It’s hard to comfort a child who’s asking tough questions about death when I haven’t yet arrived at an explanation that’s comforting to me.
I’m not sure when I first became conscious of my own mortality and that of my parents and grandparents – the people I loved most as a child. I do clearly remember a conversation with my father in which he asked, “Do you know what it was like before you were born? No, right? You won’t know what it’s like after you’re dead.”
As harsh as that may sound, it was the most comforting explanation I ever received. Without knowing about that conversation between my father and me, my husband gave an uncannily similar explanation to our oldest daughter when she quizzed him on the topic.
She’s contemplative by nature – a logical thinker who absorbs information, draws conclusions, and asks more questions. It’s fun to talk with her about subjects most second-graders would find boring. But her inquisitiveness – combined with our atheism – makes discussions of a spiritual nature difficult.
Telling her “when you die, you cease to exist in any form – you can’t see or talk or think or move” feels like I’m ripping the veil off Santa Claus, the Tooth Fairy, and the Easter Bunny all at once. Childhood’s over, kid!
But on the other hand, I don’t want to lie to her on a serious subject. I’ll tell her the truth about sex and drugs and all the times I disobeyed my parents; it’s only fair for me to be honest with her about what I believe.
When my grandmother died, it was my daughter’s first experience with the death of someone she knew personally and loved very much. I explained that Granny’s body had worn out – that her heart couldn’t keep beating, so all of her body parts stopped working. I told her that this is what happens when people get old, and that Granny had lived for a long, long time. I told her that Granny knew how much we all loved her and that we’d never forget her.
As contemplative and inquisitive as she is, our explanations have sufficed for our daughter – so far. The problem, as I see it, is that if she grows dissatisfied with them, we don’t have any other comforting words to offer her. Being nonbelievers, we can’t convince her of something we don’t believe. She can choose to adopt other beliefs that better meet her emotional needs, but neither my husband nor I can encourage that in good conscience any more than a devoutly religious parent could encourage a child to abandon faith.
I wish I could tell her differently. I wish I could believe that I will see my grandmother again – that I will see all of my grandparents, my uncle, my friend Kirsten, even our beloved pets. I wish I could believe that my friends will be reunited with their own families, especially the siblings and children they lost far too soon. I wish I could believe that this world wasn’t all we’ve got.
But wishing won’t make it so. I cannot believe any of that.
What I can do is encourage her to make the most of every day – work hard, play hard, and love the people who are important to her with all her might. To enjoy what she’s got while she’s got it, because it may change – for better or worse – at any moment. To live out the famous quote from Henry David Thoreau (figuratively, if not literally):
“I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life, and see if I could not learn what it had to teach, and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived.”
And so for me – and hopefully for my children as well – the question becomes not “What happens when we die?” but “How do we want to live?”
My grandmother would have been ninety-four this Saturday, yet my grief is still fresh. As many tissues as I went through writing this post, I’m honored to be writing in the company of Catherine, Devra, Lindsay, and Loralee on the topic of explaining death to children. The five of us have different religious/spiritual views, but we’re also friends who respect and admire one another, which makes the exchange of ideas between us both civil and enlightening.
You may agree with one of us. Or none of us. Or all of us, to one degree or another. I look forward to hearing your thoughts on this topic, whatever they may be.
I agree with you and I love this post.
I realized you guys were doing this on Facebook Networked Blogs and am making the rounds. I think it’s great to explain belief systems. I wish I could’ve been part of that conversation.
The truth is that, as Devra’s grandpa said, “We don’t know who’s right until we’re dead.” I’m a Christian, so I do believe in a higher power, but though I tell my daughter “you can ask God when you get to Heaven,” what I really think is that I won’t need to ask because heaven is knowing. I don’t think heaven and hell are literally places but rather states of being. Hell is isolation from God and other people and heaven is being surrounded by love and understanding. There are passages in the Bible I could point to that pushed me in that direction, but though I believe it’s the thesis of God’s Word, I also know it’s been translated and interpreted within an inch of its life and was written down by humans. I’ve tried to pick through the Bible five or six times in its entirety looking for the real thesis, and I think it’s “love your neighbor as you love yourself.” Hell is having nobody to love and nobody to love you.
