On Dying

Out of the blue at supper this evening Calvin said, “if you and daddy died I would be all alone.” This was not a topic I expected to discuss at supper. However, I recovered (hopefully quickly) and told him that he wouldn’t be alone if we died because daddy and I had made a plan. If daddy and I died, he would go live with Uncle Yanthor and Aunt Anya. Then Calvin backed up and wondered how he could get to Uncle Yanthor and Aunt Anya’s house. I told him we had a plan for that too and Grandma Judi and Grandma and Nana would make sure to take care of him while everything was getting sorted out.

Calvin seemed to find this scenario very interesting1 and hopefully (?) started listing off the different ways Jaeger and I could die. He finally decided that a car crash was the most likely2. He then worried that he might be in the car with us when we have our accident. At that point I decided to talk about seat belt safety and pointed out we wear our seat belts to lessen the chance we would die in an accident. Then he started talking about chicken pox and we delved into vaccines and measles.

All-in-all it was a very strange conversation. At least Jaeger and I have an obvious plan that I could tell him about.

  1. I think he had visions of playing with Uncle Yanthor all day every day.
  2. Given our ages and currently known health status, I suppose this could be the most likely cause of death in the moderately near future.