Uncomfortable Questions

This weekend Ben finally asked what happens when we die. He'd been skirting the issue for a while now, so I suppose I should have taken some time and figured out how to answer. But I didn't. So Saturday we were heading out for our morning errands and one of the CDs he likes to listen to in the car has a song that goes "Old Roger was dead and lay under the ground/Under the ground/Under the ground/Old Roger was dead and lay under the ground/Way down under the ground..." What a terrible song. So of course Ben asked why is Roger under the ground? I tell him it's because he's dead. He asked who put him under the ground? I told him that when people die usually they get buried in the ground.

This of course seemed to horrify him, and he asked was he going to die? I told him everyone dies sometime, but he wouldn't die till he was a very very old man. He still looked horrified, and said he did not want me and daddy to bury him in the ground. In a desperate effort to ease his fragile psyche (and Ben's psyche seems to be very fragile indeed) I told him that it would only be his body buried in the ground, and that his spirit would go to Heaven to be with God. After having to explain what a spirit was I then had to launch into a much longer than anticipated explanation of Heaven, God, angels, and so on. The thought of Heaven did not seem to reassure him, since he was very concerned about how he would know how to get there (I told him angels would come show him the way but he was not convinced). I should have known - he is very concerned about riding the bus to kindergarten a year from now, after all.

Then, in a very troubled voice he finally said, "But mommy, if I die you won't have a little boy anymore." I almost cried! I told him he would always always be my little boy, and some day we would all be in Heaven together. And with that, I hoped he would drop it.

But of course, on the way to preschool this morning, he brought it up again - very concerned this time about how long it would take the angels to come down from Heaven to get him once he died, and how they would find him. He apparently doesn't want to have to wait around for them. I finally gave up (in retrospect I should have given up long ago) and told him I did not know all the answers because I have never been to Heaven before so he will just have to wait and find out. And at last, blessed silence from the back seat. Until -

"Put the Roger was dead song on, Mommy."

I am going to burn that CD.