Anyway, I think your explanation is a good one and not entirely in contrast with mine. They are both states of being, but mine has awareness and yours doesn’t.
I guess we’ll find out when we’re dead, eh?
My chief problem is that I’ve already said what I believed over at Her Bad Mother and Suburban Turmoil. You’re already doing the right thing.
You might add to your explanation, if it’s appropriate: This person didn’t want to leave, they wanted to stay with you and me forever and ever, as I told my daughter when her father died after a long illness.
But, as your daughter grows, as you’ve seen, she grows into new ways of questioning and the answers you’ve given may wear out.
So I’ll give you the spiel I give most other people: why don’t you visit a Unitarian Universalist or Quaker congregation near you and join other families trying to help their kids navigate this stuff. You’d be among friends, with no pressure to believe one thing or another, and you, the grownups, might enjoy it, too.
Sorry to be a bit of a broken record, this subject is my specialty but sadly, I have limited time to converse today.
Hugs to you and your family, thanks always for sharing your honesty and insight.
My husband’s grandmother died in November, and my son has had a sort of delayed reaction to it, I think, because just over the past few days he has been asking me a lot of questions about death and funerals, and getting fairly upset about the whole subject. I think perhaps it has just taken this long for him to realize that his great grandma who used to give him presents and make him coconut toast is really, really not coming back. I guess it’s a fortuitous coincidence (if anything regarding discussions of death can be said to be fortuitous) that you and Catherine and Loralee and Devra have decided to have this public conversation in the same week my own kid is having a mini existential breakdown.
I’m in the same boat with you as an agnostic/pantheist (married to a die-hard rationalist atheist). Not feeling able to provide my son with the instant comfort of a pat explanation of where people “go” when they die is tough. I am happy to teach him about some of the many explanations people have come up with regarding death. But teaching him tenets of a faith I don’t believe in myself as if I did believe in them, just to make him feel better, seems wrong.
I guess my problem is that I still don’t actually know what I believe. I wouldn’t call myself an atheist, but I’m pretty darn close to it. Others would probably call me one. Makes it a little hard to explain it to my children. At this point, I’ve been lucky and haven’t been asked too many hard questions. I fear that day is coming soon, as yet another relative passed away yesterday.
I suppose at your daughters age, I’d tell her what you believe. Yes, she may one day choose another path, but as an eight year old, your beliefs are by default, going to become hers as well.
Julie I couldn’t agree with you more. I was just thinking the other day, gosh it must be awfully crowded at the pearly gates with all that reuniting, maybe more like India in my mind.
I’ve just grappled with this subject myself. My neighbor whom my girls knew by name and adored just lost his battle with cancer at 47. I’ve been visiting with the family, cooking them meals and my oldest was wondering why. She thought we should join them for dinner, since I was the one doing the cooking. I’m ashamed to admit right now I dodged the bullet. I just didn’t have the proper words to explain to her why a father of 3 teenagers is no longer here. I feel like a coward. I will talk to them about it (6 & 3) but it’s so hard. So thank you, for helping find the courage to know my words aren’t going to be perfect and not believing is okay.
My problem is, as I said chez moi, that I don’t know what I believe, which is the nub of the difficulty with belief, especially as it pertains to death: we CAN’T know, so all we have is belief, and belief is so… I don’t know… difficult.
So we’re left with questioning, which I think is the best grounding for both reason and faith and all the gray areas in between.
xo
It’s difficult for me to comment on this for several reasons. One of which is how much I love and respect you.
First off, having more atheist friends than religious or spiritual friends has shown me time and time again, that believing in something or nothing is not a predicator of moral behaviour. My worst experiences in life have been compounded and made worse (or created by) people with deep spiritual and religious beliefs. Believing in an after life or a higher power does not make one live a moral life, unfortunately.
Secondly, I’m on the outs with God, waffling between wanting to believe for emotional reasons and disbelieving for rational reasons. I’m lost in my quest for faith and I haven’t found comfort in the faith I once so zealously possessed.
