 Coping
with the 9.11.01 Aftermath
9.11 Coping Strategies
Helping Children Cope with the Emotional Aftermath
Helpful 9.11 Scripts to Use with Children
By Jim Messina, Ph.D. Adapted from Pathfinder
Content:
2 of 2 Back to 1
 Scripts
to Help Children Cope with Death of Parent or Loved One in
the 9.11.01 Tragedy
Introduction
Helpful Adults must recognize that death is a difficult reality for people
to face and accept, no matter their age. If a parent or sibling has died in this
tragedy, it is
important to allow the children to explore all aspects of the death. These children
unfortunately have not been able to be prepared to deal with the impact of the
death of their
loved one. However, the protracted period of time it took to conduct the search
and rescue mission has given these children an chance to experience the absence
of the loved one in their lives. They now need to be given time to say "good by" and
"talk:
with their dead loved one. They cannot be kept in the dark about what is
happening in the family now that the death of the loved one has been officially
determined. Helpful Adults have hopefully made sure that these children have
been fully informed on the progress of the search and rescue efforts. Now that
their loved one's death has been officially determined, hopefully it has not as great a shock to them as it
could be if they were left in the dark. These surviving children need to be given reassurance that the
death is not due to anything they did to or said about their loved one. They need
to be given reassurance that there is nothing they can do to make the person come back from the dead. They need to be given time to fully comprehend
the impact of the news about the death. They need to be given time to
grieve the loss and told about the stages of grieving so that they know what they are
experiencing and feeling is normal.
Since the deaths occurred suddenly, the
shock and horror needs to be dealt with openly and honestly with the children. They need
to be given permission to fully express their feelings about the suddenness of the news
and horror of the reality in their lives. Helpful Adults allow their children to see them
deal openly with their own grief and emotional responses. They do not encourage stuffing
feelings or keeping a stiff upper lip.
Helpful Adults allow their children to participate in planning the
funeral and/or memorial service (s) for their loved ones. They give their children opportunity to put their own
personal touches into the ceremony. They encourage their children to write good by letters or
eulogies which are read at the service. They have them select music which is reflective of
theor dead loved one. They encourage their children to be open about their memories about
their loved ones and to share these memories during the services. They let their children
know that it is healthy to feel sad and tearful in facing this death. They encourage their
children to be free with their sad feelings during services for their loved ones.
Helpful Adults encourage their children to establish a memorial place
in their homes where they can place mementos of their dead loved one. They encourage their
children to gather in this place scrapbooks, photo albums, baby books, and other special
artifacts of their deceased loved one. Helpful Adults encourage their children to use this
memorial place during their future grief work. In this place music tapes, eulogies and
good by letters can be used along with the other mementoes to experience the full grief
experience, as outlined in The Tools for Handling Loss, so that they can come to full acceptance of the loss over the next two to
five years post death. Helpful Adults do not attempt to rush themselves or their children to
fully accept or grieve the loss of their loved ones lost so tragically on
September 11th.
Helpful Adults openly and honestly answer their children's questions
and concerns about the death. They attempt to do so in a way to guard and keep secure
their children's self-esteem, sense of security, trust and self-confidence. What follows
are some sample questions and Helpful Adult responses.
Useful question scripts which become conversation openers with children
who have lost a parent or loved one in the 9.11.01 tragedy.
Question 1:
Child: Why did this happen?
Helpful Adult: We will never fully be able to fully comprehend why this happened.
All we can do is to ask God to accept our loved one in Heaven. We need to
hand over to God, our grief and doubts about why this happened. Death is
never easy to understand or accept. But we must go on with our own lives and try to accept
it. No one can ever tell us why it happened. All they can tell us is what caused the death
and how it happened. It is my hope that because we loved our deceased family member so
much that we will pull together as a family and survive this loss in as healthy a manner
as possible.
Question 2:
Child: Is there something I did to make this happen?
Helpful Adult: You did not do anything to cause this person to die.
This happened for reasons none of which had to do with you. There is nothing you need to
blame yourself for in this matter. You are not responsible for what happened. You need to
be good to yourself and not worry about how you could have done something different so it
wouldn't have happened.
Question 3:
Child: How will we go on without our loved one?
Helpful Adult: As hard as it is to accept, we will survive the death of our loved
one. Yes, our life will be different, but we will pull together and make adjustments. We
have the ability to make the most of our life without our loved one present. We can show
by our new life that our loved one was well loved and cared about because we cared enough
not to completely fall apart and die ourselves. Our loved one would expect us to go on and
make the most of our lives. We can fulfill that wish by making it happen in memory of
our loved one.
