How do you explain death to children?
I don’t believe in any guiding myths or stories of faith, so when it comes to explaining death to my children, I don’t feel like I have much to lead me through the process.
What happens after we die? I don’t know. And when it comes to death, I’m not sure what I actually believe. I am drawn to the idea that we are conductors of energy, and that energy moves from one form to another. In that sense, it seems plausible to me that death would simply be the movement of energy from one form to another. But is consciousness energy? Or is it something else, something that is merely animated by energy while contained in our bodies? And are we, essentially, just a consciousness that is animated in our bodies? How does it all work? I really don’t know. And to be honest, it it’s not something that I spend much time thinking about.
So when it comes to explaining the death and the origins of life to my children, I really don’t know how to go about it.
When my son was three years old, we had a small conversation that has become foundational for the way that I talk about death with both of my children. At the time, we were in the car on the way to his nursery school. I was telling him a story about his mother and I. It was a story about something that happened before he was born. He was listening carefully to me, and then he asked, What about me? Where was I?
Without much thought, I told him, You weren’t born yet, Buddy. But my answer didn’t quite register with him. So, me, thinking that my son must have been some form of energy or consciousness floating around in space somewhere (not necessarily outer space), I told him, while pointing out the window toward the sky, You were somewhere out there. Somewhere in space.
Without hesitation, my son immediately answered, In my rocket ship?
Maybe I should have thought about how I answered this question a little more carefully, but at the time, thinking what he said was cute and that any answer was harmless, I answered, Yep. In your rocket ship.
Since then, rocket ships have become an important part of the way my son imagines the time before he was born and the way he thinks about the time of death.
Earlier this year, my mother-in-law’s cat passed away. It had been in the family for sixteen years and was a cat that everyone was close to. On the night it passed away, we got a phone call. Miu was dying. So we all got in the car and went to my mother-in-law’s house to say our goodbyes.
It was my son’s first real experience with death. It made him uncomfortable, and he wanted to understand what was happening. We were telling him things like Miu is going to go away. We’re not going to see her anymore. You should say goodbye to her. You should thank her for playing with you and being such a good friend.
My son could sense the heavy emotions that everyone was feeling and seemed on the verge of crying. He said that he wanted to leave. Then he said that he wanted to stay. Then, suddenly, he asked about the rocket:
Is a rocket going to take Miu away?
It was that conversation again. Yes, I answered.
When? my son asked. Where is it? I want to see it.
It’s invisible, Buddy.
Invisible? What’s invisible?
It means you can’t see it. It’s an invisible rocket. Nobody can see it. But it will come when Miu dies, and it will take her away.
Our conversation continued in this vain for a while. With the persistence of a four-year old, my son kept insisting that he wanted to see the rocket. And with each insistence, my explanations became more detailed and more specific. Before I knew it, I was talking about the moment of death, about invisible rockets that travel so fast nobody can see them, about a soul-like thing that boards these rockets and is immediately taken out into space.
Of course, none of this really made any sense to my son. Eventually, though, we reached a point where he seemed fairly satisfied and agreed to say goodbye to Miu and go home without seeing her pass away, and without seeing the invisible rocket that I told him was coming for her.
That night, shortly after we left, Miu passed away. The following day, we took her body to a pet crematorium where we had a small ceremony for her and said our final goodbyes.
Upon seeing her body, my son became confused. In his mind, the presence of her body meant the presence of her. The fact that her body remained was testament to the fact that she hadn’t boarded a rocket and returned to wherever it is she had come from.
Again, using the story of the rocket ship, I explained to him that she was gone. That she had left, that the only thing remaining was her body, which would also soon be gone.
Seeing her lifeless body seemed to make my son sad, and possibly even a little scared. Saying his final goodbyes also seemed to make him uncomfortable. In the days that followed, he started saying he wanted to see Miu again. So I told him that Miu was gone, that the invisible rocket had come and taken her back out into space. I told him that when these rockets take people and animals out into space, those people and animals become free to live in the heads and hearts of the people that love them. Then I told him that Miu would always be in his head and heart.
Over the past year, we have had a few losses. I lost a distant but long-time friend to cancer in January and, in February, an uncle whom I was very close to. In May, we lost Miu, and over the summer we lost a couple other pets. Most recently, the preying mantis that my son spent all summer taking care of passed away.
When we buried it behind our house and marked its little grave with two stones and a flower, my son asked me, Is the preying mantis in my heart now?
Yes, I told him.
Then he asked if the preying mantis was inside his sister’s head and heart too, and whether or not it was inside of my head and heart as well.
Again I answered, Yes.
Then he asked if Miu was in my head and heart also, and he asked if my uncle and my friend were there too.
Once again, I told him that they were, that they were all in my head and heart, and that he and his sister also held the pets they had lost in their heads and hearts. I told him his pets would always be there waiting to talk to him should he choose to talk with them, and that he could always see them again by closing his eyes and thinking of them should he want to see them.
I don’t know if I’m doing my children a service or a disservice by talking to them about death in this way, but I do know that I don’t want them to fear death. What I want is for them to recognize death as something that is natural. What I want is for them to understand the importance of life and the importance of the time that is spent with the people and things that are all around them. Not only that, I want them to believe that the people and things they have lost live on within them. It is my hope that they will take comfort in this thought and that it will someday help them deal with the various moments of grief that await them.
As I said earlier, it is difficult to explain such things as death to your children when you don’t have any myths or stories of faith to guide you through the process. By chance, I stumbled upon the imagery of a rocket ship to carry the animated part of our bodies away into space. This imagery seems to work with the vague beliefs I have that we come from somewhere and depart to somewhere, even if that somewhere is nothing but nothingness. I’ve connected this story to the experiences I’ve had in life and the beliefs that I have found comfort in, namely that the departed live on within us, through our thoughts and memories of them.
How about you? How have you gone about explaining death to your children?
Image Credits: All photos are original