Pondering the imponderable.

You want to talk about death, again, but your mother's not into it.

Lately death is staring you in the face at every turn. You look down, and there's a deceased earthworm baking on the sidewalk. Look up, and WHAPPO, your cat just murdered a fly. You go for a drive with your mom, and there's another cemetery, on your left. That's where all the people go to die.

"Not to die," your mother says. "Those people were dead when they got there."

"What got them dead?" you want to know.

"They were very old and very sick," she says.

"How old? Grandma old?" You bite your lip.

"Nonononono. Older. Much, much older. Hey, look at that funny guy doing that, uh, thing!"

What funny guy? What thing? You can't see from the car seat. What were we talking about, again?

Die, death, dying, dead, you hear it all the time, it pops out of conversations, like your name. "You're killing me," your mom says to your dad. That's an expression. She won't die yet. On the television they're killing each other but then they bounce right back up. Your grandma's friend dies. You tell her, "I'm sorry your friend is dead. I hope she gets better." After a little rest, you think, she'll stand back up. So why do they bury people?

You keep asking your mom, but something happens and you don't get the answer, or at least not the right answer. You say "even when I die" a lot, testing it out. "I will always love you," you say to your best friend, "even when I die." Your friend gives you a funny look, or maybe that's just his face. After a day at the beach, you tell your mom that you will always love the ocean. "Even when I die," you add. Your mom mutters something.

"I want my grave to be in the ocean," you say. "I want to be buried on a surfboard."

"Wow," your mom says, "you really DO love the ocean."

"And maybe your grave can be in the ocean, too, and we can be buried facing each other so we're kissing, because I will always love you—"

"Oh boy," your mom says.

"—even when I die," you get out.

"Can we not talk about death right now?" your mom asks. "No one's dead, no one's dying, we're all here, let's talk about something else. Okay?"

"But someday," you say.

"Someday, but not now. Not for a long, long time."

So: not now. But someday. And what then?

Comments

[Jen]

This sounds like all of my boys the summer they were 5. I always chalked it up to impending real school, but hey, maybe it's just a summer boy thing?!

My current 5 yo has asked if I'll still love him after I'm dead. And how do I know that?

[cat19]

Thank you for this post. My older son is deeply absorbed by dying and death. (The other day he said he loved me even though I was going to die. Woo hoo.) He has noticeable anxiety about dying, already, at age 4: I don't want to not be in my body; I don't want to not be able to talk; I don't want to die; why do I have to die? when will I die?

Here I always thought fear of dying showed up much much later--but no, my son has to start NOW, in preschool. At least I can take comfort that I'm not the only parent dealing with this.

[slouching mom]

Henry, meet Jack. Jack, Henry.

Jack's consoled himself greatly by deciding that he believes in reincarnation. This, even though his parents do not.

[patois]

I don't recall my eldest son being into it nor my daughter, but my youngest lad certainly is. Into what exactly? Death, death, death. In the middle of a parent meeting for the eldest's soccer team, he asked quite loudly, "Mom, when you die, can I go to your funeral?" He's tickled that he'll outlive all the rest of us. He tells us again and again and again. We're used to it, but outsiders? They're afraid of him. (I guess the fact that I call him demon spawn doesn't help.) I hate to take comfort in others' misery, but...thanks for making my kid seem a bit normal.

[Alissa]

my older brother just died at 29, and while we're of course, very sad, my 5 year old dd sees it as very black and white. either you're alive and we can see you, or you're dead and we can't. my mom called yesterday and my dd says, "ooh! tell her david's dead." like it was some great bit of news... i about choked.

i'm actually relieved she isn't asking more questions... i just don't have the heart for it right now.

[Peggasus]

Well, better to have it all be in the hypothetical (right now) than in the real. My boys have experience in that. It's not been a totally horrible thing (except for the totally horrible parts), them having knowledge of death(s) firsthand at very young ages; my greatest regret is just that I wish all the parties could have known each other for a longer time...eh, c'est la vie.

And then there have been the pets....all you can do is teach them from the experience.