But I can’t reckon with the thought my son is just dead. Just dirt. That there is no more and not have hope that oneday I’ll get to see him again. I just cannot. do. it. It hurts my heart too much and kills any rational thought process I used to analyze my own spiritual beliefs.
I don’t know. The one thing I do know is that Henry David Thoreau is the one writer that kept my head from rolling off and losing myself into a sea of grief. Because I can’t control what happens after death but I can control what happens in life and focus on that.
So I’m finding a mini thrill in reading his quote in your post.
I’m honored to be writing this project with you, friend.
This was so well said.
We have very much in common even though or out look is different. I have conflict ALL THE TIME with what to tell my children. While I do believe we continue to exist, due to the complex religion I and my husband believed in and because we are not practicing, our truths would not be comforting at all to our children. Especially when the conversations get more complex as they age. (“Wait…there is a heaven but we might not be with our family forever because mom and dad suck?!!” It’s the conversation of nightmares and one I am dreading. )
Ugh, right?
Also…your father’s answer to you was one of the best I’ve ever heard. Many kudo’s to him. (and you).xo
I feel blessed to have had the opportunity to read your words on this subject. I have struggled with this very same thing, for the same reasons. It is not only comforting to know I’m not the only one, but that there is as eloquent a way to explain this difficult subject to children as you have written here. Thank you.
I count my blessings that I have a few years before I have to come up with an answer to this myself. In the meantime, you know what your father said? My father said something very similar to me when I was little.
Then he followed it up by telling me that after you die, in two or three generations you’re just dust that nobody remembers ever existed. Unless you invent electricity or beer. I remember the first part being comforting and the second part has always made me laugh.
I clicked your twitter link and left a novel on an old post of yours.
And now I’ll leave one here.
I’m an atheist, too. My children are Christians. I’m not going to steal their thunder, nor will I flat out lie to them, so when the death conversation came up, I told them what I honestly, truly believe, and that is that when you die, the charge in your body that you can call a spirit or a soul or whatever, the thing that attracts you to the people who you are meant to touch, that leaves your body and goes into the people who you loved and who loved you back, like magnetic force. They get to carry you with them inside their heads and hearts, you become part of their charge, and you live on in them.
My mother died almost a year ago, and my child was – is – so matter-of-fact about it. It’s like I really didn’t have to say anything. Granny was sick, Granny died, but she’s still around – in the curtains she made, the memorial brick in the walkway at daycare, the music that reminds us of her.
How do we want to live? With joy and purpose, frivolity and substance.
We don’t “have a religion” as it were so we don’t talk about heaven and I definitely never refer to death as “going to sleep.” (Like I need more delays on the bedtime thing.)
Instead, we’ve always opted towards a very open approach, whether it’s talking about death, body parts, sex, whatever, but in kid’s language. When my father died a few years ago, and Jon’s grandmother last year, we did similar as you did — talking about how bodies get old and eventually things wear out… and that in everything in life there’s a circle of being born and dying (I found it helped to talk about the seasons and nature elements instead of obsessing about people dying). Laurel seems to get it and I’m glad it’s not a taboo topic in our house.
-Christine
Great post, Julie. I am an atheist who was raised by atheists, and what you’re saying sounds right on the mark to me. I don’t always refer to myself as an atheist, but I am definitely a materialist. By which I mean, I believe in the material world, and am sufficiently awed by the wonder and beauty of its workings that I don’t (can’t) imagine anything greater.
For my parents (and for me), life begins when the potential of life is realized at birth, and life ends with death. Before birth (so, when a woman is pregnant), we celebrate the possibility of a new life, and after birth we look back and celebrate the living that person did. We mourn the loss in our own lives of someone beloved, and we may mourn the loss of further potential contributions s/he might have made (or celebrate the fullness of the life she did live, or perhaps both). I have to admit I don’t remember any particular conversation about death, though we probably had at least one when I was quite little. But once I understood what death was, I never sought any further answers. This might be because the first family death didn’t come until I was 12 (we dutifully attended the church memorial service, then moved on to the impromptu wake-like celebration of Grandma’s life; I think this juxtaposition taught me everything new that I needed to know at that point). I have to imagine that a child losing a parent might need to have a very different relationship with death.
