Honestly . . .

Why is it so painful to talk to a five-year-old about death?

When she asks what she is going to do without her mom and dad when we die, I can only say I don't know.

When she asks what she will do if she needs me when I'm gone, I can only tell her they'll be other people.

When she asks if kids can die, I have to say yes, but not very often.

When she asks if it hurts to die, I say it depends.

And when she says once her mommy and daddy are dead she will never see them again, I say I don't know if that's true or not (though I think it is), but I hope not.

She has been sad and reflective about the idea of dying, since she noticed what's really happening in Scooby Doo and Belle and Sebastian. It would be much easier to make up a story of afterlives and marble and clouds, but I don't believe those stories. So should I convince her it's true to make her and myself feel better?

She doesn't know enough about life yet to romanticize death or to embrace it as the ultimate human ideal. And yet she is starting to realize that knowing we will die (whatever that looks like) makes food taste better and families worthwhile. The ideal makes songs and movies and art important. Man I wish I believed, like so many others, in something besides poetry. Something to make us feel better. Something to end the questions. I wish I could say, "for sure."