June 14, 2006
Among the wind-blown blossoms that flew around our feet, my three-year-old, Aiden, spotted a yellow butterfly that lay dead on the parking lot of my doctor’s office.
I paused to let my Mr. Curiosity examine it. "It’s dead," he muttered. This concerned him.
I suppressed my initial inclination to comfort Aiden with the words, Yes, it’s dead and in heaven now. Instead I explained, "His brain stopped working. His life is all done now."
My concept of death has reincarnated into an entirely new animal since leaving religion. Years ago my father-in-law made a vocal recording of the story of his conversion from Judaism to Mormonism. I transcribed that story at least seven years ago and I remember how his reason for considering Christianity made an impression in my mind.
At that time the war in Vietnam was alive and killing many of America’s youth. The war stopped the breath of a number of my father-in-law’s friends. He said in his recording that the reformed Jewish temple that he grew up in didn’t provide many answers about death.
He said that most Jewish people focus on the memories of the person. They emphasize that what you are after death is what you leave behind for those who are still alive. This answer was inadequate for my father-in-law in his time of loss.
Such a concept of death was foreign to me, a Mormon. The explanation impacted me because Mormons and other Christians place so much emphasis on life after death. My thoughts of death during my religious days were images of enhanced life.
How ironic that I now embrace the concept my father-in-law abandoned.
Transferring that concept to my children was a task I avoided for a long time. My kids held on to our previous idea of heaven when we left religion.
Last month Blake realized there was a dilemma between my assertions that there are no such things as ghosts, and his belief that people become spirits when they die.
"Aren’t spirits actually ghosts?" he questioned. Yes," I explained. "Religions say we become spirits. And if that were true, then there would be ghosts. But from all the scientific searching there is no evidence of it. We can’t find any reason to think there actually are ghosts or spirits. And we only rely on evidence. We don’t hold beliefs that have no evidence."
Later, the kids asked about death, wondering if people are sad or hurt when they are dead.
"When someone dies, their brain shuts off," I told them. "So they can’t be sad. And they can’t feel pain. And we have all the memories of that person and the things they did and how they made us feel."
I was reading a scrap booking magazine article about the healing process of sharing stories of loved ones who have passed away. I like to swap memories with my sister about our late grandmother. It seems healthier to enjoy the memories of a loved one than it is to harrow on longings for a future reunion.
It is important to experience the mourning and the sad feelings of missing a loved one, but we can also celebrate their life with all its joys and difficulties. We can share stories, look at pictures, and laugh at the quirks and unique traits of the person who is gone.
Such a focus at the time of a death should give our children an appreciation for the significance and brevity of life.
Back at the doctor’s office, as we returned to the car to go home, Aiden wanted to see the dead butterfly one more time. It wasn’t where we had left it and Aiden insisted on finding it. I could have rushed him on or tried distracting him with another topic. But I knew that both the ideas of a butterfly and of death were important to him at this time.
Finally, we found the yellow butterfly where the wind had blown him a few feet away. We stared for a while. Looking at death from my current paradigm, I talked to Aiden about the happy life the butterfly had. Its life was over and it was short, but it was a good one. It got to fly in the sky and look for beautiful flowers.
Aiden wanted to pick it up. I was hesitant at first to let him touch a dead insect. Then I changed my mind. This was a chance for him to examine the body of a butterfly. It was also an opportunity to look at death close up. I wanted to give Aiden associations of confidence and gratitude rather than avoidance or anxiety.
I passed the butterfly to a fascinated Aiden. We pointed out the head, the eyes, the legs, the antenna.
It was time to go but Aiden wasn’t ready to leave his specimen. Again, with hesitation, I let Aiden bring the butterfly with him in the car.
We drove to the school to pick up Trinity from kindergarten. Aiden showed her the dead butterfly. She expressed a little pity, but then said, "At least he’s not sad. His brain shut off. So he’s dead, but not sad."
In a discussion on my blog regarding teaching kids about death, one of my readers commented that he uses a book called Lifetimes by Bryan Mellonie. He explained that the book describes the lifetimes of various living things and focuses on the life that happens in between birth and death.
He explained, "I tell my kids that they do continue, not only in the life matter and lineage cycle, but as part of the world/universe per se. The world produced life and us along with it. We are not separate from it. Like a drop of water taken from the ocean and re-turned, when we die we return to the world. There is no place else to go (the world is a materially closed system); whatever we are has been and always will be a part of it."
My reader then explained the results. "If you asked either one of them [my kids] what happens when they die, they will tell you, 'We go back to the world.'"
Another reader gave this idea: "One thing that helped with my kids was the concept of the circle of life. I asked them to think about what would happen if no one died but we kept having babies. They figured out pretty quickly that this was not a good option. Then I told them that one of the most wonderful things ever in my life was having them, and they agreed that having babies was something they wanted to do one day. The only other option, then, was to have death occur in order to make room for new babies."
I love these ideas of using positive concepts when talking about death in general.
Our children need to see us deal with death. I do not hide them from it (unless it is particularly gruesome) when they hear about someone dying. We discuss how sad it is, and then I focus the conversation on that person’s life before they died.
In my opinion, death is really about life. It is the conclusion of what was hopefully a fulfilling one. Death makes life meaningful.
We can talk with our children about the sadness that we feel when a person leaves us. We can talk about the love we had for that person, about the joy they gave us, and how they made us laugh and think. And we can talk about the joy our loved ones had while they were here.
Noell Hyman writes for her blog, AgnosticMom.com. She has been blogging since August of 2005. Relatively new to the humanist landscape, Noell declared herself a humanist some time in the year of 2002 after leaving religion, specifically the Mormon Church. A stay-at-home mother of three young children, Noell's aim is to reach other non-religious parents who find themselves isolated in the struggle to raise a healthy family without religion. Noell wants to make "Agnostic Mom" a humanist and secular household name. Visit: www.AgnosticMom.com
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