How Do You Tell Your Children Their Mother Has Been Killed?

How do you tell your children their Mother has been killed? That was something I never thought I would have to do or even think of doing until it happened.

My children's Mother and I divorced February of 1977; it was the 16th day of February. I remember that day well, since the kids and I were on our way down to pick up a friend of ours who was going to celebrate with me that day since her soon to be ex was why my ex and I got divorced, another whole story there.

On the way down to Anita's I was involved in an auto accident (dang my whole life has been one long auto accident I think sometimes), so we didn't get to celebrate that evening nor as I remember did we ever have a celebratory dinner.

That was a year and a half before the day I got the news my ex-wife had been killed. In that year and a half many other things happened but again for another time much less that she had been killed by a lion. My two youngest children, Janis and Jamie stayed with their Mother for a few weeks the summer of 1978. I picked up my two oldest sons, Pat and Denis who were staying at my Mother's on my way to Alabama to pick up the two youngest.

I had never visited my ex's place in the boonies of Alabama near the city of Tallassee before the day I picked up Janis and Jamie. The kids and I were going on vacation to Florida for a week of camping in state parks and going to the beaches. So I stopped by her and her new husband's place which was a one room house, no plumbing of any kind so you had to go to the bathroom in the woods or behind a bush.

I was not impressed with her accommodations and only learned later that Janis and Jamie were sleeping in a utility shed some hundred feet of so behind the one room house. It had been where they had kept their dogs before the kids came to visit. I was livid after finding this out but by then nothing I could have done would have equaled what had happened to my ex. She asked me while I was there if Janis and Jamie could come back to live with her and her husband to go to school there. I told her I would think about it. Thought about it and my answer was NO!!!

The kids and I went on to Florida for our vacation and then back home to Georgia. It was the later part of September I received a call from my ex wanting to know if I had thought about letting the kids come down to live with her to go to school there. I told her yes, I had thought about it and my answer was no. She said O.K. then you will hear from my attorney. I told her go ahead.

Then on October 24th when I arrived home from going some where the kids told me that my Captain from the police department had called and to call him back. I wondered what I had done wrong now. I called and was told by the secretary that he was in a meeting and would call me back shortly.

Thought that maybe it was about paperwork I had not finished so went out to my patrol car to finish it. We could drive our patrol cars home if we lived within the county, so mine was parked in front of my home. As I sat down in the car, out of habit I turned on the police radio and heard my Captain and Sergeant advising radio that they were pulling out at my residence. That shocked me so I looked up and didn't see them yet. Cut the radio off and walked back to my house. As I turned around I saw them pulling up in front of my house.

They walked down to where I was standing and asked if we could go inside to talk. My captain said could you send your children outside while we talk. I sent the kids out to play, while wondering what I had done so wrong that my Captain and Sergeant would come to my home to tell me about it. Then my Sergeant asked me to sit down and he sat next to me.

He said, "We have news that your wife has been killed."

I knew he was talking about my ex, but it was still a shock to me. He went on," What we have been able to find out is that she was killed by a lion."

I remembered when Rick, her new husband and I talked back in August he had said something about wanting to raise lions because you could get good money for the cubs since you couldn't import them any longer. I didn't know they had gotten two from Zoos, one male, one female and had them chained to trees behind their one room house.

I learned that that morning she had gone to the bathroom; you had to walk across this plank over a stream to get to the woods on the other side. While she was walking back the female lion had broken the chain holding her to the tree and caught my ex from behind killing her with one blow to the head.

There I was sitting there numb in shock and then my Captain and Sergeant leaving. I had to tell my children that their Mother was dead. I sat there for a while trying to think of what to say. How do you say it to them?

I called my children back inside. Looking at their happy faces, it broke my heart to think I have to tell you of what has just been told to me about your Mother. I had been with the Chaplin before when he and I told the parents that their child had been killed in an auto accident but that doesn't prepare you for telling your own children their Mother had been killed.

I can't tell you exactly what I said because I was in shock and still digesting it myself. I only knew I had to tell them before they found out some other way what had happened. I didn't have enough shoulders to go around for their tears. I did my best to comfort them. Each of them reacted in their own way and in some ways they are still reacting to it to this day.

I held each and all of them in my arms that evening. I held my daughter in my arms until she cried herself to sleep that night. I know that over the years I made mistakes with raising my children, I did the best I could. That night I wept for the loss of their innocence, for the loss of their Mother who even though she and I had our differences I still loved her. Together the children and I made it though those days of going down to Alabama for the funeral and the years afterwards. I know they still bare the scars of that time within their hearts. I would wipe them away if I could; no one wants to see their children suffer.

I still don't know how you tell your children that their Mother has been killed. I don't know how I did it that night. It is a blur to me what I said and did that evening. It is something you never want to have to tell your children. It is something straight out of a nightmare from which you wake screaming to find it is not a nightmare but reality. And yes, I wake from them even now to the memory that it is still the truth.