Teaching My Children About Death

Recently, someone in my family passed away. My husband’s grandfather had just celebrated his 101st birthday, and then it was time for his soul to return to God. He was surrounded by his family.

Meanwhile, in our home, life was full of children and questions. I am blessed with a sweet gang of children, and as a former early childhood teacher I have built up a library of “scripts” for speaking about hard topics with them. Most recently: “Why do we keep running to the bomb shelter?”

In earlier years, when someone in our family passed away, my kids were too little to grasp what that meant. When we left for a funeral or visited a shiva, the seven day period of mourning in Jewish life marked by gathering, prayer, and reflection, I could simply say, “We’re running out for a bit.” At those times, my children were too young or too far removed from the loss to feel its weight.

But now, things are different. Some of my kids remember their great grandfather. All of them know his picture, his voice from FaceTime calls, and the stories we have told about him over the years. This time, I found myself in new territory, having to explain what it really means when someone dies. What happens to a person’s body? What happens to the neshama, the soul? And how do we talk about mysteries no one on earth fully knows?

And you can bet I turned to the Bible for help. How do we explain death to children and to ourselves in a way that is honest, faithful, and comforting?

The first thing I told my children is simple and deeply rooted in the Bible: when a person dies, the neshama returns to God.

This verse gave me language I could share. The body is buried, but the soul does not vanish. God breathed it into us, and it goes back to Him. For my children, this created a picture: their great grandfather’s neshama is now with God, safe and cared for. This reassurance mattered.

The second thing I told my children is that even after someone passes away, we can still do things that give strength and comfort to their neshama. I explained it to them this way: every prayer, every mitzvah, every act of goodness we do in his memory is like giving his soul a hug. My husband’s grandfather loved to say Birkat HaMazon (the grace after meals). So we can make an effort to say it beautifully, slowly, and with meaning, just like he did. He loved to sing, so my kids can sing too, lifting up their voices in joy. These are not grand gestures, but they are real. They connect us. They remind us that love does not end when life ends.

The third thing I told my children is that stories keep a person alive in this world. The Bible says:

Every time we remember his words, his habits, or the way he carried himself, we bless him again. So I told my children: when you remember the sound of his voice on the phone, or how he would chuckle before telling a story, you are giving life to his memory. When we tell these stories around our table, he is present with us in a real way. This is why we gather for shiva, not only to sit in silence, but to share. Mourning is remembering. It is stitching together the small details of a life into a legacy that endures.

It is no small thing to talk about death with children. Adults, too, often shy away from it. But children deserve honest answers. The Bible does not ignore death, it gives us a framework of faith, responsibility, and eternity. When Abraham faced the death of Sarah, he wept and mourned. Then he rose up and secured a burial place (Genesis 23). Grief was real, but it did not paralyze him. Faith gave him a way forward. That is what I wanted my children to see: death is not the end of the story.

My husband’s grandfather lived through a century of change and challenge, and he carried his faith to the very end. His neshama has returned to God, as the Bible promises, and that is not the end but the fulfillment of a life lived under God’s direction. The responsibility now falls to the living: to honor the dead not with silence, but with action. To strengthen the souls of their ancestors through our own faithfulness. To take their songs and make them our songs, their prayers and make them our prayers, their stories and make them part of our inheritance.

The Bible is clear that death does not sever the covenant between God and His people. Abraham buried Sarah and continued on in faith. David mourned his child, rose, and went to the House of the Lord. Each generation faces death, but each generation is also called to continue the work of life. That is the charge we inherit: to meet death with faith, and to live so that our own memory will one day be a blessing.