But they're okay. (Whoa, I'm a bummer today!)

[zan]

Wow, Alice. "I will always love you, even when I die." What a spooky and touching refrain. I want to be loved that much, loved into immortality. It brought tears to my eyes, like what Didion's daughter and husband would say to each other: "I love you more than one more day."

[Em]

I am with Henry. What then??

[Karla]

Death is never an easy thing to talk about. Right now I am sort of mixed on how I will ever tell my son that he had a sister.

She took her last breath in my arms.

It can happen so suddenly. So unexpectedly.

Talking about death forces you to confront your own mortality, and I don’t think that’s a bad thing because knowing how brief life can be, I think, makes your own life more meaningful.

I’m just not sure how you communicate that to a child.

[JustLinda]

Oh, you don't want any advice from ME on the whole death-talk-with-children topic. No way.

See, my husband and I are atheists and we approach the whole religion thing with "Some people believe this... but we don't believe that." and all is good.

But death? Someone dies or the subject of death comes up? I whip out the HEAVEN bit faster than you can shake a stick. Kids like heaven. It seems to be a concept they can understand, that comforts them. So I let them have heaven while they're little.

Someday, later, I'll tell 'em what i really think...

[Frankie]

Right. Death and kids. I suck at that. My 6 year old has been obsessed for years for some reason that I never quite got, and we always handled it.. ok. Then my partners father died in a horrible accident, in a fire. My son knew him and he is keen to our emotions and so we explained that he had died and prepared ourselves for the onslaught of questions, which did come. My partner told my son that her father had gone to bed and died (technically true, kind of) and I got nervous that my 6 year old would think that all of us were going to lay down and die at any minute. So I came up with the brilliant idea of telling him the truth.Yes, all of it.The tears and horror that followed, combined with his blunt "why did you tell me that" won *me* mother of the year... any one care to contend???I believe my license to tell kids anything, ever has been suspended until further notice. I've only recently been allowed back out of the house....

[Ginny]

Karla--I'm so sorry about your daughter. We have always talked about our oldest, who was stillborn, to our other kids. Just always mentioned him,always hung up a stocking for him at Xmas--made him real to them and to us. You'll be glad you did. And Alice? My son told me to shut up today. He's not 5, he's 15. I think I'd prefer some eternal afterlife devotion. You do tell the best stories. Thanks.

[gina]

Uh, before my dad died, my mom gave me a pamphlet to read about "saying goodbye." He died two nights later. I was 14. I really, really, really wish I hadn't read a pamphlet. I wish he'd talked to me himself about it. He had the luxury of time to talk to me but he didn't. Just me, sitting there in the hallway on the floor, reading a stupid pamphlet.I guess I would recommend just holding and talking.

[Julie Martin]

I highly recommend Dr. Irvin Yalom's book, Existential Psychotherapy, which focuses on the four ultimate concerns of life: freedom, existential isolation, meaninglessness, and death.

The entire book is extraordinary, including his chapter on children's awareness of death. The cited research reflects that a child very early acquires that knowledge, including the possibility of his/her own death, and can communicate the resultant fear and anxiety by age three.

Yalom's premise is that we all throughout our lives must face the same developmental task: how to deal with fear of death. One apt comment from a cited researcher: "What is remarkable is not that children arrive at adult views of the cessation of life, but rather how tenaciously throughout life adults hold to the child's beliefs and how readily they revert to them."

We all whistle in the dark.

[superblondgirl]

I remember when my son first got the idea of dying being forever. He was only 2 1/2 or so, which was weird enough - but even weirder, we were discussing Patsy Cline, who we'd been listening to, and how she's dead now. And he just lost it, because she was DEAD and that's FOREVER. He was inconsolable. Eventually he did calm down and we talked some more about death and how none of us are going to die for a long time, but it definitely blew my mind.Even now he still does the "I'll love you, even when I'm dead", which is odd but sweet.

[Elgoodo]

I love how you presented this. Very Amy Hempel.

