Death Becomes You

The Mud Puddle has become curious about death. He has started asking where certain people are (my parents’ parents) and when I answer they died and went to heaven a whole long conversation ensues.

Now, he is three. Sure the invitations for his fourth birthday party are ready to go out, but right this second he is still three. And three, is really a wee bit young to be discussing matters of mortality and the afterlife. I was ready for this conversation when he is like, five, but I wasn’t really sure how to tailor my answers to him right now.

We have talked on several occasions about my grandparents demise and he has decided that they were ‘killed’ (which means dead to him, I have tried to explain the difference but he keeps saying killed) after being put in a hole. Now I have begun to wonder if one of the kids at school explained the idea of a grave to him and he is getting the sequence of events mixed up. I try not to ask too many questions about it as I prefer we keep this conversations brief.
One night during such a hole/ kill/dead relatives conversation he asked if everybody dies. And I answered yes, that we do and that someday we will all die. (I TRY to be honest with him on occasion).

Well, that went over like a fart in church b/c the look on his face was complete despair. He plays well at being upset but this was the first time in a long time I had seen the real thing.
“But I don’t want you and Daddy to die,” he told me with genuine tears in his eyes.
Damage Control! DAMAGE CONTROL! Ugh
So I had to promise him I wasn’t going to die anytime soon and neither was Daddy. (which according to MY belief system - which I like to call the “Hedging Your Bets” sect of Christianity – means I should be hit by a bus by month’s end).

So as our tour of all things related to death continues he asks a question that has come up before but I had decided to lie about previously (well, not lie exactly, withhold a truthful answer is probably more accurate, I would tell him that I didn’t know): What happened to Nemo’s mommy?

For those of you who have not had to sit through “Finding Nemo” 78 times as I have, let me explain: Nemo is raised by his dad and is an only child. What the Mud Puddle has never been privy to (that I am aware of) is the first five minutes of Nemo where he has 100 brothers and sisters waiting to hatch with him and a pretty nice mom. She and the other baby fish are eaten by some kind of barracuda looking fish. With a DVD you can skip over chapter in a movie and we always by-pass that one.

I decided after all of our death talk that I should probably come clean, I shot Scott a look asking what he thought I should say and he kind of gave a half nod/half shrug indicating it was ok to spill the matricide – which Disney loves, oh by the way. So I did.
And the look on his face was PRICELESS. His jaw dropped as if on a hinge and his eyes were as big as moon pies and a small, quiet, uncontrolled (I am guessing) “NO!” *Gasp* escaped from his lips. But he didn’t get too upset about it and we moved on to other topics.

I wonder how long it will be before he begins to question where we go after we dig a hole and get killed. I look forward to his thoughts and theories, I am sure they will be insightful if not slightly off base.