People die. This is something that hits kids hard when they first REALLY take it on board. You could say something like, "Grandma V is very old, we all love her very much but she's had a very long life and is getting more and more tired. This sometimes happens when people get very, very old. They just get more and more tired and sleep more and more."
If you can go from there and explain that she will die at some stage, because her body is getting so old that bits are worn out past doctors' ability to fix things any more, but Grandma V is OK with this because she is tired too.
There was a really good children's book which won some awards in Australia few years ago, about a boy remembering his grandpa who died. It was a very good book to help a child comes to terms with this sort of thing. In the story the boy remembers the fun he always had with grandpa, the games they used to play. Then grandpa got sick and said he was too old and tired to play games. Sometimes grandpa was cranky. The story develops to the point where grandpa dies and the boy gets told about it (because he wasn't there) but then grandpa left something for him to play with, something that he and grandpa used to talk about and having this thing helps the boy remember the fun he had with grandpa.
I just looked it up, it was a Children's Book Council picturebook finalist in 1999. It's by Noela Young and Lilith Norman (Text), it's called "Grandpa" and is published by Margaret Hamilton, 1998.
I hope it's available in the US. I remember reading my way through the short list that year. Some of them were awful, but that book was brilliant.
Marg
