Wednesday, June 11, 2008

Getting Dead

"If we get old and bonked all over, we would get dead," says Owen this morning, as casually as if he was talking about going to the park. 

Aidan does not have such a comfortable relationship with death (he is the one who burst into tears when he learned Kurt Cobain was dead), so he quickly said to Owen, "We don't have to worry about that."

Owen ignored him, of course, continuing on with, "When you get dead, you can't talk or move."

To which Aidan, our resident old man, shook his head in exasperation and said, "Owen, I'm trying to put that behind me." 

Acceptance of mortality? Check. 

Perhaps next he will tackle fear of the unknown. Maybe by the time he is 7, he will have figured out the meaning of life. 

3 comments:

Nixie said...

Death must be a subject 5yr. olds in general try to wrap their little brains around. Boo is worried sick I'm going to die. AND in the same breath she said " I wanna bury someone"... after a shocked "WHAT?!?" from me, I found out she was thinking it would be more like when you bury someone at the beach.....
It's definitely hard to ease her worry on the whole death thing. I'm at a loss.

Anonymous said...

I don't know what makes kids think what they think about death, but I do know that after our grandma let her hair get white me and Butch wanted to stay over at her house because if she died we didn't want to miss the funeral. And she lived for a long time after that.

Judith U. said...

I love the whole twin dynamic. (Have I mentioned I'm a twin?)