Last weekend my daughter asked for money to buy cookies with. As I handed her some coins, she asked, "Mama, when you die, who will give me money?" I said she didn't have to worry, I don't think I'm going to die soon, but when I do, Papa will give the money. She nodded and went her way.
Later, she came to me again. She asked when I'm going to die. Then later, if I will die when she's grown up.
I told her that we don't know when we're going to die, but mostly people grow really old and get sick before we die. As she can see, I'm not yet old, and I'm not sick. I could tell she was anxious, but she was relentless. She asked who's going to take care of her baby sister if I die.
My daughter knows death as something that happens to old relatives, like my grandmother and my dad, but she was too young then, and she has never seen a dead person. She knows it happens to pets, but she has not wept tears over a puppy or a bird. I think she was trying to come to terms with death as a personal thing, as something that forever takes away someone she loves. And she was finding it difficult.
I could not explain that even adults such as me have trouble coming to terms with death. Oh, would that I could tell her I'd be around forever. To an eight-year-old, it would be an assurance that her world would be safe, but the lie would hurt her when it happens.
I hope I'll be around a long time, for her sake. But I also hope that I have helped her understand the inevitability of death, so that when it happens and it breaks her heart, she could smile again later and live on.
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