About two months ago my 3-year-old daughter finally grasped what death is. That conceptual shift was precipitated by the death of my father-in-law’s dog (the dog was very old). After visiting grandpa’s house and realizing the dog she loved to terrorize was no longer there, we simply explained that grandpa’s dog had gotten sick and died, while reassuring her fears that mommy or daddy might die.
It only took her a few weeks to realize that she had never met my dad and started asking questions about where my father was. Again, we tried to put the matter as simply and straightforward as possible, explaining that my dad had gotten sick and died a long time ago. For the most part she seems to accept those explanations without the anxiety both my wife and I were afraid of. Except for occasionally insisting that her grandfather’s dog is still alive, she accepted it just like she accepted our explanation of what buses and police officers do, and moved on.
Someday, though, she’s probably going to want more information about her other grandfather and that whole can of worms is a bit more complicated, especially since I barely knew my father (I didn’t attend his funeral and couldn’t tell you even what year he died, though it wasn’t too long after the El Paso Times article).
The one good thing I can say about my father, aside from the fact that he accomplished a lot of things in a very short life, was that he was extremely honest when you could get him to open up, even when he knew he was dying.
I never had a single discussion with my father about his illness or imminent death, but toward the end he sent me a letter describing the regrets he had about what he described as the selfish way he had lived his life. It didn’t make any sort of rapprochment possible, but it made me respect him for being able to admit that and made me realize how he garnered the loyalty of the men who served under him in Vietnam (where he earned a boat load of medals including a Silver Star for disarming a live grenade booby trap — of course he didn’t have much choice as the grenade would have blew him to bits if he hadn’t done so very quickly).
On the other hand, my early life was a poewrful lesson that professional success and personal achievement can be a prison if if pursued in exclusion to everything else. For the most part I’ve avoided making my father’s mistakes, but if I had I’d hope I would have had the courage to face up to them like my dad did.