Children's Thoughts

by Ivan Saldarriaga

“Hey, are you awake?”

“No,” Johnny responded from his bed.

“I got a question.”

“I’m sleepin’,” he said, hoping this would discourage her from starting a conversation.

“Do you ever think about dying?”

After a long, quiet pause, Johnny roused himself to his elbows, and blindly blinked across the dark room to his sister and asked, “What do you mean?”

“I mean, do you ever think about death? Like when will mommy and daddy die, or what will happen when we die?”

Johnny tried to see at least her outline on her bed, but his eyes still hadn’t adjusted to the darkness. He groggily asked, “What are you talking about?”

“Never mind, you’re too young to understand. I’m sorry, go back to sleep.”

“Now wait a minute. You woke me up, remember? Now, what are you talking about? Tell me…And I’m not…‘too young’. I’m almost eleven years old, y’know.”

“Well…It’s just that, lately, I’ve been thinking about it a lot. Like…uh…what do you think happens when-we die?”

“Oh geez, Jan, I don’t know, I guess we go to heaven.”

“But how do you know? I mean, what if…what if nothing happens? Like…what if we just die and don’t go anywhere?”

Turning over onto his back, Johnny looked up at the ceiling. He could now see a bit more clearly around the room and was casually observing the outside traffic’s lights play on the walls. “Like, we don’t go to heaven or anything?”

“Yeah. Doesn’t that scare you? Not knowing? After we die, there’s nothing more of us, nothing continues. Or what if mommy or daddy dies? Then…then the people we’ve loved all our lives would disappear forever. You really don’t think about this stuff?” Johnny could start to hear her sniffing, trying to hold back tears. As of late, he’s caught her crying because of things that he just could not understand. All he knew was that he wished he could comfort her, tell her things to make her stop crying, but it was beyond him to know where to begin.

He lay silently in bed, overwhelmed by the expression of emotion from his older sister and realizing how he had never really thought about death before. He tried to console her best he could by saying, “Yeah, Jan, I do. It’s just that I know we go to heaven. It’s just like they say in church. When we die, we’ll all meet up in heaven…It’s going to be ok, Jan, it really is.” He knew, even as he said it, that it sounded hollow, almost insincere. He just didn’t know what else to say.

“I’m sorry, Johnny, I shouldn’t have woke you up. Go back to sleep now, okay buddy?” Johnny could hear her rolling over to her side away from him, letting him know that the conversation was over.

He too rolled over on his side, and then said, “Alright, Jan, have a g’night…I love you.” After a bit, he could hear her trying to stifle her tears with her pillow. Johnny began to realize, for the first time in his life, just how powerful the notion of death can be, and how fragile we can become when we face it. He began to think of what other things in the world-this immense, mysterious world-could cause us so much fear and sadness. It wasn’t so much a conscious thought as much as a quick and momentary sense of uneasiness. Before long, however, he was peacefully adrift in his own dreams, smiling with his own thoughts.