If You Don’t Explain Death, They Will Imagine It

“Excuse me… where is my daddy?”

That question did not come from a microphone.
It did not echo from a pulpit.

It came from a little boy sitting alone in the lobby of a funeral home.

iPad in his lap.
Fresh pair of J’s on his feet.
Braids neat and tight, laid back like somebody loved him enough to sit still and part carefully.

His name was Adam.

And while grown folks were in a conference room crying, arguing, negotiating caskets and costs… Adam was out there trying to locate his father.

Alone.

The confusion in his eyes sent a chill through me. Not dramatic. Not poetic. A real chill. The kind that starts in your spine and works its way up your neck.

“Where is my daddy?”

I froze for half a second.

I didn’t want to overstep.
I didn’t want to intrude.
I didn’t want to say something that wasn’t my place to say.

But I also couldn’t ignore him.

You don’t ignore a child in grief. You don’t pretend you didn’t hear the tremble behind that question.

So I sat down next to him.

Not as the funeral arranger.
Not as the professional in heels and a name badge.

As a woman.
As a mother.
As someone who understands what silence can do to a child’s mind.

I didn’t start explaining.

I let him talk.

I let him take over the narrative. I let him tell me what he thought was happening.

He told me his father was shot.
He told me he was mad.
Mad at the person who did it.
Mad at the world.
Mad that none of this made sense.

He told me he would do anything to get his daddy back.

Anything.

And right there in that funeral home lobby, with cartoons still playing faintly on his screen, I could identify two of the seven stages of grief without even pulling out a textbook.

Anger.

Bargaining.

“If I could just…”
“If I could trade…”
“If I could fix it…”

This baby was negotiating with a reality he hadn’t even been properly introduced to.

I placed my hand gently over his.

I told him that everything he was feeling was real. That being mad made sense. That wishing his daddy would walk through the door was normal.

But what broke me wasn’t his anger.

It was the isolation.

He was in one of the scariest buildings a child can imagine, and no one had explained why.

No one had prepared him for what he would see.
No one had sat eye to eye and said, “Your daddy’s body stopped working.”
No one had assured him that his feelings were allowed in the room.

He wasn’t just grieving.

He was ostracized inside his own grief.

And let’s talk about what we do in our families.

Especially in Black families.

We don’t just stay silent.

We promote children to emotional superheroes overnight.

The real hero, the provider, the protector, the “big dog,” is laying lifeless… and somehow the child is expected to be strong.

I have watched it happen.

“Don’t cry.”
“You’re the man of the house now.”
“Your mama needs you to be strong.”
“It’s going to be okay.”
“You’ll be fine.”

Fine?

His father just died.

And now he’s being handed a cape he did not ask for.

We do this thing where adults take center stage in grief. The wailing. The fainting. The arguing. The dramatic retellings of what happened. The family politics. The church performance.

Meanwhile the child, who just lost their real life superhero, is told to manage themselves.

Manage your tears.
Manage your questions.
Manage your confusion.

We minimize their emotions while magnifying our own.

We expect them to comfort their mother.
We expect them to be strong for Grandma.
We expect them to sit quietly while grown folks rewrite the narrative in real time.

And the most dangerous part?

We mistake suppression for strength.

That little boy in the lobby was already angry. Already bargaining. Already trying to process violence. And somewhere along the line, someone was going to tell him he had to hold it together.

Hold what together?

He’s eight.

Black boys especially are taught early that tears are weakness. That vulnerability is unsafe. That grief must be swallowed whole.

So they swallow it.

And it doesn’t disappear.

It turns into rage.
It turns into detachment.
It turns into emotional distance in adulthood.
It turns into a man who never learned how to cry when it mattered.

And we look up twenty years later wondering why he can’t access his feelings.

Because the day his hero died, we handed him armor instead of language.

Girls don’t escape it either.

They’re told to help with younger siblings. To sit beside Mama. To be mature. To pray harder. To not upset the adults with too many questions.

Children are not supporting characters in the movie of your grief.

They are grieving too.

And when we minimize their emotions with “you’ll be fine,” what we are really saying is, “Your pain is inconvenient right now.”

As a grief coach, I have untangled too many adults who were once children told to be strong too soon.

As a funeral professional, I see it every week.

As a mother, I refuse to participate in it.

If you don’t explain death, they will imagine it.

If you don’t give them language, they will build armor.

And one day, that armor will be so heavy they won’t remember how to take it off.

Children don’t need a cape.

They need a conversation.

Because here is the other side of this that we don’t talk about enough.

When a child is actually taught what death is, something powerful happens.

Their imagination doesn’t disappear.

It transforms.

Instead of imagining monsters under the bed, they imagine Heaven the way their faith describes it.
They imagine Grandma without pain.
They imagine Daddy not hurting anymore.
They imagine memories as treasures instead of ghosts.

When you give a child language, you give their imagination direction.

If you don’t explain death, they will imagine it.

But if you do explain death, they will still imagine it.

The difference is this:

One imagination breeds fear.
The other imagination builds meaning.

When a child understands that a body can stop working…
that death is not contagious…
that grief is love with nowhere to land…
that tears are not weakness…

They don’t spiral.

They process.

They ask questions.
They revisit the conversation.
They connect dots.

And slowly, their imagination begins to hold memories instead of terror.

I have seen children draw pictures of their loved one in the sky.
I have heard them describe Heaven with playgrounds and no more sickness.
I have watched them smile while remembering the sound of their father’s laugh.

That is imagination guided by truth.

That is grief with guardrails.

That is what happens when adults are brave enough to say the hard words.

We cannot eliminate a child’s pain.

But we can prevent unnecessary fear.

We can trade silence for safety.
We can trade armor for language.
We can trade confusion for clarity.

Because one day, that child will become an adult.

And when death sits across from them again, they won’t be eight years old in a funeral home lobby asking where their daddy went.

They will be grounded.
They will be informed.
They will be emotionally literate.

And they will remember that someone once sat down beside them and told them the truth.

That is protection.

That is strength.

That is love. 🕊️