Although my parents never put it into words, I agree that this orientation led pretty directly to focusing on the life we are living right now (along, I think, with some focus on the ties we make with other people, since those ties and our actions are what will live on after us). And I like this emphasis. I’m not sure all atheists share it, or live it, but I think it is at the heart of my own moral compass.
I like your dad’s answer too. It’s truthful, and concrete enough for a child to understand, yet open-ended enough to encompass many possibilities as well. With my own loss I have found no solace in religious trappings. I just miss the baby that I never knew, no matter where he is or isn’t right this minute.
This is a beautiful way of explaining your belief to your daughters and, as you said in the comments of my post, I’m also struck by the fact that our beliefs are different but our motivations are identical. We all want so very much to protect our children and keep them from being fearful. I love that.
Thank you so much for participating, Julie!
While I am loving all of these posts, and wrote about it myself here: http://bit.ly/a8FCcu, I had to comment on your title.
As I mention in my death post, all is not well with my mom. She does not talk to her father anymore, and he asked me recently how she was doing (insert any number of physical ailments and life dramas here), and then asked me why I thought these kinds of things happened to her (most recently, it was the roof of her condo caving in after a pipe froze and flooded the joint).
I told him that I believe you have to actively LIVE your life, you have to be proactive about good things happening to you, or the bad things just inevitably will. I went on for a while about it.
Live deliberately, that was the point. I might have to write about that sometime too….
Totally off topic, sorry!
I think you’re handling it beautifully so far. The only thing I would say is that when you wonder how to help your child have comfort about your own personal view of what happens after death, it might help to consider what it is that comforts YOU about your beliefs and share that with her. Ultimately, when people accept a system of belief, there is something about it that resonates with them and provides them with comfort, acceptance and peace. Whatever those things are, expressed age-appropriately, your little girl will be able to relate to.
This is an interesting topic, I’m enjoying reading the different perspectives that all of you have offered today, and also really loving that I have seen no disrespect so far in the comments that have been left.
In my limited (perhaps naive) observation, being religious or non-religious does not seem to offer any greater or lesser measure of solace when someone has lost a loved one. I love your take on it though… I do believe it is about how we live now, the best life we can have.
I’ve found these posts very interesting all around. Thank you all for doing them.
I’m not sure how to respond because I’m not sure what I believe. I’ve always sort of believed that there’s something after, but I’m sure what it is. I know it can’t be the heaven that either of my grandmother’s believed in because if one of them is right, then the other one won’t be going and that doesn’t make sense to me. I have a hard time with the Christian view that only humans have access to heaven, because dogs strike me as far closer to godly than I will ever be. My dad used to say that heaven was a big building and every religion has its own floor. This made sense to me until I realized that, if that were true, many of the people I love would be off limits to me depending on the faith I chose (if I chose).
We’ve explained to Ben that the cousin we lost a couple of years ago is in heaven because that is what my cousin believed. I couldn’t use the bodies get old idea with him because my cousin wasn’t that much older than me (talk about terror for him). When dogs pass, we explain about the rainbow bridge and that settles him down. He’s been very worried about what happens to Sam when she dies (she’ll be 12 on Monday, so it’s not an odd thing for him to inquire about).
I think what bothers me is the person who will tell my kid that what he believes isn’t true. We’ve been trying to get Ben to understand that different people believe different things and that as long as their beliefs don’t involve hurting someone, those beliefs are fine. Does that make sense or am I rambling?
I could be rambling. Fevers do that to me.
I asked this of my readers and got some wonderful responses here:
http://www.weebleswobblog.com/2009/08/answer-me-this.html
I just saw the Body Worlds exhibit today. It and your post have me deep in thought about matter and energy.
my husband and i are atheist as well. i struggle terribly with the concept of death and my husband doesn’t understand why – he says when you die it’s over, we don’t know and can’t know so why’s it worth even thinking about? i wish i could be so nonchalant about the matter. i don’t know what i will tell my kids. no idea. i told my dad (also atheist) i was going to join a church just to avoid the subject. he laughed but then later admitted he was glad my mom raised us catholic so he didn’t have to approach the subject with us until we were adults.
Why can’t you believe?
