Parenting Like A Royal
At around 2 AM on July 4th, 2022, every iPad in my house started ringing. At the time, the tablets the kids used were logged into my Apple ID, so even though my phone was on silent, my bedroom was suddenly screaming with multiple ringtones. The number that appeared on my phone was not one I recognized, but my intuition (or the brain fog from still being half asleep) led me to answer. My step-grandmother was en route to the hospital and was using a family friend’s phone to let me know that my father and step-mom had been in a plane crash. At that time, she was not sure of the severity. I thanked her for letting me know and told her I loved her. I then sat on the couch for two hours in the darkness praying and going through all the possible scenarios.
Of course, the absolute worst case scenario was that both of them would die. Next to that, the worst situation would be one alive while the other passed. I wondered what life would be like if one or both of them were permanently disabled in some way due to their injuries. My step-mother had become the primary care giver for her parents in recent years- running their errands, taking them to the doctor, and spending time with them daily in their home. If she became unable to assist, or passed away, I wondered how my brother and I would manage. I’ve known my step-mom’s parents as my grandparents since I was two years old, but with no children of her own, and a brother who had passed a decade earlier leaving no other grandkids, if my step-mom was gone or unable to assist, my brother and I were the next of kin. We of course would have figured it out, but with my grandparents losing their son in 2008, leaving only my step-mom, I was imagining how chaotic and tragic things could get if she did not make it through this.
My uncle called me while I was sitting on the couch in the darkness to let me know that he was on the way to the hospital, and based on what he could figure out, my step-mom was in ICU with a collapsed lung. With the little information he discovered, he had heard at one point my father was complaining about being unable to feel his legs, and from another source, had been told my father wasn’t alive at all. He wanted to get to the hospital (four hours from where he lived) to get the facts. He promised to let me know when he found out.
As I continued to wait, I wondered what life would be like if my father somehow miraculously survived, but ended up in a wheel chair. The man spent his years driving cars, motorcycles, planes, and boats as fast as he could. I struggled to imagine what a life bound to wheels would mean for him and his love of driving. He would probably find a way to drive vehicles once again. I assumed he would, at the very least, take a perfectly safe electric wheel chair and turn it into an ATV-like contraption that could top out at 50 MPH or so. As I imagined what life for him would be like, my uncle called me again right at sunrise.
He let me know that my dad did not make it, and my step-mother appeared to be in a very precarious situation. I thanked him for letting me know, told him I loved him, and hung up the phone. I spent the next 24 hours trying to figure out what to do next. My step-mom was in the ICU and we had no idea who to call to get dependable information about her status as my uncle did not stick around for some reason, and my grandparents didn’t even own a cell phone. My brother was en route from New York and I was hosting family friends from out of town, while trying to find information. Because my dad was a little bit mysterious and secretive about his life, neither my brother or I knew how to contact any of their friends. Fortunately, my father’s former assistant (the family friend who had taken my grandparents to the hospital) kept in touch, and seemed to have the best understanding about what was going on since she lied to the hospital and said she was my step-mom’s daughter.
The last picture of my kids with my dad- May 2022
The next day I made the 4 hour drive to northeast Texas to visit my step-mom who had made some improvement, and connected with my brother as we began to figure out how to get my father to his final resting place. At 35 years old, you don’t expect to be chatting with a funeral home director, swiping your credit card to pay for embalming, and picking out caskets with your brother, but that is exactly where I found myself.
Because of my step-mom’s battle to recover, she was not mentally in a state to make any decisions, and, even if she were healthy, her emotional despair would have impaired her. After getting the doctors to give us a somewhat decent guess on when she would be ready to be released in order to attend a funeral, my brother and I set the date for two Saturdays away, and I went back home to my family while he stayed to support my step-mom.
It was almost a full week after the accident before I worked up the courage to tell my kids that their grandfather had died, and it was awful. I am not an outwardly emotional person, and I had yet to shed one tear. Not when my uncle called me to confirm the news. Not when I first spoke to my step-mom as she was talking about how she couldn’t live without my dad. Not when I chose the casket with the most chrome to reflect how much my dad loved cars. But when my wife and I gathered my two kids in my daughter’s room to share the news, I could not form a complete sentence. I believe my wife carried most of the burden of communicating, but as soon as my daughter started crying, I couldn’t manage to do anything but weep. I was more distraught over their loss of a grandfather than I was at my loss of a father.
As a parent, the only thing more difficult than receiving tragic news is sharing that tragic news with your children.
