The Talk

OK, not that talk, but one of those talks that makes parents nervous. Or at least it did for me.

I was sitting at the dining room table Saturday evening, going through the days mail and chatting with Veronica as she was making dinner. The big headline of a weekly newspaper I subscribe to was "The Army is Killing Itself: More soldiers committed suicide last month than died in combat. Is op tempo breaking the Army?"

Darling boy sees this and asks "What's suicide, dad?"

Crap....

He's 8 yrs old and is not totally naive to the concept of death. When my grandmother passed away 2 years ago we explained what happened (hell, the woman was 99 1/2 yrs old, if anyone has ever died of plain old age, it was her!) and he came to the wake and funeral with me.

But how do you explain someone killing themselves to a child?

I turn to Veronica, point to the headline, and tell her that he's asking about this story. "Do you think he's ready to hear about that?" Because you know I wasn't delving into this topic without Veronica having my back!

DB is pretty good about accepting it when we say "That's grown up stuff" or "Ask us again in a few years" when we feel that he is too young for his inquiries. So I could have taken the easy way out. But not this time.

I told him that some people, because they are in so much physical or emotional pain that they think that they would rather be dead than go on living as they are. And I emphasized that this is a very sad situation, sadder than he could imagine.

While he understands that we are at war in Iraq and Afghanistan, he hadn't fully wrapped his brain around the idea that the enemy wants to kill us and sometimes succeeds, so I had to talk about that as well. On a positive note, now I have something to start with when I explain Memorial Day to him.

Short, simple, and to the point. He understood, and was sad for a few minutes, but was okay after that.

Anyone else ever have to deal with the questions of suicide and/or war? If so, how did you handle it? I'm satisfied with how I responded, but I'm curious about other experiences.