Recently, my grandmother (my 2.5 year old's great grandmother) passed away. She was 93, but it was still sudden. We live about 3 hours away from Grandma, so she was not a daily presence in my daughter's life, but she was certainly part of all the major holiday celebrations (plus my daughter watches lots of home videos over and over again where Grandma is featured).

This brings up the impossibly difficult issue of how to explain the death of a family member to a 2.5 year old. I ultimately took the tack of explaining to my daughter that we were going to church to "say goodbye to Grandma", and that "Grandma is going away, and we have to say goodbye". I scrupulously avoided mentioning the word "sick"...because my understanding is that this can scare very young kids into believing that they are going to die every time they get sick.

That was about a week ago. But last night at dinner, my daughter brought up the topic again, apropos of absolutely nothing. She said "where's Grandma?". I reminded her that we said goodbye to Grandma at church, but she persisted and observed that we went to Grandma's house after church, and "Grandma wasn't there".

Again, the funeral was a week ago, and my daughter still seems to be attempting to process the whole situation in her head.

I think the only notion she has of "dead" is that the worms on the sidewalk are dead. And even that, she doesn't quite get.

Ideas?

Wow. This is such a tough one. Probably near the toughest.

Our kids' great grandmother (my wife's grandmother and an amazing woman) passed away a couple of years ago. The kids saw her once or twice a year, knew her well, but not like immediate family.

The entire extended family gathered in Connecticut for the funeral and we went, taking the kids. This huge gathering of family, the expressions of love and sadness, the stories, all seemed to really help our kids process. They could see that this was part of life, difficult and painful, but normal.

We took the kids to the funeral service but not the graveside. There were questions and conversations, but what they absorbed from all the people around them seemed more important.