A Death Doula's Advice On How To Talk To Kids About Mortality

In October 2019, my mother was suddenly diagnosed with stage 4 colon cancer. For months, doctors confused her symptoms—steady weight loss, fatigue, high blood pressure, anemia—as simply the stresses of single motherhood. As a result, we were thrust into a new routine of chemotherapy, surgeries, and extended hospital stays. 

But that wasn’t the worst of it. 

My three siblings and I now had to face the possibility of life without her. Something we had never thought about prior. And seven years later, we still haven’t discussed. 

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I recently asked my mom why she never talked to us about what life might look like after her death. She answered, “I never thought I would die.” Her faith lent us courage during that difficult season, but kept her from preparing us for the inevitable. 

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With the “what if’s” still lingering in my mind, I decided to tap an expert to learn how to better navigate the taboo.

Enter, death doula, Darnell Walker. 

Walker’s work educates individuals and communities on how to face mortality with care and courage. With platforms like his highly anticipated debut book, Never Can Say Goodbye: The Life of a Death Doula and the Art of a Peaceful End, he is redefining how we talk about life, loss, and everything in between.

For this article, Walker shared insight on how parents can prepare their children for their death through healthy conversation. 

“Death is not an emergency that arrives only when someone is sick.”

MadameNoire: Should we have these conversations even if death isn’t looming?

Darnell Walker: Yes. Death is not an emergency that arrives only when someone is sick. It is a certainty that walks beside us from the day we are born. Waiting until it is “looming” is often too late, because fear has already taken the room. I grew up in a home where my mother and grandmother never treated death like a stranger who had to be hidden behind a closed door.

If I asked a question, they answered it. If someone died, we spoke about it plainly. That honesty didn’t make life darker. It made it clearer. And I’ve tried to raise my son in that same light. We talk about death the way we talk about love, or responsibility, or kindness. As a part of being human. When children grow up knowing that death exists, they are not shocked by it when it arrives. They are steadied by the fact that it was never a forbidden subject.

Why are healthy conversations about death more helpful than harmful?

Silence breeds imagination, and imagination, when guided by fear, can be cruel. Children will always sense that something is being withheld from them. When adults refuse to speak about death, children often invent stories that are far more frightening than the truth.

Healthy conversations perform the very simple act of giving language to what is inevitable. They teach children that grief is not madness, that sadness does not mean something has gone wrong, and that love does not end when a body does. In my work as a death doula, I see again and again that people are not only grieving the person who died. They are grieving the conversations that never happened. Talking about death before it arrives allows families to practice honesty, tenderness, and courage while there is still time.

Some avoid the conversation because they don’t want to “live the moment twice.” What is your take on being sensitive yet realistic?

I understand that instinct. No parent wants to imagine their child living in a world without them. But avoiding the conversation does not spare anyone from the moment. It only ensures that when it comes, it arrives without preparation. And, to me, that’s far worse than living it twice. Talking about death is not the same as rehearsing tragedy. It is preparing love to endure. It is saying to a child, “Even when I am not here, you will still belong to this world, and you will still be held by the people who love you.” Sensitivity means speaking with care. Realism means telling the truth. Children deserve both. What harms them is not the knowledge that death exists. What harms them is the feeling that the adults in their lives cannot be trusted with the truth.

Can you share actual conversation starters around the topic?

These conversations rarely begin with a lecture. They begin with curiosity, and with the courage to follow a child’s question wherever it leads. A few openings might be:

“One day, very far in the future, my body will stop working the way all bodies eventually do. Have you ever wondered what happens when someone dies?”

“If something ever happened to me, there are people who would take care of you. Do you know who those people are?”

“What questions do you have about death that you’ve never asked?”

“What do you think happens to love after someone dies?”

“Is there anything about death that scares or confuses you?”

And if they’ve already experienced death, even if it’s just a pet, the thought has crossed their mind, and that death can be a way in as well. Children often lead the conversation once they realize the door is open.

“Preparation is both emotional and practical.“

What practical steps can a parent take to prepare their children for the parent’s death?

Preparation is both emotional and practical. First, speak the truth while you are alive and able to speak it. Tell your children who you are, what you believe, and what you hope for them. Let them know your love is not conditional on your presence. Second, make the practical arrangements that protect them. This means naming guardians, organizing important documents, writing down passwords and financial information, and making sure the adults who would care for your children understand your wishes. Children should not have to navigate chaos while they are grieving. Third, leave something of yourself behind intentionally. Letters, voice recordings, stories from your life, even small rituals you share together. These become anchors later.

And finally, normalize grief. Let children see that sadness is not something to hide. When we teach them how to grieve, we are also teaching them how deeply they are capable of loving.

At the time, my siblings and I were between 14 and 30. Should different approaches be taken for different age ranges? If so, please explain.

Yes, because understanding grows with age, but the need for honesty remains the same.

For younger children, the language should be simple and concrete. They need reassurance about safety and care. Who will look after me? Where will I live? Will I still be loved? For teenagers, the conversation deepens. They are capable of grappling with the emotional and philosophical aspects of death. They may ask harder questions about meaning, fairness, and fear. They deserve real answers, even if the answer is “I don’t know.” For adult children, the conversation often becomes collaborative. It includes practical matters like medical decisions, end-of-life wishes, financial planning. But it is also an opportunity for reflection. Adult children are often ready to hear the full story of their parent’s life, including the parts that shaped the person they became.

The approach changes, but the foundation does not. 

Please share other pertinent info or resources you offer around parents preparing their children for their death.

Much of my work lives at the intersection of storytelling and mortality. I help families create space for the conversations many of us were taught to avoid. When I’m at the bedside or sitting with clients, some who are not actively dying, and through my workshops and my book, Never Can Say Goodbye, I encourage people to tell the stories that matter before time runs out. The stories that explain who we are, what we regret, what we’ve learned, and what we hope the people we love will carry forward.

Preparing children for a parent’s death is not only about logistics. It is about legacy. It is about making sure that when a child reaches for their parents in memory, they find something there. A voice, a story, a truth that was spoken while there was still breath enough to speak it. In the end, what steadies children is not the illusion that their parents will live forever. What steadies them is knowing that love told the truth while there was still time.

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