Preschool Confidential by Sandi Kahn Shelton

Author:Sandi Kahn Shelton [Shelton, Sandi Kahn]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Family & Relationships, Humor, Infants & Toddlers, Life Stages, Parenting, Parenting Humor, Self Help Parenting
ISBN: 9781943772568
Google: K6fXMJByUuMC
Amazon: 031225458X
Publisher: NYLA
Published: 2001-05-14T04:00:00+00:00

Death and the meaning of life

But I have to warn you: there are way tougher questions than “Where did I come from?”

It’s usually when a kid is four that she starts to muse on the possibility that not only can’t she remember how she arrived on the planet but she’s thinking that someday she might have to leave it as well. And she’d like to get your thoughts on this.

“How am I going to die?” you’ll be asked.

It is best, if you can manage, not to drop your coffee in your lap in your rush to run over and hug her. In fact, it would be terrific all around if you could just calmly say something like, “Well, none of us knows how we’re going to die.”

The questions after that will vary. Does everything die? Where do we go when we die? Will I still eat ice cream when I’m dead? Stuff like that. These are the questions you can’t just answer with a flippant reply and go on about your life.

I once spent the better part of twenty minutes answering questions about death. My four-year-old and I ruminated together on just how limited human beings’ knowledge of the Great Unknown is; we talked calmly and sanely about how death is just part of life, and therefore we try to live our lives fully every day because we don’t know what will happen. We talked about how we hate the fact that we can’t know what’s going to happen and how it’s going to be for us, and I went on to detail my philosophy of love and forgiveness, touching briefly on what it meant to be a fragile being and going on anyway.

When I got finished, we sat there in the dark, her head on my shoulder, breathing in the stillness.

Finally she spoke. “But not you and me, right?” she said. “We live forever.”

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