This week, Catherine, Princess of Wales (known also as Kate Middleton) shared with the world that she had been diagnosed with cancer. After several weeks of intense speculation online, and in the midst of many conspiracy theories beginning to take off, Catherine made a video to announce her diagnosis, and cited her children as the reason she had remained quiet for so long. She knew that as soon as her condition was made public, she had no control over how the kids would be exposed to what was going on as reported by the media. She and her husband took their time working out the best way to walk the children through the situation, making sure they understood that no matter what they heard otherwise, mommy was ok, she was getting great treatment, and she wasn’t going anywhere.
Catherine, Princess of Wales - Image from her video linked on YouTube
It’s comforting to know that even seemingly perfect parents with all the resources in the world struggle with some of the same basic things that I do. How do you communicate big, tragic news to children when every bone in your body is working daily to shield them from pain and struggles? We all know that there will come a day when we can no longer protect them from the troubles of this world, and it is not wise to keep them insulated from reality for too long, but that does not make it easier to tell them a family member has died, or that you are facing an uncertain future in regard to your health.
I think many parents find themselves imagining the worst things that could happen and how they would handle them, but when some of those things actually end up happening, so many of us are completely at a loss for what to do and say. As I drove back home from making arrangements for my father’s funeral, I tried to decide how to approach the topic with my kids. I was angry that so early in their lives I had to talk to them about death. My dad was 59. I should have had a few more years to allow them to mature before having to deal with significant loss. They had yet to even have a beloved pet die, so how could I talk to them about “Big Daddy” suddenly being gone from their lives? I didn’t want them to be afraid of airplanes. I dreaded the funeral when they would see my step-mom immobile in a wheel chair with a broken ankle. I hated that years of future memories with their grandfather were suddenly cut short at the young ages of 4 and 6. I wondered if my son would even remember my dad. I assumed my daughter might have a few glimmers of memories, but when I think back to my childhood, I remember essentially nothing before the age of 5. My dad was larger than life and, honestly, I believe he was better equipped to be a grandfather than a dad. He talked about taking the kids to Disney World. He never struggled to think of something fun to do outside after holiday meals. He was ready and willing to buy anything and everything they laid eyes on in his presence. I truly was more upset about their loss than mine.
Ultimately, delivering bad news to your kids is always going to suck.
There isn’t an easy 3-step process to delivering bad news. You can’t find a one size fits all technique for walking your kids through tragic information. And I don’t care what anyone tells you, the resiliency of kids doesn’t make the conversation any easier. Whether you are letting them know you are about to be in a battle for your life, or you must share with them the loss of a precious grandparent, they are going to have questions. Depending on their age, they are going to be upset. And, no matter how clear you communicate the situation, one conversation will not be enough. Even two years later my daughter will talk about how Big Daddy is dead. She doesn’t dwell on it, but it seems that he crosses her mind sometimes, and all she knows to do is say that fact out loud. On the way home from lunch after church recently, she brought him up again. We passed a senior citizen center and she mentioned how Big Daddy didn’t make it to becoming a senior. She quickly mentioned how glad she is to still have my step-mom. She understands that we could have easily lost her at the same time we lost my dad, and she seems to be grateful for that.
Anytime over the past two years when my daughter has brought up how sad she was about her grandfather, my instinct has been to blow right through it. I am so uncomfortable, I quickly point out that he is with Jesus and we will one day join him, and we will all be happy together. I don’t try to talk her out of being sad, but I am always transported back to that day in her bedroom when she was weeping. My gut reaction is to avoid ever having to revisit how I felt that day. It probably isn’t the right thing to do, but for most of parenting, I’m making it up as I go. And I believe all parents are in the same boat.
When it comes to hard conversations, don’t beat yourself up.
You’re not going to say all the right things. There’s no way you can anticipate every question and response from your kids. It is almost impossible to fight some of our knee-jerk reactions to the unexpected things our children will say or do in response to tragedy. Give yourself a break. You’re only a few weeks, days, hours, or moments ahead of them in this process. In most situations, we are managing our own intense and uncontrollable emotions in regard to the news we are trying to share, so we won’t handle it perfectly. And that is 100% ok. Even princesses struggle to say the right things.
People who have been trained for years to always say and act in the most perfect way possible find themselves speechless. Parents with access to any resource imaginable can’t seem to make a reasonable plan quickly to have difficult conversations. Even royalty struggles to parent through tough situations. All parents face the same underlying difficulty of communicating big, existential, and scary topics to their young kids. We’re all trying to figure this out as we go, and if you make a mistake, you’re in good company. Because parenting is hard, and sharing bad news with our babies is one of the worst parts of being a mom or dad.