Owen on death and the soul

Last night (September 24) after dinner we were all kind of lying around, reading and hanging out and suddenly Owen walked up to me and said, "Mom, when someone dies they can be with God forever. It will be so great to be with God." He sounded happy and excited. He went on, "It's better to be with God than in their body."

He said a lot of other things on the subject but to be honest I was so flabbergasted I couldn't even take it all in. I waved Daniel over. 

Owen was walking in circles, as he does when he gets going on a topic.

He continued thoughtfully, "Mom, if someone dies, they could come back later. They could turn into a baby later on. It's like their life cycle." (I kid you not: life cycle.) Then he asked, "Do we come back later, Mom?"

I said something along the lines of: "When we die we can be with God in heaven. But when we love someone they stay inside us forever." 

It was one of those moments as a parent that always seem to come at random times. Like in the car last week, when Owen asked me, "What happens to our body when we die? When it's in the ground?" or a few nights ago at bedtime, when he started asking me detailed questions about how exactly the baby gets from the Mommy's tummy out into the world.

In these moments, you try to calibrate your adult sense-making beliefs and ideas with a child's. It's a teaching moment, sure, but really for me, these moments are more about connecting with this other being about the real and raw questions of life.

He talked with me about this for about 5-10 minutes (which is long, for a 7-year-old kid). I could tell he was putting together some things he's heard here and there (the words “life cycle” which he's studying in science at school). He knows my Aunt Sandy has been very sick but I haven't emphasized it with the kids or talked details.

I had weird, vivid, disturbing dreams all night and didn't sleep well. Jack climbed into our bed with a nightmare, too.

When we woke up Thursday morning, we found out that Aunt Sandy had passed away peacefully in the middle of the night.