Death and Scooby Doo

Sometimes this parenting stuff is hard, cause the real truths or answers aren’t always the answers you want to give your kids or the answers they want to hear.

Case in point:

Two nights ago, Caleb and Noah were headed to bed and as he was falling asleep, Caleb started to scream out that he was having a nightmare. He was absolutely beside himself but didn’t want to tell us what he was concerned about. I got him calmed down and he asked me to sing “the baby Jesus song.”

[Sidenote: The Baby Jesus song is a carryover from when he was a toddler. Caleb HATED to be sung to. The best way to ensure he wouldn’t fall asleep was to sing to him. However, one Christmas when he was about two years old, I, for some reason, sang “Silent Night” to him. He loved it (the song, I assume, not my singing) and took to calling it the Baby Jesus Song. He still requests it when he is upset or having trouble sleeping or whatnot. Thank goodness, is all I can say, that I didn’t sing The Star Spangled Banner or something tricky like that :) ]

The next night he was fine. Then, last night, we put the boys to bed and headed downstairs. I suddenly heard him screaming again and headed back upstairs. This time, he had gotten Noah worked up too so they were both in the hallway, wearing their oversized nightshirts, with red, wet faces. Caleb, again, was beside himself and kept saying through his sobs that he wanted to stop thinking about it, but couldn’t…

It took some time but eventually what he shared was that he wished that no one ever had to die. Why did people have to die? He wished we could all just live forever. He doesn’t ever want to die.

Death, as I knew, is a hard thing to talk to kids about. There are no absolutes, well, I mean, death is absolute, but there are no hard and fast rules about when you die or why or how. And 6 year olds need absolutes. They like rules and expectations and plans. They like cause and effect. And death isn’t always clear cut like that, is it?

They both climbed onto my lap and I talked about making good choices, living a healthy life and enjoying every day.

Caleb then asked what happens when you are “sprinkled.” This took us back to a conversation from about a year ago when they asked what happened to your body when you died. I didn’t want to get into the specifics of cremation as I knew that would traumatize them, so I just talked about the options being buried or being cremated and then you could be “sprinkled” somewhere special. Both kids liked the sprinkled idea and both settled on sprinkling then and there.

So back to last night, I said that when you are sprinkled you or your family can pick a special place and sprinkle your remains there and then know that place will always remind people of you. Caleb then asked if you were sprinkled if you could still walk in heaven.

Again, hard questions to answer. I told him I had never been to heaven, so I wasn’t sure, but that most people had their own ideas about what heaven is or isn’t and what you can or can’t do there, and so that was fine for him to decide on his own.

Caleb had calmed down and seemed to be more comfortable with all of these ideas. He asked me to tell Brian about the conversation (Brian was with Eli during all of this) so he knew why Caleb was upset and I promised I would.

Noah was quiet during all of this. I looked over and he was crying quietly. And I hugged him and asked him what was wrong.

Noah: Mom, I really, really want you to get Dad and tell him for me too.

Molly: Tell him what Noah? About this conversation?

Noah: No I want you to tell him how scared I am.

Molly: Of dying Noah? We just talked about that.

Noah: No, not about dying. I want you to tell him that I think the monsters in Scooby Doo are really, really scary.


And yes, I had to stifle a laugh. I gave him a hug, promised I’d tell Brian, and tucked them into bed. I sang, at Caleb’s request, the Baby Jesus song. Noah fell asleep during the second verse. Caleb listened, yawned, rolled over, thanked me and went to sleep.

And despite a crazy day of running to pick up three kids from three places, and one kid complaining he didn’t like our dinner of leftovers, and a dirty kitchen and too much laundry to fold, I felt like a good mom.