Every once in a while, my 5-year-old son blithely asks a question that punches me in the gut.
“What is death?” he recently asked matter-of-factly. Why do people die? Where do they go? What do people look like when they die? Do they look like this? (Rolling up his eyeballs, he staggers around with his tongue hanging out of his mouth.) Or this? (He suddenly collapses in a heap on the floor.)
I am horror-stricken as my first-born child tries his best to look dead.
He tells me his theories about death. How the very oldest die first, like people who are 100 years old, and then in order of age. He tells me, “You shouldn’t worry about dying anytime soon,” because I’m old, but not that old. “And I’m so much closer to being born,” he says, “that although I’ll die one day, it won’t be for a long, long, long time.”
I believe he’s trying to reassure me. But he is much braver about this subject than I.
More Top Picks Best Amazon Prime Day Tablet Deals 2026
In the past, I’ve explained to him — as candidly as I can — that flowers die, bugs die, animals die and also people die. That people die when their bodies become so sick or damaged that even doctors, who can fix most things, can’t fix them. That no one really knows for sure where the dead go — since no one has ever come back to tell us — but many people think the spirit goes to heaven. I’m not sure he is convinced.
I tell him that if I sound uncomfortable (and I am), it is because I don’t know much about death, not having ever died myself, and thinking about it makes me feel sad. He stops talking, and we are sad together for a quiet moment until he zings this one at me: “So, Mom, what do dead people do when they’re underground in their box?”
I’d rather be having a conversation with him about sex.
Help! I say to Judy Schiffman, director of Barr-Harris Children’s Grief Center in downtown Chicago, asking her a slew of questions of my own. How do I be candid about death without scaring him? Should I set him straight that young people can die, that he can die, that I can die? Should I talk about things like the Tucson, Ariz., shootings, or should I shelter him?
And what do I do when I just want to yell: “I don’t know! Ask your father!”
“You need to be as comfortable as you can,” Schiffman, a child social worker, tells me. Which is, of course, easier said than done. “Explain things in the simplest way — the heart stops and a person stops breathing — concrete terms.” Don’t use euphemisms, like “a person goes to sleep” or “passes away,” because that could make him worried about people going to sleep or away.
“Often kids ask questions and parents go into lengthy explanations and all they want is quick response,” she said.
Reassure him that you’re planning on being around for a long, long time and will take care of him. “Part of these questions is that he’s playing with the idea, ‘Are you going to be here, and are you going to take care of me?'”she said.
And what of his question about what people do in their graves?
Ask him what he is thinking, Schiffman says.
Which is an excellent idea. I think his father can do that.