Early this summer, I had a conversation with my daughter. It was a conversation I had been thinking about and dreading for 3 years. It's not the one you're thinking. She is presently 9, about to turn 10. About 3 years ago, her mother hanged herself. At the advice of a few professional people whose collective advice I revere, I chose to delay telling her the full truth of the event. I believed that she was too young to really appreciate the details of the situation in such a way that she wouldn't blame herself.
"Small children are inherently self-centered, and they always blame themselves" they said.
So I told her that her mother "hurt herself" and that her injury was to her neck, and so on. I never gave the crucial detail that she did it to herself intentionally.
So, fast forward 3 years, and this is a sharp kid, asking pointed questions. We had talked about a few prominent suicides that had been in the news, and I felt she was ready to have more understanding.
So about a week after she finished 4th grade, I took her to the cemetery and we talked about it. I gave her all the facts first, labeled as facts. Then I gave her my opinions and my thoughts about why, and all that...clearly labeled as thoughts and opinions.
She understood, and cried for a few minutes. Then we took a walk around the pond at the cemetery and looked at all the frogs, turtles, and ducks. Since then, she has seemed noticeably perkier and light-hearted. I think the uncertainty of it all was bringing her down. She seems more at peace now than before. So that's good.
(By the way, before I did this, I did consult a few child development professionals...the same ones I spoke to at the beginning, and they were all in agreement that the timing was good.)
But...and here's the ranty part...her grandmother disagrees. That is, her mother's mother. She thinks she's too young. She thinks she should have been given the task of telling her about it. She is a retired child counselor for the state, so she thinks she knows everything about children. I intentionally excluded her from my consultation circle specifically because I find that her actual, practical child-raising experience has been severely screwed up, and is in complete discord from her former professional knowledge.
She is too much of a backbiting wench to come to me with this. No. I learned about how she felt about this well after the fact, from talking to my ex-wife's other ex-husband (the one she was married to when she died). She hasn't said a peep to me about it, but I haven't seen her in person in a while, so she hasn't had many opportunities.
So...today is my daughter's birthday party, and of course the ex-MIL will be there. She is a confrontational person, so I expect her to say something to me, so I have been preparing myself mentally for this conversation. It will take all of the civility and serenity in my heart (of which there is precious little) to keep from slapping the crap out of this "woman".
