Sorry for the grim post but we had a call this morning from my wife's family and my wife's brother has killed himself. He leaves behind two very young kids. My wife's gone over there to be with the family.
We have a 13yr daughter who was extremely close to her uncle, and she is like something of an older sister to her two much younger cousins.
I've just spoken with my wife and the family are proposing to tell ALL the kids (our daughter included) that he had an accident and fell down the stairs. I feel very strongly this is the wrong thing to tell our daughter because she will find out the truth - she is way too smart and will work it out for herself. The family aren't in a position to be thinking rationally right now but there's no way that secret could be kept. I'm not sure I want our daughter knowing how exactly it happened though. How do you tell half a truth?
I do not want to be adding to this terrible situation though or causing more stress for my wife.
All our daughter knows for now, as she was waking as my wife left, is that 'mum's gone over (couple of hours away) because grandad was trying to get in touch, and he and nanny have been quite ill this week (true) so she's gone to see if everything's ok.'
Our daughter spent a lot of time with him over the Christmas period and had a couple of very apologetic texts from him only yesterday about a Christmas present that had never turned up. Also as I'm typing this it's occurred that if his kids are told it was an accident but my daughter told the truth, that in itself would be a terrible burden on her.
I'm at a loss how to deal with this.
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