Uncharted territory for me

My husband's grandmother just passed away at 95yo! They are still trying to figure out when the funeral will be and we are figuring out whether or not we will be able to travel.

Just looking for some experience in this area as this is the first death in our family. What do you tell a 3.5yo about death or do you? She probably wouldn't be able to attend the funeral, right? So maybe my husband should travel alone or would it like like we are snubbing them?

Any advice is appreciated!

I'm sure you will get some good responses to this post but you might want to go through the Parenting forum for archives as well.

My FIL died when our daughter was 4yo. I'm trying to remember what worked best to tell her. From recollection, high level information and less detail is better. We talked about people getting sick because of not taking care of their body to a point where it can't be fixed and that bodies wear out and everything dies. (FIL died of smoking-related illnesses and we wanted to mention that). If you want, talking about heaven can be helfpul.

I don't know about the funeral. I think it depends on your child and maybe other factors too -- open casket or not. We saw my FIL about a month before he died so just DH went to take care of arrangements. There wasn't a funeral as much as an outdoor memorial and we had him creamated. She knows his ashes are in our house and we explained that his body burned to ash because he was done with his body. If you want to have a more religious or spiritual discussion, that can be a time to bring in the soul.

Is it a grandmother she is very familiar with? If not, you might not need to explain as much, as in why she will no longer see someone familiar.

[Momo]

My dad passed away recently, I was estranged from him, therefore the kids only knew of him. DH & I opted to let them know he had cancer when he was diagnosed, and we explained it was an illness that was too big to be cured, as DS kept saying "maybe daddy can fix him". When he passed we told both DS & DD1 that he died , we explained this meant he was done with everything on earth...they "seemed" to get it, to this day they say "your daddy is gone because his body died"...kids are amazing ...at this age they don't seem to have fears or cares for that matter ...we just decided to tell them...DH told them to try & be extra nice to mommy during those few weeks... I did seem to get extra hugs, and it really helped having a nanny there for 3 weeks( she quit )