A 6-year-old's perspective on death

Brigid was in her back-seat booster-seat this morning, as usual, on our ½ hour commute to school. As usual, she happily chatted about one topic or another, and I only half listened to her discussion about something about flowers and candles as I tried to catch up on election coverage on NPR for the eight-thousandth day in a row. Suddenly I turned off the radio and asked her to repeat what she was telling me. She happily answered me. “Oh, I’m just telling you what kind of box I want my body placed in when I get to die and my body is burned to ashes.”



Don’t get me wrong, death is not a taboo topic in our household, and never has been. Paul makes his living drafting wills and managing probates after all. But I’m not ready to hear my six year old describe what kind of casket or cremation box she plans to be buried in. It’s a bit, I don’t know, young to worry about that?!





Death, death and death. That has been the total focus of our family for the past year and a half. If we go back 5 years in fact, there’s a whole laundry list of losses. My mother’s parents, my grandparents, died in 2004 and 2006. Brigid looks through relatively recent photo books of family all around us, and every single person in the book, except for our immediate family, is gone. It’s like a holocaust of sorts just hit our family. Her beloved nana even dropped dead in front of her when she was four. How do you explain all of the missing people from the photobooks?

Grandpa Gerry holding Brigid -

Grandma Bev holding Brigid- Grace holding Brigid - Dad holding Brigid - Mom holding Brigid -
My explanations have gotten better since the time when she was two and we had to put our pet cat, Sammy to sleep. Back then, we just told her Sammy “went to the doctor” and felt no need to explain more than that. I learned the hard way that honesty with kids is the best policy, when she asked me for the next year and a half why Sammy hadn’t returned and why couldn’t we just go get him? I also told her one day that I was going to the doctor’s and she nearly turned white with fear that she would never see me again!

We’re keeping things as simple, yet detailed as possible. Dying is just your heart stops beating and you quit breathing. She understands heaven is where your soul resides after your body dies. I even put a glove on my hand and described it as our body, and our hand is our soul. When your body dies (take off the glove), we can discard it, but the soul lives on forever.

She listens to our explanations, and happily takes it all in, as if we’re explaining to her that dad goes to the office everyday. “Death isn’t sad mom, because everybody is up there in heaven just waiting for us. Daddy’s mom and dad and your mom and dad are there waiting, someday you will be waiting for me too!” As an adult, it’s hard for me to see it as simple as I explain it, but I really really want to see it so simply as well. Everybody just sitting up there, around the dinner table, waiting for us to walk in the door and sit down to supper. We’ll all catch up on old times together and laugh about the good times, while we wait around for everyone else to get there.

That’s a good enough image for now.