My family and I just returned from a week on the western shores of Lake Michigan. It was the first time that the four of us had all gotten away together, and it was wonderful and stressful. I am happy to be back.
While there, for no reason whatsoever, my older daughter, who will be turning four in about a week, walked up to me, looked at me with her big brown eyes, and said, in a matter-of-fact tone,"You're getting older."
I nodded. "That's right. We all are."
"But you're getting much older," she said.
"That's true."
"And you're gonna die soon."
Okay. I froze. How, exactly, does one respond to that? Keep in mind that this girl is three years old, and entirely incapable of grasping the metaphysical concepts that I find necessary in order to have a conversation about our frail mortality.
"Well," I say slowly, still feeling my way around this minefield, "everybody dies eventually. Everything dies. But that's not important right now, honey. The important thing is that right here, right now, we're together and I love you so much."
I reach over and hug her, but she's gone limp, and I can hear her crying. I push away gently and ask her why she's crying.
"Because I'm gonna miss you when you're dead," she says. "I want to be with you forever, Matty."
My heart breaks. I mean this is as close to a true, poetic heartbreak as I have ever experienced in my thirty-seven years of life. The truth of the matter is that I, too, want to be with her forever. At this moment, as she is standing next to me and talking to me and sharing her existential fears with me, I think that I've never felt closer to anybody at any point of my life. She and her sister have made my life complete and whole in a way that wasn't possible before they were born.
Up until recently, I was militantly agnostic and leaning towards atheist. Not long ago, my life situation has undergone a tremendous and traumatic upheaval that has required rethinking some things on my part, and I am no longer militant about anything in life. I have opened myself up to the wide universe of possibilities, and among these possibilities is the existence of a higher power of some sort.
Of course, being a lifelong non-believer, I had very often considered and planned how I would attack this inevitable conversation with my children, and I confidently assured myself that I would approach it with a cold but calm rationality, explaining to my children that life has no meaning and there is nothing to look forward to after our brief existence on this strange planet.
Right now, to be sure, it occurs to me that I used to be a complete and utter moron.
Now that we are here and my child is staring sadly at me, looking for comfort and an explanation that won't doom her to a life of anxiety and depression, my thoughts regarding the topic change instantly. My eyes tear up, and my throat begins to stiffen. I choke my reaction back and force a smile onto my lips.
"My darling," I say, stroking her long hair, "I want to be with you forever, too. The truth is that I will die eventually, but that day is a long way away. We have so many years that we'll be able to spend together, love, and I promise that I'll spend every day that I can next to you."
She nods. "But when you die, will we see each other again?"
God. This kid is just like me, and I hate it.
"I don't know, my love. I hope so. I really hope so. I don't believe that everything just ends when we die. I think that something amazing, something that we can't understand happens, and I believe that, one way or another, I'll find a way to see you again, my love. Okay?"
She nods and hugs me. And, as quickly as the conversation started, it is over, and her attention is focused on something trivial and more suitable to her four-year-old mind.
The fact is that right now, at this moment, I need something trivial to focus on, too, so I reach over, grab one of her Sesame Street coloring book pages, and begin to turn a colorless Cookie Monster into the fabulous blue eating machine that he is.
In no time, I am already feeling better. Thank God for Cookie Monster.
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