Collecting Tokens
I had been collecting tokens one by one for years for my children. I never really knew what I was going to do with them, or whether I would ever award them to my kids at any stage – That was until I collected the biggest token of all.
The biggest token I ever had in my possession, wasn't one I wanted to keep, well at least not forever. This token was destined for the children; I just didn’t get the investment period quite right.
When my husband’s death occurred, I called my friend the Shrink to ask for advice. The Professor agreed that I shouldn’t tell the children what had happened for a few days. This was to give my young son a lifetime of birthdays free from the memory of his father’s death.
When the time came, I told them that he had died and they had plenty of time to plan what they wanted to do for the funeral. The girls wrote some poetry to read at the service and my son took a photograph of him being held by his father as a newborn, he put this into the coffin.
A few weeks after the funeral, my daughter came home from school crying, someone had told her that her father had committed suicide. I was mortified and I told her that nobody had decided that yet, it was for the Coroner to decide!
Unfortunately it took the Coroner over a year to make his decision. When he did make his decision it was the one that nobody wanted to hear, that dirty word ‘suicide.’
So this is the biggest baddest token of all and I had to give it to the children.
I couldn’t quite work out how to do this, over year later, just out of the blue. I realised it would have been so much easier to tell them at the time, rather than try to shield them. Days went by, weeks, months went by and with every passing hour, it became harder and harder to deliver.
My daughter eventually approached me about it and I made an excuse not to tell her. I said I wanted to speak to everyone about it at some point when we were altogether.
About a week later, we managed to all meet up and I dropped the bombshell. The children were screaming blue murder at me, tears rolling down their faces, I couldn’t believe I had done this to them. Their behaviour was as expected, they resented me for not having told them beforehand, they were angry at me for a long while after and I just had to accept it.
I don’t collect tokens anymore; it’s really not a good thing to do, especially with big bad tokens or a large collection saved up over a period of time. Children are fragile and they are also pretty resilient but collecting tokens, is a very cruel thing to do.
Thank you for reading my blog 
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read more blogs!
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CrackerJackPat
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Apr 3 @ 11:04AM
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Good blog Missy....
Also not a good idea to give our kids "enough rope to hang themselves" for which I've been guilty. But that's another story.
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cartay25
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Apr 3 @ 1:16PM
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Very well put Misschoos.........no matter how difficult it may be for us to say, the children always seem to handle it better when they hear it now rather than later. Sometimes in trying to protect them we end up harming ourselves. 
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Palomino
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Apr 3 @ 2:10PM
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~*~
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mystery2u888
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Apr 3 @ 2:15PM
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 little misschoos.............
xoxo
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blueyed_cdn_girl
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Apr 3 @ 3:09PM
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Take it easy on yourself Misschoos,, you did what you thought was best at the time.
I do agree though, in most cases, it is best to tell the young ones right away. I understand though why you were hesitant,,,, I think I may have been also in that circumstance, depending on the childres ages.
Thankyou for sharing another part of "you" with us.
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TroutFishing
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Apr 3 @ 6:06PM
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A very sad position to be put into.
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hoftner
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Apr 3 @ 11:40PM
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mystery2u888
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Apr 20 @ 8:50PM
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fenderchick
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Apr 20 @ 8:54PM
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