Children need to face up to matters of life and death

IT'S an issue which most of us will never have to address: is a child emotionally strong enough to face the funeral of their parent or another close relative?

A few days ago, the matriarch of Radio 4's The Archers, Jill Archer, argued passionately for the inclusion of 11-year-old twins Lily and Freddie in their father Nigel's funeral. He had died suddenly in a fall from a roof, and their mother, Elizabeth, felt her children had already been through too much to withstand the wear and tear of the funeral. Jill, who'd lost her father when she was tiny, spoke for the first time in many decades about the fact that she had then lost her mother at seven-years-old and had been denied "the chance to say goodbye" because her family thought she had already suffered so much.

Jill explained that for many years afterwards she remained a guarded and wary person, suspecting that people she loved and who loved her could disappear at any moment without a parting word. It took her many years to forgive her mother for disappearing and never coming back. It may only be fiction, but the storyline (in which the twins attended the funeral in the end) has resonated with many listeners, including those who still resent the real-life decisions made for them long ago.

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"I was nine when my mother died", says Jacqui, now 47. "No-one sat me down and asked me if I wanted to go to the funeral. I wasn't told what day the funeral was to be held, and a relative took me and my brother, who was 11, to the seaside as a treat. When we got back it was all over, but people were talking about it for weeks afterwards. I cried and cried, and it took years for me to believe that she hadn't just left us and gone away somewhere. My dad thought it was for the best and I've never really had it out with him, but I would never do that to a child. Unless they were very small, I would assume they were coming to the funeral, but make sure they wanted to first. I still get very angry when I talk about it..."

Funeral planner Liz Lee, of Leeds-based The Fantastic Funeral company, says she routinely sees children aged as young as six, seven and eight at funerals. "In our experience, children who are able to go to a funeral seem to carry fewer fears about death afterwards than those who are excluded. They seem to understand a bit more about death as a natural rite of passage. The funerals we arrange tend mostly to be for people who have died in their 50s and above, whose children are grown up, but grandchildren are often at a funeral and included in the event by lighting candles, reading a poem or maybe carrying a flower to the graveside. I've seen children upset at funerals but not frightened, and I think that these days the kind of people who bring children to funerals are also the type to sit down beforehand and explain what will happen".

There is no such thing as a child being "too young" to be taken to a loved one's funeral, says educational psychologist John Holland, whose doctorate at York University was based on research carried out among adults who had been allowed to attend a parent's funeral and people who had not.

His pioneering study revealed that none of the 47 per cent of the group who had attended the funeral reported any negative experiences. Two-thirds said it was positive or helpful, describing how it led to them 'grasping reality' and had 'let them say goodbye". Of the 53 per cent who had not attended the funeral – some simply told they were not going, and others distracted from the event and told about it afterwards – more than three-quarters said they wished they had. They expressed feelings of regret, anger, exclusion, frustration and "detachment from reality". Those who'd been given the choice and had decided for themselves not to go did not express the same negative emotions.

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"A child will always gain something from going to the funeral and basically you only have one opportunity to do it," says Dr Holland, whose work includes giving training to school staff in how to work with children who have been bereaved. "A funeral is very important in the grieving process and on many levels, including the fact that it allows the child to appreciate how much their loved one was valued by their community as well as the family. I think children need to be spoken to gently and given an explanation of the funeral in very simple terms, then asked if they would like to go. Of course, there is the time after the funeral to think about, too, when a child can sometimes feel neglected while their remaining parent is focused on their own grief."