Talking to kids about death

Our three-year-old daughter has an eerie new catch phrase. She wraps her arms around me, squeezes me tightly and says, “Mommy, I love you so much. I’m never gonna let you die.”

I’m sorry, WHAT?

I have no idea where she got it. She hasn’t seen any movies about death, really, unless you count the sneaky parents-die-in-the-sinking-ship scene in Frozen. We don’t talk about death or dying. We don’t even say it in prayers.

(I even swapped the “If I die before I wake/I pray the Lord my soul to take” line for “Guide me safely through the night/And wake me with the morning light” before our oldest was a year old.)

After a few days of constantly being told my child wasn’t going to “let” me die, I finally told her to please stop saying it because it made Mommy uncomfortable. So she started telling me she’d never let me “go very, very far away … forever.” I didn’t like that one, either.

Then she tried “I’ll never let you go to Heaven,” and I had to explain that no, actually, Heaven is a really awesome place. I do want to go there, someday. (And the alternative is … not good.)

“Are there colouring books in Heaven?” she asked after a pause.

“Oh yes,” I told her. “In Heaven, you do anything you want all of the time. There are no chores or naps or boring errands.”

She was pleased with that and I thought we were done. But then our five-year-old started piping up about death and how he was afraid I was going to die. He had lots of specific questions about when I was going to die. Was he going to be a grown-up when I died? Was I going to die before or after Daddy? Um … ugh …

The kids’ only real experience of death so far has been visiting the gravesites of their great-grandparents, whom they saw quite regularly until they passed away. They were confused by the gravestones and I explained that their bodies were buried in the ground, but their spirits — how do you explain that concept to a child?! — were up in Heaven. They didn’t need their bodies anymore because a body is like a shell, and, oh, are we done here yet? Because this is hard.

They apparently thought pretty hard about this, because one night at dinner our oldest came out with, “Your bones go up to Heaven and your spirit goes in the dirt.” No, no no! Other way around! So when we drove past cemeteries, I made a point of saying, “Those are just people’s bodies in the ground, but their spirits are up in Heaven having a great time!”

I think they now somewhat understand the concept of spirits versus bodies, but the idea of death still really freaks out our oldest. I finally told him that scientists are working hard to find a way for people to live forever (pretty much true?) and that by the time we’re all older, they will probably have figured it out. I even told him the man who made Sleeping Beauty is frozen in a tube waiting to be brought back to life, and he liked that idea.

Help me out, here. What’s the best way to explain death to a small child without scaring them or setting them up for a lifetime of therapy? Maybe I should dig up an old copy of Ghost Dad because I think it was a useful learning tool, for a ’90s movie.

Heather Laura Clarke is a freelance journalist who married her high-school sweetheart. They moved from the city to the country, where they spend their days chasing their spirited five-year-old son and sassy three-year-old daughter. Follow their family’s adventures over at at: www.LaptopstoLullabies.com.