[merseydotes]

Petunia has been asking more questions about death lately, and I tell her that when you die your body stops working. We've had to talk about her paternal grandfather, who died seven years ago, and how he got very sick in the hospital and the doctors tried everything to make him get better, but his body just stopped working. That seems to satisfy her for now.

I figure we'll talk about souls and heaven and such when she starts asking about those things.

[maria]

Heaven, yep, I'm all into the heaven explanation. My daughter has gone through some of the death questioning, and heaven has been reeeeeal useful, even for a non-religious gal like me.

I had a terrible, crippling fear of death for most of my childhood, and nobody ever bothered to mention God to me. Not parents, not grandparents, nobody. My family wasn't into it I guess. And unsurprisingly, I grew up without any strong religious convictions or anything. I've developed a weird kind of spirituality since then, I suppose.

But my point is, I was just thinking the other day (what, are you psychic or something?) that it would have been nice if someone had traveled outside their WASPY comfort zone of acceptable topics of conversation, or their cynical scientific too-smart-for-religion persona long enough to at least suggest that there could be a God, or something so that I wouldn't have had to lie awake in terror of nonexistence night after night. Not that I'm bitter about my parents or anything.

Too much information, eh? Sorry - but something to keep in mind when dealing with the death questions, maybe.

[islaygirl]

we're all about Death here. And just last night we added 'Who's God?' to the conversation. And have I mentioned that the child has attended a nice Episcopalian church since she was an infant? And i think we're all right on schedule -- she's almost 5.

[Angel]

You handled this beautifully.

Our 14 yr old dog is dying and I had to break it to the kids today. My 5 yr old son just sobbed for so long (my 12 yr old cried later) and we had a long talk about dying and death. He'd been asking about it the other day, remembering our cat who passed away 2 years ago.

It is hard enough for us adults. I hate this part of parenthood, the sad stuff :(

[ozma]

I found a diary of mine that I wrote when I was in first grade that said "When I die, I want to buried in my room, with all my stuff." Pretty sure I was thinking Cheops, Ramses' tomb. I may have assumed my sister would also be sacrificed to keep my company in the afterlife.

I suppose I don't want my kid to dwell on death but to sort of know it is there, to face that it happens. For this (and other reasons) I love Charlotte's Web. I worry that the more we deny or run from death the more afraid of it we will become. I never outgrew my morbid freakiness, though. So I could be off base here. It might be nice to forget about death more than I do.

[Julie]

When I was a kid we lived near a cemetery and I was totally preoccupied by it. But it was one of those cemeteries without headstones, just flowers perched at each grave. I thought the people buried there grew into flowers. Nice, right? But then on the fourth of july they changed all the flowers to flags and my whole brain melted. I couldn't understand. Next day? Flowers again. Totally destroyed me.

[aleximac]

I've been walking around for the last few weeks constantly thinking about death myself. "I love you so much", my husband says, and I reply "But you'll be ok when I die, right?"

Talking with my mother on the phone yesterday, kept wanting to ask her if she and Dad have a Health Care Directive? A Living Will? Has Dad talked to her about where all the important papers are filed, in case he dies suddenly?

I have always lived my life with death sitting on my left shoulder. Yes, the left. And you're right, most people don't want to talk about it.

Thanks for your post, I was starting to think I was alone with this :)

[elsimom]

My brother was 4 when he asked my mother "Who buries the last dead guy?"Huh . . . .We've talked about bodies not working, and how sometime doctors just can't fix them. We are also somewhat religious, so the "in heaven with the angels" is also part of the deal for us.Once in a great while, when she is very tired, our daughter will begin to tear up and say she doesn't want to die, or doesn't want us to die, and we usually just try to remind her that we hope that won't happen for a long, long time. . . .Our dog is aging - I don't treasure that time when it comes.

[Erika]

My five year old likes to tell me gruesome tells of his own death, such as, if I can't have that, I'm going to fall in the road so I get run over by a car. I try and laugh it off, but then he has to go and tell my mother in law, I'm going to cut my head off. Nice! Then I get the call telling me how disturbed my son is. Apparently though from the moms I've talk to, it is normal.