Hellobee Boards

@bhbee: I'm so sorry. My son was just a baby during my mom's battle with cancer so I don't have personal experience, but I would just be as honest but as concise as you can be. "Grandma is sick and we don't know if she will get better, but we are going to go visit and spend time with her and grandpa."

I have no firsthand experience. But my best friend has 6 & 7 year old girls and I know they'd handle it much better being told about the cancer and possibility of death in advance, vs. just being told grandma is "sick." I don't think you need to go in all the details but it's not just a cold.

I don't have any firsthand experience but am so sorry

@bhbee: we bought this book called ‘lifetimes’ and it’s really nicely illustrated about life cycles of plants and animals and then humans. It doesn’t say what happens after I don’t think.
https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/113067/lifetimes-by-bryan-mellonie/9780553344028/
Both our dog and my grandpa were cremated and I just could not bring myself to tell him what that was when he asked what happened. So I said that a lot of times when we die and our body doesn’t work anymore that we bury the body in the ground and eventually it becomes like the soil and can grow flowers and trees, etc. He was good with that. I said that we can remember them with pictures and stories forever even though we can’t physically see them anymore. We have a stone in our garden for our dog and he waters the flowers around it. We aren’t religious though that might be easier to say they are with Jesus or in heaven I think.

I dunno, maybe it’s because my son is younger than your oldest but I found that most of what I read online was to just keep it super ‘need to know’ for kids. If you do tell your kids more about cancer and sickness, prepare your MIL to talk about it with them. My son asked for a long while where great grandpa was even though we told him a billion times. It was hard for my grandma and mom to hear that or talk about it.

I just had an uncle die rather suddenly. I told my 6.5 year old the day he went in the hospital (with very poor prognosis) because I didn’t want to shock him with him just being gone. My son is inquisitive and asked a thousand questions including will he die. Who is going to die next. A ton of why... He did feel sad when I told him he passed but he was ok to the next activity and question within a minute. I’m glad I was upfront with him because it was helpful for me to just tell him how I was thinking:feeling. I don’t believe I’ll take him to the memorial though. He did know this uncle, the 3 of us stayed with him last spring break. We saw him about once a year.