Let's Talk About Tragedy
One of the deepest desires of parents is to keep our children shielded from the tragedies of life. We don't want to expose our kids to the horrors of pain, illness and death. We don't want them to think about Surfside or Meron or the worst effects of COVID.
Aliza and I certainly didn't want to tell our children that their Zeida, Aliza's dad, passed away last week.
Most of that discomfort was our own. Our children were saddened by the news. But they knew that Zeida was sick. They knew that mommy had gone to visit him two weeks ago, and they knew that he didn't recognize or remember any of us. We had not denied our children the knowledge that, despite our tefillos, his terminal illness most often ends in death.
Our kids asked a lot of questions. They wanted to know about when or why Hashem chooses to take a Neshoma back to Shamayim. They wanted to know why people die at all.