Because it makes no logical sense to me. Because it requires faith in something that cannot (yet) be determined or proven true. Because I require evidence to believe.
A bit off topic, and only occurred to me because of Julie’s question above. My daughter, who is devoutly Catholic, happens to be best friends with a young man who is atheist. He has spent a lot of time trying to get her to deny her faith, and cannot understand her belief. Her response to him is always “If you are right, then I am no worse off by believing in God, but if you are wrong, then you are in big trouble!”. I just thought this was a little levity in a very serious conversation!
That’s called Pascal’s Wager, actually. But the counterargument is that given the number of different religions/denominations, it’s a crapshoot as to which one’s going to turn out to be correct. Hence my emphasis on living well vs. gambling on the afterlife.
But I fear most people perceive that atheists as a group behave like your daughter’s friend. I hope to continue dispelling that stereotype.
Sorry! I meant Lori!
Should you need to add more comfort/additional info/other alternatives, you can always honestly say “some people believe that…” and then you won’t be trying to convince her that you believe it.
We do – it’s important to us that she realize many different belief systems exist so that she can understand more about what her friends and other family members may believe.
Julie,
I think you’ve hit the right note with your daughter. You are answering what needs to be answered now and waiting for her follow-up questions. Lot’s of parents get caught up in trying to figure out “what’s coming next? what will my kid need to know next?” and then answer what they assume would be the next *logical* questions. Only problem with that is a grown-up’s logical “next” may not be the direction their child was heading. We love our kids, we want to protect them, we want their worries to be absolved before they even have time to worry about them, all good reasons for feeling anxious about what our kids need to know about topics which are emotionally complex for a whole host of reasons.
Absence of “belief” is still a belief so it’s fine to teach your kids what you believe, just as anyone else would teach their children about their faith community. I tell my kids “this is our belief system, but it’s not the only one out there.” And kids know that to be true, so it’s fine to acknowledge that which is true; I believe this, others may not. DONE! : )
As for grief, many of the comments reflect another truth, everyone grieves in a unique way. It is normal for children to be at either end of the spectrum from becoming inconsolable to acting utterly non-plussed when someone dies. Even if they were extremely close to the person who died, a child may respond to the news with “Okay, can I go outside now?” It’s the way they process things, and it’s fine. Maybe that should be our next post, how we deal with death and dying?
I loved your post Julie, it gave me the chills in a very good way. : )
Devra, such a great point. Giving unsolicited answers may very well scare the crap out of kids.
The only thing I’ve been able to come up with that works for my lack of fath in something larger, is that even when a person dies, they live on in the memories of the people who loved them. In our family we pass on stories of those who have come before us, so in a way, even without heaven or hell, people live on. Living deliberately for me is living in a way that I want to be remembered.
I love this project. I think you should continue it beyond just the question of death.
Thank you for writing about this topic this week and sharing the other links. We have had our shares of deaths in our oldest child’s lifetime, but never at an age when it has really affected him. Now at almost 9, losing his grandmother (my husband’s mother) this week, his teacher last month (and two others in our extended family in the last 10 days)….it’s just very timely. So thank you.
I’ve had a few death talks with my daughter. About my father, who she never met, and about a homeless man we used to speak to daily, who passed away this past Christmas.
Being an agnostic-atheist, and one who is ridiculously (and inconveniently, sometimes) honest, I’ve told her that some people believe in a heaven, or a version of utopia, but that I don’t.
That I (kind of in line with Mr Lady’s) believe in the science of it — that all matter continues existing and that our energy, even after we’re done breathing, will continue to have an important place in the world. That what matters about someone’s death is their life. The memories; that ways they lived life that made them happy and fulfilled; feeling like they had a positive role upon the world… and so on.
I hope that tides her over until she’s at least four.
Neat post. I’m agnostic/pantheistic-ish… I feel like atheism is saying, “I believe that there’s nothing to believe in”…and that doesn’t work for me. ;p
But. I totally support the “live life to its fullest”, “make the most of what you have” side of atheism.
The fact that our molecules get to recombine into new living things–I think that’s a good minimum for our continuing to exist, even if not in these forms. (though I do personally believe in reincarnation!) ;p
Cheers!