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Home / Lifestyle

Papa Don't Preach: 'What happens when you die?'

Herald online
25 Apr, 2012 10:20 PM3 mins to read

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How do you explain death to kids? Photo / Thinkstock

How do you explain death to kids? Photo / Thinkstock

Opinion by

Try to explain Anzac Day and its significance to a little person and wait for the fall out.

I didn't mean to bring it up, but on Tuesday when I told Mia that it was a holiday the next day I got the inevitable "Why?" - a four-year-old's automatic response even though sometimes they are old enough to figure out the answer by themselves.

Anyway, I can forgive Mia's intrigue on this one because a holiday in the middle of the week, with a day off kindy, and mum and dad being home is a rarity.

But then came the hard part of explaining what Anzac Day is. I shouldn't have gone there, and my wife shot me a look as if to say, 'What are you doing you absolute idiot of a father?' But I did. I went there.

"It's a day off to remember all those people who died during wartime," I said. Yes, rather dim of me because though she sort of knows what dying is, she wouldn't have a clue what wartime is. And what sort of an ancient word is wartime anyway. What was I thinking?

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She didn't care about wartime anyway, she just wanted to know "why did they die?"

With which I dug an even bigger hole for myself: "Because countries around the world started fighting against each other."

"Why were they fighting?" she said, screwing up her cute little face curiously.

And I suppose I could have given her the whole gory run down about trenches, fighter planes, and life during wartime (there's that word again).

But thankfully I pulled my dim little head in because there is such a thing as protecting a child's innocence. And she also seemed to lose interest. Or so I thought. Because later it brought up even more pressing and poignant questions about her and her sister Katie.

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"What happens when you die?" she piped up during dinner. And, more to the point "Dad, where will Katie and I live?" she added quickly.

There was a simple answer to those questions which roughly went like this: we won't be dying anytime soon so you don't have to worry honey, and by then you and Katie will both have houses of your own.

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But I tell ya, even though it's just a child's innocent and inquisitive mind working over time, it hits you with a few sharp, aching pangs of emotion because as a parent you always want to be there for your children.

And more than that, how exactly do you explain death to a little person? It's hard enough to fathom as a grown up, so almost impossible for a kid to understand. You don't want to shelter them from it, but until Mia (and Katie at a later date) are a little older and wiser, I plan to be a bit more careful when it comes to matters of death.

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