One of the most important lessons

I have an old friend that I was in the Navy with years ago. he lives in Hawaii and is my age and has 2 little girls and a wife.
He has been fighting Leukemia for a while now. He recently received a bone marrow transplant. During the process, his immune system was weakened, he developed pneumonia and ultimately, the cancer came back.
As of yesterday Dr.'s have given up and planned to take him off life support. As the nurses were repositioning his body to begin the process, he held his hand up telling them to stop.
His wife has been posting on facebook, and that was her last post yesterday, so thats all I know but it as of this moment.
It got me to thinking...
The idea of Sean dying felt like a punch in the gut. Being the same age and all just made it scary. Sean is still hanging on , and regardless of how this ends I admire his strength more than he will ever know.
I was thinking last night , about how Sean always had this infectious smile and laugh. I t was unmistakable:)..so as I sat there thinking about it, the tears came and came. My sons asked what was wrong, so I explained it to them. Esequiel struggled trying to figure out a way to make my pain go away. I explained that "offering condolences" to those we love is not about making their pain go away, but rather acknowledging their pain, and offering support BECAUSE of that pain..nothing takes it away, we just all huddle together, emotional, sometimes physically, till it hurts a little less, and less and less. Somedays it hurts more, and when those days come, we get a little closer than we were yesterday.

Then today , I saw on facebook that a friend that I went to high school with lost her Dad. I am going to be going the viewing tomorrow to support my friend.
Ive decided to take my son with me. He's never been to anything like this. Some people want to protect their children from death and the rituals we have of death. but what a horrible thing to do!..
Death is one of the things that we ALL deal with at some point, and I dont want Esequiel to have the first funeral he goes to be someone he really loves. because he didnt have any kind of healthy family life before us, he missed out on important social things..common rituals, like weddings and funerals.
The loss of someone we love can be so traumatic..so painful. The fear of seeing a body in a casket, for example, can be really scary.
Part of my focus in my graduate studies is child therapy and more specifically, childhood grief. I believe strongly that children should be included in conversations about death rather than being ushered out of the room when things get too real. Children can be very confused when adults use phrases like " passed away" or "gone to see Jesus". Children are very literal in their thinking, and as parents, I think, we have a desire to protect them. I also think, by doing so , we can deny our children some very important life lessons.
Talk to your children about death when the dog or goldfish die. Let them have funerals for their pets and most of all, allow them to cry and feel sad about the loss..yes, even the boys.
We can include conversations about our faith, whatever that may be, but it shouldn't over shadow or cancel out the mechanics of what is happening either.
Talk to your kids about death. It may not be the most pleasant thing to do , but there's no more important lesson we can teach them