The audacity of death

Tradition has it that the veil between the physical and spiritual worlds is at its thinnest this month. We are gearing up to remember the dead, eat the sweeties we had set aside for the trick or treaters, and wonder whether pumpkin spice lattes are worth the hype. So perhaps it is fitting that death has been on Spike’s mind again. 

When Oscar was about 3 or 4 years old, he had a lot of questions about death. He didn’t ask them all at once. They trickled out slowly as he quietly processed everything. “Do we go to Heaven when we die?” and then - needing to know more, “What does happen when we die?” There were one or two nights when he was upset about the idea of me dying and needed extra cuddles but, at 9 years old, he has done the bulk of the mental work that we have to do when contemplating our mortality. Just last week, we both laughed until we cried at this silly, allegedly AI-generated, obituary, and admired Patrick Caulfield’s stylish and humorous headstone. 

It was different with Spike. For many years, he was not curious about death. The subject came up from time to time, as it inevitably does, but the fragments did not come together to form a concept of death. And then when he was 10 years old he suddenly did *a lot* of this processing all at once.  It was intense. 

There are, apparently, four subconcepts of death: nonfunctionality (your body doesn’t work anymore), universality (all living things die), irreversibility (you can’t come back to life) and inevitability (death is unavoidable). This is the concept of death that children learn.

By the end of the last “death phase”, Spike had grasped these four subconcepts - intellectually, at least. We read a great book called “What Does Dead Mean?” which I would recommend. It is sensitively written in plain language, avoids euphemisms and tackles the typical questions children ask head on (a good approach for autistic kids). It might not be a book you sit down and read cover to cover with your child (although we did), but it provides a good model for answering questions about death as they arise. 

Spike was very stuck on the topic for many months. He constantly doodled gravestones with his name on them and used a lot of death-related language in unexpected ways (a disappointment might cause him to grumble, “RIP, Spike.” When New Year’s Eve loomed, he warned of the approaching death of the current year.) Eventually, something settled in him and he was able to move on from the topic.

Death still comes up regularly. I have noticed that Spike engages in some magical thinking around the subject. It feels like he is looking for loopholes and testing the veracity of what we say. Just how irreversible is “irreversible”? Perhaps if I change variable x the answer will be different? 

Just the other night we had a long talk about death (at Spike’s instigation). The generalities of the four subconcepts were less on his mind than the specifics. He is now, quite naturally, most concerned by the idea of someone who is “beloved” by him dying. He is also trying to work out how many degrees of separation there are between him and death? “Have I met anyone who has died?”, he keeps asking. “Do I know anyone who has died?” “Has anyone that has been to my house died?” There are one or two people on that list but I have not shared this information with him yet. Hearing about these deaths would be an important stage on his journey to understanding, but it is not just about him.

A few years back, Spike learned that one of his classmates had a pet fish that died. Spike subsequently brought it up in near enough every single conversation he had with her until the end of primary school. “Did your fish die?” I think she took it pretty well, but it’s a little brutal to be reminded of the death of a pet on the daily. Death is never not a big deal for Spike. I think, until he is more able to navigate people’s boundaries around discussing the death of loved ones, I will refrain from telling him. The deaths were acquaintances but loved by people we know and in some cases the grief is still quite raw. It wouldn’t be fair on the bereaved. The caveat is that of course I would tell Spike if we lost a friend or family member.

*

During our conversation, Spike felt compelled to detail vivid, harrowing scenarios involving his death, feeling that his own demise was an inevitable consequence of the death of his loved ones. It was a rather amped up and distressing version of “If you die, I think I’d die, too”. His words communicated the intense emotional response that the idea of losing family and friends causes him. They are not plans and he did not mean them literally - I get it, but it was tough to listen to. I ran through my reassuring refrains. Your family and friends are strong and healthy. They plan on living long and happy lives. Death is sad, but it’s a fact of life. It is normal to be very sad for a while when someone dies, but time passes and we will find joy and happiness in our lives again. Life goes on. 

He is feeling the weight of that full stop. Struggling to picture how exactly life goes on when your world order is upended. All he can see is chaos and devastation after the fact. He was also thinking about his own death and had specific instructions for me.

“If I die,

Destroy all the buildings

In the Network Railcard area. 

Cut Big Ben 

And the United Kingdom flag in half.

…

Do not destroy the train stations.”

I was struck by how conceptually similar Spike’s evocation of his fear of dying was to W H Auden’s “Stop All The Clocks”. Auden was writing about grief and loss, and Spike shares his incomprehension at life having the audacity to go on after a death, (albeit viewed through his immature, egocentric world view - the death he is struggling with here is his own).

I loved that he made an exception, amidst all the destruction, for his precious train stations - his cathedrals. His sacred spaces. At the end of his exhortation he seemed to develop a little perspective and added,

“If someone does not have a sleeping bag or tent, do not destroy their home.”

We read Auden’s poem together and Spike was consoled. Poetry as a mirror, reflecting back his big feelings. The subject dropped and he went back to designing his train liveries. 

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