The other day my three-year-old directly inquired: “Mummy, will you die?” I didn’t think kids were supposed to grapple with things like this until they were much older, so the question caught me a bit off guard. I always tell my boy the truth (except when it comes to Santa and the Easter Bunny), so I replied: “Yes darling but not for a long, long time and I’ll be really old and you’ll be a big grown-up man. Everyone dies eventually.” He burst into tears. Good one Mum! Perhaps I should have lied and said we would both live forever. But on some level that didn’t sit right with me. Even my truth, is not really the truth. I could be a hit by a bus tomorrow, get some horrible disease – obviously I just don’t know. The thought that I will die at a ripe old age when he is a healthy, productive man is my fantasy, not fact. Experts say that children are aware of death from a very early age. They see dead animals on the side of the road, or they see it on television. Young children often think death is reversible. But between the ages of about five and nine they start to realise it is permanent but it will usually be viewed as some impersonal concept – something that happens to other people. My son’s direct question leapt over all these stages and landed straight at the heart of the matter: death is forever and it happens to all of us. Even if you are religious and believe the soul lives on, it’s the physicality of the matter that will have most impact on children: here one day, gone the next. Many parents use the idea of heaven to cushion the impact of death. The person or pet who has died has gone to be with the angels (or whatever). But I’m afraid my heart isn’t in this explanation. So on the one hand while it seems a bit brutal to tell the truth, I console myself that death is not a taboo subject in our family so that should help my son come to grips with it later. Sadly two of my child’s grandparents have passed away – one before he was born and one when he was only six months old. We often discuss them and my son is aware that they are no longer with us. But dealing with the death of a living friend of relative who is a part of your daily life has to be very different experience for little people. I still remember the day of my grandmother’s death when I was nine. I remember the weight of it on my mother, an only child. My recollection is that my Dad pretty much told me like it was – she died of a heart attack while sitting in the lounge chair. I didn’t attend the funeral. I remember my pet birds dying in their cage in the backyard. (Perhaps that was the problem – that their cage was in the backyard!!) When Hope, Faith and Charity died, we let Love go (seriously – that was their names!! Maybe they died of shame?) I never experienced the loss of a close lovable dog or cat until I was in my twenties. During my childhood my Dad would do his block with our pets, and ship them off, long before they reached old age. I often thank my lucky stars how limited my experience of death has been. But that’s often not the case for many families, on many different levels. I would be interested in how others have handled the issue with their children, especially if you’ve actually had to deal with the death of a loved one. Do pets really help children cope with death or is that a conspiracy put about by Pets’ Paradise? Do you think kids should see a dying relative or go to funerals? Should we take our cue from our children themselves? (That is, let them do what they are comfortable doing.) One thing is inescapable – we can’t protect them from death forever.

Last weekend my husband and I celebrated our sixth wedding anniversary. The day conjured up lots of memories because for the first time our anniversary was on the same day as our wedding (a Saturday). I decided to relive part of the day with a surprise trip to the church we got married in. After all after six years, I thought it was about time we went back.So, after dropping off our 3.5 year old with his Nanna and Aunty Nat, we headed into town about the same time we did so, six years earlier - except this time there were a few differences and I am not talking about the extra weight or the grey hairs! I was in a Mazda, not a vintage Bentley; my husband was driving, not a chauffer; I was not dressed in a willowy ivory number, clutching white roses; my Dad wasn’t nervously fidgeting beside me; and 100 or so people weren’t awaiting my arrival at the other end. In fact there was no one at the other end. No one at all. And you see, that kind of derailed my plans for a trip down memory lane.

The church was closed. Doors bolted. Windows barred. The green steeple seemed to be laughing down at us saying: you think after six years, you can just turn up again, and we’ll welcome you with open arms? No way, we know what you’ve been up to!

Earlier in the week I’d expressly phoned to make sure the church would be open for our little sojourn. The church secretary and the “verger” (whoever that is - sounds like someone from Star Trek, or maybe the Thunderbirds) assured me that if we arrived before 5pm there’d be no problem as a Palm Sunday rehearsal would be taking place.

But as I’ve already told you - that wasn’t the case. I even phoned the “verger” on a mobile phone number displayed outside the church, just in case he got an attack of the guilts and decided to fly down and open the church for us. I mean what else do these church types have to do on Saturday nights anyway?
Well no such luck. And I still haven’t heard from him.

So what to do? We took a few photos of ourselves outside the church for old time’s sake and briefly considered joining the homeless people outside the building next door. (Hey, perhaps they were there for us, in the absence of the “verger”?)

