Browsing Tag

death

Conversations with a Preschooler on Death and Dying

April 9, 2019

This morning Everest and I took a walk and passed a sweet little cemetery in downtown Palm Springs. He immediately scrambled up the stone wall that surrounds the cemetery, positioned himself to hop down, and declared his intention to pick a flower for me. A flower from a grave.

He’s never seen a cemetery before, so he didn’t know. I shouted “No no no no no!” Then I explained to him what this place is, and how we respect the dead. We don’t touch monuments or headstones. We don’t stand on a burial place. And we never, ever pick the flowers.

He climbed off the wall and ran to my side.

“There are dead people there?”

Yes, I said. He and I talk about death a lot, which I didn’t expect to do with a preschooler. But our cat died a couple years ago, and Ev always has questions about that, and we talk about my mom, who is dead.

I try to be very clear and straightforward about this: There is no rainbow bridge in our conversations. I don’t use any euphemisms or evasive language. And I don’t promise him an afterlife. There is simply the body, which is buried or cremated, and the memories, which live on.

He asked more questions about the cemetery: Who are the people buried there? Will I be buried there? Will he be buried there? Why are they under the ground? And as I answered him, I mentally congratulated myself on this healthy conversation about death and dying and how well I had explained everything.

“It’s just weird,” Ev said as we walked away.

“What is, baby?”

“How all those people died right there. And in a line too.”

My grave error

October 11, 2018

Ever had one of those conversations in which you know you’re saying the wrong thing — you feel yourself saying the absolute worst words — but you can’t stop yourself? It’s like when you’re headed for a car crash and time becomes stretchy and slow, but it’s too late. You’re already on a trajectory.

That’s what happened recently when I watched Coco with my 4-year-old son, Everest. We’ve seen the movie before, but this was the first time that he fully realized the skeletons were dead people. Of course he had questions — and that’s when a car crash spilled out of my mouth.

E: Are they really dead? Like dead dead?

ME: Oh, yes. Dead like our cat.

E: Dead like Kung Pao? … Why did they die?

ME: Well, everybody dies.

E: EVERYBODY DIES?

ME: Yes.

E: Even me?

ME: Yes, even you. But don’t worry. I’ll probably die a long time before you.

I can’t even count the number of therapy appointments Everest will eventually have based on that one conversation.

It didn’t phase him too much in the moment, but he’s 4. Sometimes it takes him days to process something, and then seemingly out of nowhere he’ll say, “Wait. So tigers DON’T lay eggs?” So I fully expect him to circle back to this at a very inappropriate time: “What do you mean I’m going to die like my cat?!?”

Most likely this will happen in a public space.