A Conversation With My 6 Year Old Daughter About Death
“Dad?”
“Yes, sweetheart?”
“Why do we have to die?”
I tell her the reasons, the sweet nothings, we talk about the seasons, plants, the beginning and end of things. The parables we learn to keep the fear of death at bay. Then:
“How old will you be when you die?”
Small children have such big questions…
Trigger warning, this might be an uncomfortable read — so please don’t continue if you think this could cause you distress.
Let’s talk for a moment about death.
The first death I experienced in my life was the loss of my grandfather. I was 5 years old. He was a boulder of a man, working all his life in the Port Talbot steel mills in Wales. He had arms like the stout branches of an oak tree, thick-rimmed spectacles, stubble like steel wool which he would often rub the back of my hand against and slicked back, pomaded hair. Every week we would go to visit my grandparents for Sunday lunch, and he would take me up into the attic to look at the treasures he had accumulated over his life, to help dig up weeds in his allotment, or out to his workshop where he would show me his metalworking that he still did for the community, putting a big welding mask on my face while he constructed a wrought iron gate or a bed-frame.
It was a heart attack. My grandmother found him, frozen in the middle of one of the endless tasks to which he applied himself. My family kept his body in the front room of our house until it was time for the funeral — a traditional welsh ritual in which only the men, which thus included myself, went to the church to bury their lost companion. I can remember being small, looking around at the black-suited men, arrayed around the grave like slabs of stone, tears streaming down their faces, the low rumble of their sorrow reverberating within their barrel chests. I remember how this was left in the graveyard, put to one side before returning to my grandmother’s house for the wake.
I had what might be described as a difficult upbringing. My father was an alcoholic and that brought with it years of misery and violence. My grandfather had been an island which I escaped to every week. I didn’t really understand grief, until those pieces of myself that found solace in him started to encounter the dead ends of his absence and the realisation that there was nowhere to escape. His death sent my father into a spiral that would ultimately make this part of my childhood something I’d rather forget.
My mother and I left this life behind months later, in her red Datsun Cherry. I can still see the number plate, black on yellow: RCY 558M.
OK, this one is difficult.
My brother had not coped with our childhood as well as me, and as the years progressed he slowly unravelled. The arc of his trajectory descended from that of a promising, talented and intelligent boy to an angry, impulsive man who — like so many men — distracted himself from his pain with addiction. This created a cycle of trauma, which fed into his grief. I watched over the years in frustration and sadness as I tried to pull him back from his brink — remembering him as a child sharing a bathtub, playing in the fields behind our house, teaching me how to draw — but he was trapped by his rage, the tragic secrets of our past and the reputation he had acquired for himself.
I used to work in my parent’s pub and one night he came in, tears streaming down his face, soaked and reeking of whisky. He started shouting at the customers, railing against them, snatching people’s drinks and slamming his fists on the bar. I had to stop him, but knew that if I took him outside we would end up fighting — so I called the police to try and take him.
They arrived and started manhandling him. I asked them if they could just talk to him and escort him off the premises, but they told me that it was in their hands now. They had dealt with him many times before and I could feel their resentment towards him as they put his arms behind his back and handcuffed him. He started to struggle so they put him on the floor and handcuffed his ankles together and dragged him writhing into a van. He was screaming my name, begging me to not let them take him. I stood outside in the rain, crying.
I never spoke to him again, he died in a car crash months later.
The funeral was unbearable, despite it being an accident it felt like a suicide. The religious veneer of the service reeked of inauthenticity, white-washing the tragedy of his life, capitalising on tragedy to peddle membership. At the wake, people came to me, offering platitudes about how great he was. I was incandescent with silent fury, anger like I have never felt before or since — knowing how he had been ostracised, how difficult he had become, how ugly it was. And yet none of that mattered. He was my brother. He had been an asshole. I would rather he was an asshole and alive than dead.
I still carry him with me, when I travel, or see something beautiful. Sometimes I whisper to him and hope he can see what I’m seeing, like the photo of Pico Ruivo above which I took last year— so that he can enjoy the life he was denied.
I’m sorry Justin.
Nearly there. Last one.
Years later, I was married to a wonderful woman and am the father of two beautiful girls. I had unfortunately piled on the pounds over one winter and decided I needed to do something about it, so I took up running. Months of watching my diet ensued, counting each calorie, obsessively racking up the miles to drive my body mass below the curve on my fitness app. It paid off and I lost 49 pounds, had not looked this good in years.
