In walking around an old cemetery, wonder may be ignited. Children may benefit from guidance including rules of respect and the freedom to explore. They can discover stories long ago buried. Augmenting the story on a stone with a few nuggets of adult historical knowledge can bring enormous learning to all, and can make history itself relevant and vibrant. Serious play may look like a child coming upon a dead bird and deciding to provide it with a green burial ceremony with her friends to honor the bird’s death.
Being able to talk about death helps families honor each other’s expressed wishes about issues of death such as organ donation, do-not-resuscitate (DNR) wishes, green burials, cremation, and wills. There is a lot to learn about death care, with many new visions of how dead bodies might be dealt with in “green” ways.
How people learn from one anothers’ deaths is an important question. Felix Adler, founder of the Ethical Culture Movement, offers this wisdom: “The dead are not dead if we have loved them truly. In our own lives we can give them a kind of immortality. Let us arise and take up the work they have left unfinished.”
Books for Children on Death
“Death is Stupid” by Anastasia Higgenbotham http://anastasiahigginbotham.com/death-is-stupid
“When Miss Bluebird Died” by Jennifer Reich https://bookshop.org/books/when-miss-bluebird-died/9780692924327
More books to check out: https://www.nypl.org/blog/2017/07/21/childrens-books-about-loss-and-grieving
The Importance of Talking About Death (article with links to booklet and video): https://www.ageuk.org.uk/discover/2018/why-we-should-all-be-encouraged-to-talk-about-death-and-dying
To create a digital memorial: https://theinspiredfuneral.com/build-an-obituary
Here is an example of a digital memorial: http://stevekindred.blogspot.com
