A Four Year Old Philosophizes on Life, Death and Abandonment

I cuddled with N on the bottom bunk a bit tonight when I put him down. This evening, not uncommonly, we had a bit of a philosophical discussion. N has been pondering concepts of mortality, but doesn't seem to be particularly oppressed by it as his sister sometimes gets. His ponderings generally take a stream-of-consciousness type of feel and don't really seem to require much in the way of acknowledgment or comment.

"Daddy, did you know that kids don't know when they are going to die? Nobody knows when they are going to die. When you're 70 or 80 or 90, then you might die. Or you might live to 100 or maybe 200. Or you might live to 1000. Did you know that there are people that lived to 1000? They are all in heaven with God. They lived a long, long time. Did you know that some day you will die?"

He paused for the briefest of moments.

"That will make me have a lot of tears... And they won't be happy tears."

But gazing up at the sheets hanging from the upper bunk he was quickly distracted to another subject and the maudlin moment passed. "Daddy, I've decided on days that L has to go school but I don't, I get to sleep in the top bunk." (L is in full-time kindergarten whereas N goes to preschool on Tuesdays and Thursdays.) "Mommy has put my very favorite sheets on the top bunk and I never get to sleep on them," he explained. "Daddy, what's your phone number at work?" The sudden apparent shift in subject matter caught me off guard. I read out my work phone number a couple of digits at a time, secretly worried that he would actually remember it. He repeated back the chunks as I said them. At the end his face screwed up in consideration. "Daddy, you'll have to write it down for me."

"Why do you need my work phone number?" I ventured.

"Because when I sleep on the top bunk Mommy will forget about me when she takes L to school, so I'll need to call you so you can get me down."

"I see."