How My 5 Year Old Made Me Come To Terms With My Own Mortality
Explaining The Unexplainable To A Child
“Mommy, I don’t want to die.” The little voice wafts from his bed and stops me dead in my tracks. I turn back around and see my son sitting bolt upright in bed staring at me in the semi-darkness. I walk back over to him, my mind running furiously. What the heck am I going to say to him?
I quickly reason things out. No one in our family has died in his lifetime. We have no pets that have recently passed away, same with friends or neighbours. His favourite thing to watch on tv is geography shows, so I know he hasn’t seen anything there. So where is this coming from?
“What do you mean buddy,” I say, sitting down on the edge of his bed.
“I don’t want to die,” he repeats.
“Why do you think that will happen?”
“It’s just something my brain told me.”
At this point, I’m not even sure he understands what dying is. It isn’t something we have discussed, it isn’t something we have witnessed together. I don’t know what to do. My mind flashes back to myself at 8 and 9, when I started to worry about my own mortality. Young, just like him, but not this young.
