When my daughter asks me, “Mommy, what happens when we die?” I’m never moralistic enough to tell her that I know.
I don’t know.
And, truthfully, the thought of any timeline she’s not a part of is too much for me to bear.
So, I answer her in a way that tries to encapsulate the type of magic she holds.
“Maybe we come back as rainbows.”
“If I come back as a rainbow I want you to come back as a rainbow, too, mommy.”
“I do, too, baby”
“Or, maybe we come back as butterflies or birds and we can soar the skies together. Wouldn’t that be amazing?”
She asked for a special necklace from one of her favorite shows. In the show it grants wishes and creates magic.
On her first night wearing it she had the biggest sense of wonder on her face, as she asked her first wish.
“Can you make the doggies live forever?”
I explain that magic can’t interfere with nature.
The fact that she’s four and she already thinks so much about finality lets me know that she’s my child.
Finality is one of my biggest struggles in life. It always leaves me with a feeling of emptiness and doom.
She struggles with the same. Always asking about death and letting me know that she’s sad because I will probably go first. She tells me that she doesn’t want to be without me.
And, before her, I never feared death.
Now I do.
But, not in the way you would think.
I don’t fear what happens to me after.
I fear a universe without her.
There is no timeline where she is, where my heart isn’t.
I will search for her in the skies.
I will look for her in the wind.
I will feel her in the waves.
Death means nothing when she is the definition of life.