Instead we decided we’d better make the most of being in town on a Saturday afternoon, without a kid, and with a few hours up our sleeves now we didn’t have the option of enjoying a bit of solace at the stained glass windows.

So, where to? It’s 4pm - too early to start drinking; too early to have dinner; best to have a coffee and consider the situation. Perhaps we could go to a movie? Yes, let’s get a paper. Soon discovered 4pm is never land in cinema world. No movie ever starts at 4pm - they’re all halfway through.

And actually we’re parked in a two-hour zone so if we go to a 5pm movie we’ll get pinged in the middle of it. So we could just park somewhere else and forfeit all the gold coins we’ve just fed into the hungry parking meter, but, oops, do we have any coins left for the next one? And where is that cinema anyway - it used to be so simple - with those big blockbuster-type places in George St. Are they even there anymore? I think the last time I went was 1986. Oh there’s that Reading place, and that Dendy place, and that Verona place.

Oh god it’s all too hard. Let’s just head back to the ‘burbs where we know we can park. And catch whatever movie happens to be on (Emilio Estevez’s Bobby - not bad).

I tried to do something a bit different - I really did.

But next time I think I’ll get my Mum to come to our place and we’ll just go to Hornsby.

Isn’t life in the digital age wonderful? I find by the time I update my two blogs, transfer pictures onto the computer from the camera, answer my emails and check my favourite websites, there goes the night. I find I now spend more time in front of the computer than the television. I have simply swapped one sight-ruining box for another.

Social commentators used to spend columns of space writing about the dangers of television. It was supposed to tear at the fabric of families, and ultimately society.

How can families possibly be relating properly if they are sitting in front of the gogglebox all night? Well at least we all sat around the gogglebox together and occasionally even laughed at the same time.

In contrast, using computers is a fairly solitary task. I’ve never heard of the family logging onto You Tube, for example, and having a laugh at the latest Chad Vader episode (check them out - they are so funny. Chad, as opposed to Darth, actually works in a grocery store, but I digress).

Music used to be something to be shared as well. Now with the i-pod generation, music is a case of plugging in and tuning out.

For our little kids, perhaps the same will become of television. Everyone will have their own personal monitor and it will be so interactive there’ll be no such thing as the 8.30pm Sunday movie. It’ll be the anytime-you-want-it movie, from any camera angle you want.

It’s not all negative though. I find that with my blogs and the uploading of my photos onto share sites, such as Flickr.com, at least those members of the family who don’t live near you, can get a sense of what you’re up to. How else would my son’s Aunty is Canada know, for example, that he just saw King Kong on the weekend?

So we all get to know things about people we never needed to know. And as for the stuff, we need to know? I’ve just got to write one more post, answer three emails, contribute to an online forum, and edit the Christmas pics (in particular reducing the size of my nose and chin), and then we can talk, ok?

Just last week I was faced with a screaming child grabbing onto my leg as I left the childcare centre. It is a difficult situation for any parent. How can you leave, when your child is in such obvious distress? On the other hand, how will they ever learn that everything will be okay when you’re gone, if you stay.My boy hasn’t been particularly clingy, especially as he’s gotten older. He’s been in some sort of care since he was about eight months old. Until this year it was mostly family daycare, which consists of a maximum of five children in a carer’s home.

It’s a very personal experience for both the parents and child and I’d recommend it to anyone with very young children.

This year, in our second-last year before school, we have started at a childcare centre to give our child a bit more stimulation and to prepare him for school. He does that two days a week and still checks in with his lovely day care lady one day a week.

He’s really enjoyed the new experience for the two months or so he’s been attending - until last week. Apparently our experience is not unusual. There’s a novelty value with new things that soon wears off. Then the child can go backwards for a while when they realise the set-up is an ongoing thing and that they have to go, even when they don’t feel like it.

So what did I do? Initially I said I’d stay for a little while in the vain hope that I could leave a happy child and then I wouldn’t feel guilty. But I don’t think that helped at all. In fact I think it made it worse. When I then did have to go (the train was coming!!) he was really upset as though he’d been deceived into thinking I was going to hang around.

He settled down of course but it took him a while, they told me. And of course he was fine when I saw him that evening but it was still a crappy way to start the day and I’m sure that bad taste was in his mouth a lot longer than mine.

I only hope that when it’s my turn to drop him off again in a few days, we don’t have a repeat performance. I will be sure to wax lyrcial about all his friends there and all the great activities he can do and I might even throw in a new Spiderman action figure (or his favourite “Kindy” (Kinder) chocolate) as a bribe for a happy drop off.

Pathetic, I know. But then it’s my separation anxiety as much as his!!

My blog: www.yuckymummy.com