Question 4:
Child: Why couldn't it have happened to me?
Helpful Adult: I appreciate your concern, but it does no one any good to think that
way. You weren't responsible for what happened. There was nothing you could do to not make
it happen. If you took our dead loved one's place, then we would be mourning your death.
No matter how we feel about it, we still must accept it happened. We must go on from this
point forward with no regrets or doubts about our role in the death. To offer ourselves up
for the life of the other is to bargain with the loss. It is a form of denial. We had no
control over this death. We need to accept this death as it is rather than how we would
like it to have been.
Question 5:
Child: Why did it have to happen now?
Helpful Adult: There never seems to be a right time for a person to die. We know
that we will all ultimately die at some time. We need to accept that it happened now in
our lives when we least needed it to happen. We can't control when we will die, even if we
take perfectly good care of our health and safety. This is a fact of life we need to
accept. When death comes no one can control the timing. This is just one more thing we
need to hand over to God. Why this time was chosen, we will never know. What
we do know is that it happened. We need to go on from this point to live the rest of our
lives without our loved one.
Question 6:
Child: Why couldn't the rescuers find and save our loved one from dying?
Helpful Adult: No matter how skillful and talented the rescuers were, they cannot always
save a person from dying in such a tragedy. We need to recognize that we can do lot of measures to
search out and find our loved one, but even with the greatest advances in search
methods, there are still
things that cannot control and prevent deaths in such tragic events as this one. We did every thing we could to
find our
loved one alive. When there were no other things to do, we needed to accept that
accepting that our loved died was
all that was left.
Question 7:
Client: Why does it still feel so bad a year later?
Helpful Adult: To fully grieve the death of a loved one takes a long time. It is a
sign of how much we loved that person that we still feel pain over this loss. There is no
shorthand, quick solution to relieve the pain of our loss. We need to fully grieve and
allow ourselves to let our feelings out. Maybe in time the hurt and pain will feel less,
but the loss will always be there for us to remember. Feeling bad does not mean that we
haven't accepted the death. It instead means that in acceptance of our loss we recognize
its magnitude and impact on us.
Question 9:
Child: What can I do about feeling guilty about what I did or didn't
say or do to my deceased loved one?
Helpful Adult: There is nothing that you can say or do at this time to make up for
what you said or didn't say before your loved one died. You need to forgive yourself for
what you did or didn't say or do in the past. You need to let go of guilt for this and
allow yourself to go on and live your life to the fullest without burdening yourself with
blame or guilt. Your loved one would have wanted you to live your live as optimally as
possible and would not want you to be so down on yourself for your past behaviors.
Question 10
Child: Will you die and leave me too like my dead loved one did?
Helpful Adult: Death is a reality which we cannot predict or control. All we can do
is to live as healthy a lifestyle as possible so as to insure that we lengthen our time on
earth. But we cannot ever fully reassure you that some accident or sudden unexplained
event might not cause you or me to die. For that reason, we need to enjoy life one day at
a time. We need to enjoy each other's company to the fullest each day of life we are
given. It is because of this that we need to always be as honest and open with one
another. We need to try to insure that things do not go unsaid which need to be said.
Conversely we need to try not to say things to one another anything which we might come to
regret later on. I love you very much. I will do what I can to take care of my health and
safety to be around as long as I can to share my life with you.
Question 10:
Child: Will I have to accept my new step-parent as a replacement for
my dead parent?
Helpful Adult: I never expect you to fully let go of the loss of your dead natural
parent. My wish is that you accept my new spouse as your step-parent. Step-parent means
"in place of." I would like you to accept this new person as someone who loves
and accepts you enough to parent you in the place of your dead parent. Your step-parent
does not want to replace your dead parent but rather to fill in to complete the tasks of
parenting you which death robbed your natural parent from accomplishing. My hope is that
you will come to love your step-parent as your own. I recognize that this love will be
different from what you felt for your natural parent. We will always openly talk about
your dead natural parent if the occasion arises. I never want you to be afraid to ask
questions about your dead natural parent. I want you always to be free with your feelings
if you are hurting or in pain. I hope that you will be free with your loss feelings with
your new step-parent. Please do not hide from us if you are missing your dead parent.
Don't hold back because your natural parent is not alive to experience the joys and
successes you are experiencing in your current life.
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