Last night, Soleil climbed into bed with me and said "mom, I’m a little afraid"
"Afraid of what?"
"Of dying one day"
"hm, that’s hard. One day, we all die. That’s how it works. I hope it doesn’t happen for a very long time."
"I know that. It just makes me sad."
"What about dying makes you sad"
"I’ll miss Luna for those 2 years"
"What 2 years?"
"You know… the 2 years between us" (Her new phrase is "you know" when clearly I don’t)
"Honey, we don’t all live to the same age. Just because Luna is two years younger doesn’t mean you’re going to die two years before she does"
"Oh…I’ll still miss her"
" I know… I understand."
This talking about death and dying is a tough one. It gets scary for everybody and one day, we all have to face our own mortality.
I just wish someone had included a big manual on how to talk to your kid about death and dying. It’s like sex. A conversation that you have over and over and over.
I remember being terrified of dying when I was a little younger than Soleil. I had read “Charlotte’s Web” and worked out from the spider’s death that I was going to die one day, too. I was probably in college before I really came to terms with that idea.
Weirdly, G has never experienced that fear, or if she has she’s never expressed it. Sometimes I wonder if her father’s death took the mystery out of it for her — for most kids, it’s an abstract fear, which makes it all the more awful and scary. She’s alarmingly pragmatic about it sometimes; we were talking once about what the world would be like 100 years from now, and she said, “Well, of course, you and I will both be dead by then.” 0_0
Grace has been talking about her teacher that died back in November. She’s very upset. She doesn’t understand that Ms. Kimmy isn’t coming back. It’s hard that she doesn’t understand…and is so emotionally attached.