It was a perfect weekend in the countryside. The child had spent two days running in the fields, building huts and jumping on a trampoline with friends. Happiness. On the way home, my son, strapped in his back seat, blurted out this sentence, without warning:
– Dad, I’m afraid of when I’m dead.
The big file. The one who has agitated humanity since its beginnings without a satisfactory answer until now. Exchange of slightly panicked looks between the parents. This is the kind of moment you shouldn’t miss. How to reassure the child without lying, nor putting the subject under the rug? He had already addressed the question a few years earlier by asking:
– Dad, where are your grandpa and grandma?
I cleared my throat and explained that they were no longer alive. That after life there was death. That some believe that there is something else after, that others think that there is nothing.
And that I don’t know. The child had nodded and moved on. A few weeks later, he returned to the charge:
– Dad, are you going to die too?
– Um, yes. But in a very long time.
If all goes well.
– And me too ?
Um, uh, indeed, everyone dies one day. But you, you are a child, it will be in a very, very long time.
– Do children who die exist?
I thought of operating a diversion, because cowardice is a safe haven. (“Do you want us to go buy some Pokemon cards, honey?”). It would only push back the problem and increase the anxieties.
– Um, um, uh, so let’s say yes, but it’s very very very very rare. You don’t have to worry.
– Can I see a video with dying children?
– BUT IT’S NOT GOING, NO? Uh, I mean, no, we can’t watch this.
In short, he manifested a natural curiosity. But he did not express his personal anguish head-on. Until this day, back from the weekend, in the car:
– Dad, I’m afraid of when I’m dead.
Again, I really wanted to say something like, “Tell me, is Pikachu or Snorlax the strongest Pokemon?” “. No, no way to go back, we have to go to the fire. Respond with delicate honesty. Find the
right words, even if the right words do not exist.
– It’s okay to be afraid, son.
Nu a spus nimic.
– Me too, I ask myself the same questions. Everyone is asking them. That shouldn’t prevent you from living happily. On the contrary.
The child is surely too young to understand that life only exists because death exists, that the unknown in the face of the Afterlife gives value to the Present. I explained it to him anyway and those words will sail through him, waiting for the right moment of maturity to rise to the surface of his consciousness. When he searches for answers and appeasement again, perhaps he will remember the day his father told him that if death is scary, life is good.