I joked to my wife — “I bet I’ve got some awful illness”.
The next night, as I came home from my run, I went to the bathroom to urinate. My eldest daughter came in unabashed, as children do, chattering away at me. I looked down into the bowl, and it was full of blood. I sat down quickly, terrified — and shooed my daughter quickly out, needing to hide this. I told my wife, and we waited a couple of days, but it didn’t stop.
A trip to the hospital, scans. Lying in bed, whispering to each other late at night, hopeful, optimistic. I was called back to the hospital and sat nervously in the waiting room, scrolling my phone until my name came up on the monitor. I went into the doctor’s room, sat down — and as they put down the leaflet, all the air left the room. Cancer.
Grief is the thunder that follows lightning — in the ensuing silence you think you may be ok, you feel calm. And then it comes. Terror. The tumour is removed, but now come five years in which my own body is like a haunted house — waking in a cold sweat in the night, every creak or rumble a signal of something sinister. I become detached from myself, obsessed with being healthy, taking up yoga 5 days a week, running, becoming vegan. During this time, although my health improves, it takes its toll on my relationship and our marriage quietly fails until finally, we decide to separate, and ultimately get a divorce.
I remember sitting on the wall outside my wife’s new house in the sun, it’s the first day my children will sleep in a house that I no longer live in. My eldest daughter comes out to sit with me, it’s time for me to go home. Now I see it, in her eyes — the realisation. We look at each other silently, then the tears begin, unspoken and I put my arms around her. I tell her it’s going to be fine, even though I am not sure if it will.
I’m blessed that my ex-wife is one of the finest people I have ever met, and to this day we support each other and our children. We have been awarded the dubious merit of conducting the best breakup our friends have witnessed. Our children are happy now and have adjusted to the change. Our family is still strong and there are definite positives to (an amicable) divorce. I have become more nurturing to my children over the years which has had its own effect on the processing of my childhood experiences.
Death is terrifying yet inevitable — a subject we are increasingly less comfortable with in a culture obsessed with positivity, youth and beauty. This leaves us vulnerable to wasting our lives in distraction, engaging in drama or toxic behaviour as if we have the luxury of a rewind button.
If you like reality TV, death is the ultimate breakup. It can come abruptly and give you no time to say goodbye, or so slowly that’s all you will wish for. It’s messy, incomplete — not easy to tidy away philosophically. It can invoke difficult, conflicting emotions: love, anger, guilt. Death can redeem even the most pitiful life and reveals the worth of every person.
My experiences with death have changed me profoundly. For a long time I didn’t handle it well. I distracted myself with people, compulsions, but there comes a point when that has to stop. It has made everything and everyone matter to me, sometimes to my detriment, where I would forgive far too much. When you lose someone, there comes a moment that you want to talk to them, and you are faced with the fact they no longer exist. Once you have experienced this, it’s hard to wish harm on anyone or to be unaware of it when you spend time with people.
Grief will crack you open like a nut — yet it can be an agent of personal growth. Kintsugi is the Japanese art form of repairing broken pottery, the joins made with gold lacquer celebrate the history of the object. The bittersweet nature of grief is that it is equal in volume to the love that you felt. I used to think it was a weakness, but now I realise it is beautiful in it’s own way. It made me aware of how fragile life is, every moment like snow melting away. It taught me the tragic cost of believing that summer will never end.
Don’t waste your time, live with purpose, help people, don’t harm them. This moment right now, it matters.
One day, two years ago, I am given my final scan. It’s over, for now.
My daughter, frowning as she wrestles with the concept of time, the difference between a minute and an hour, is not yet able to tell if something happened last year or last week. I see her, unfolding in time like origami, from the moment she was born, rising imperceptibly, like a sunflower. I see myself reflected back in her eyes, a giant with a speckled grey beard, a pirate’s tan, her tattooed, mischievous dad. Then, for a moment, I see her future, remembering this moment, of me tickling her, playing games, but I am gone.
She’s looking at me — eyes like coffee beans, squinting in the sunlight.
“When will I die? Not yet darling…”
this story is part of a series inspired by conversations with my daughter :
A conversation with my 6 year old daughter about forever
