My son is 3.5 years old. We are currently surrounded with death. I lost an aunt on Saturday night. We aren’t very close and she lives in another state so we aren’t able to attend the funeral (and I wouldn’t take my son anyway as he doesn’t really know her). My uncle has been battling cancer for years and is currently at home with hospice care. He had surgery 4 years ago to cut out parts of his tongue and has been on a feeding tube since then so he is malnutritioned. He’s had cancer multiple times and is unable to have radiation again and he’s not strong enough for chemo. He’s only 61. His daughter and I are incredibly close (each other’s maid of honors and we would spend every other week at each other’s houses most summers). My son knows my uncle but not super regularly and I don’t plan to even take him to the funeral. When I go up to help my cousin with her dad, I have someone else watch him so he doesn’t see how bad my uncle is. We heard he has lost control of his bowels today and is refusing his feedings (he’s only been doing one every other day anyway). I don’t think he’ll make it through this next week. Now, here’s the hardest part. My husband was raised by his pap. His pap is in renal failure. We live very rurally and our hospital is pretty awful. We typically drive the two hours to the closest city for hospital care. He was admitted to the local one. Last week. It took until a few day’s ago to realize what was even wrong 🙄 Last night it was decided he’d go by ambulance to the city hospital. Well, they couldn’t get transport for him until 8 am this morning and the city hospital gave his bed away.... They did dialysis here and he was to stay here. We just got a call he’s being sent by helicopter to the city because he’s getting worse not better. We are so close to him. He and his wife babysit two days a week for my son. I’m completely heartbroken myself but I’m more afraid of how my son will handle this. The first thing he does is walk in and ask where pap pap is. Pap teaches him how to do things in the garage and he’s recently been taking my son out to camp to keep an eye on it in the winter and all my son talks about is how he’s going to go camping with pap pap in the spring. We haven’t lost a family member since he’s been born and he’s at such a tough age. He’ll feel pap’s absence hard but not be able to understand. How do we handle this? I keep hoping and praying he will come home okay but things seem really bad right now. I have to go back to work after maternity leave tomorrow. My family is dealing with two deaths in the family and are unable to watch him and my husband’s only family are his grandparents and mom (who has lasting effects from a stroke). I’m using bereavement for my aunt to be home with my son one day. My mom even called tonight because my dad hit his head when working in the garage and needed stitches. Life is not good right now and we are all in total survival mode... Anyway... any advice on how to handle things with son? We aren’t incredibly religious.