When Carter was little, he used to talk about my Aunt Bev after she passed away. Casually. Naturally. As if she were still nearby. As if the boundary between this world and the next wasn’t as rigid for him as it is for most adults. I’ve started to understand: some children arrive with a quiet familiarity with the unseen. Carter is one of them.
Over the past year and a half, he’s begun asking me questions that stop me in my tracks.
“What happens when you die, Mom?”
He often asks this at night, during bedtime.This is when the deeper questions rise to the surface. Every time, I feel the weight of the moment. How we speak to our children about death becomes the emotional framework they carry for the rest of their lives. I refuse to hand him a story built on fear.
