Tag Archives | life

Dad, what happens when you die?

My cat, Prince, my friend for 17 years, is dying. He hasn’t eaten in over a month. He’s very skinny, moving slowly. The kind of thing that even my children can’t miss. Which lead to a talk about preparing for Prince, the cat that is the combined age of both of my children put together, to die soon.

Often while putting my boys to bed, they’ll ask me a question. It’s usually a science question. I figure the reasons being that they truly are interested in science combined with the fact that they know I’ll sit and talk about it rather than tell them to just go to sleep.

Tonight, they asked me what happens when a person dies.

I explained to them that some people believe that if we are good enough, we go to heaven after we die and we see friends and family that have died before us. Some other people believe that we simply… stop, like going to sleep and never waking up but never dreaming either, just no longer existing.

This is heavy stuff for a 10 and 7 year old.

Big BangThen I said that I believe it’s somewhere in the middle because of what I know about science.

I told them that scientists have looked into our molecules, into our atoms and found the very same elements from the big bang… the very start of our universe. The same things that are found in stars and galaxies billions of years ago, billions of light years away, are found right here, in us. Everything in the universe is connected and can be traced back to the big bang… when time and space, as we know it, began.

Again, pretty heavy stuff for a 10 and 7 year old.

So I said “Do you remember when we talked about the Sun? How it’s a big fiery ball of plasma in space and how it’s putting out a ton of energy all the time? It’s moving, it’s emitting light and it’s emitting heat… all of that is energy that the Sun is sending out into the universe all the time. Remember how I said that energy never dies? There is never more or less energy? It just goes somewhere else or becomes something else?”

I continued “We are basically bones and muscles and hair and stuff that is holding in our energy. Some people call it a soul. It’s you and me. It’s the energy that allows us to think, to remember, to move and control our bodies. It’s the energy that stays inside of us until we die. But then when we die, what happens to it? Energy doesn’t die. It doesn’t stop existing. So where does it go?”

They just stared at me. Yup, heavy stuff for a 10 and 7 year old.

So I went on, “That energy goes outward from you, like it does from a star, like our Sun. Some of it goes back into the Earth where it’s used to create new life. Some of it goes to others around us where it becomes a part of them. Some of it goes up into the sky. Maybe some of it rejoins the Sun while other bits go along with the energy that the Sun is releasing, out into the universe, traveling for billions of years over billions of light years. Maybe some of that energy will find new stars, maybe even stars just being born. And those stars will have new planets around them. Some of those planets will get the same energy from their star that we get from ours and maybe… just maybe, life will grow. Maybe plants, animals… maybe a new civilization, not like humans but just as smart, maybe smarter? Maybe those aliens way out there, way off into the future… maybe one day they’ll look inside themselves and their molecules and atoms and elements and they’ll find traces going all the way back to the start of the universe, the big bang. And along with that, they’ll be seeing bits and pieces of…”

At which point Cameron, 10 years old, jumped up and said “Me!”

I finished off by saying “It’s not as nice and convenient as heaven, thinking that we’ll still be us and fine and happy but it’s also not as gloomy as just closing our eyes and no longer existing. But it’s what I believe will happen to us. I think we’ll rejoin the Earth, we’ll rejoin our friends and family and we’ll rejoin the universe. We might not know it or remember it or really be us anymore but we’ll be a part of something as big and vast as space and time itself. And for right now, while we’re alive and able to appreciate that, I think it’s pretty incredible.”

“The truth is that I don’t really know what happens. No one actually does. We can only make our best guesses and believe what we choose to believe. But now you know what I believe. It’s up to you to figure out what you believe will happen for yourself.”

I turned off the light and left the room. They did not sleep. For two hours, while I worked, I heard them talking about it. I was supposed to go in and tell them to stop. I was supposed to tell them to go to sleep.

But I didn’t.

 

Comments { 2 }

A life taken away

take a chanceI was talking with a friend about cancer, how it may take her life. It reminded me of my grandfather who’s life was taken by cancer. It’s… not a fun subject.

But I got to thinking about what exactly that means, “take a life”. Because, the more I think about that friend, the more I realize, that phrase does not mean what I think it means.

Life is so much more than a breath or a heart beat. It’s the culmination of all things experienced, affected, impacted, touched and shared from the moment you came into existence until… infinity.

You probably thought I was going to say until the day you die, didn’t you? But your life doesn’t end there, does it? Do people suddenly forget who you are? Do they suddenly forget the times you had together? Do people who learned something new from you suddenly unlearn it? Do they ever stop missing you?

Life isn’t breathing, it’s being.

Your first kiss, your first point in sports, your first risk, your first love, the first smile on your parents face when they see the pregnancy test results, the heartaches, the successes… all of it. And not just for you but for those all around you. Those who shared in those smiles, the person you kissed and all those lives that were enriched just by you being a part of it.

Yes, your future, the things you have yet to do can be taken from you. But that’s not your life either. That’s a bucket list. And it is tragic. I can not lie. But it can not, in any way, diminish the life you’ve lived nor the life that will continue to live on in others, in time and in space by you having existed and hopefully, being the best you that you can be.

Think of the butterfly effect. The theory that, if you go back far enough in time and kill a butterfly, that it could spark a chain reaction through time through cause and effect that completely and totally changes the way things are now.

That’s fine for the past. But today, right now, you are that butterfly. And your life, you, you have affected all there will ever be for the future.

Your breath and your heart beat can be taken from you. But your life can not.

Don’t ever let the thought of your life being taken away from you get you down.

Because so long as your life has been, it will always be.

And that makes you pretty spectacular.

So live your life, while you can and do all that you can with it. Because no one and no thing can ever take that away.

Comments { 0 }

Explaining death? Easy. Explaining not existing before life? No so much.

brothersMy boys, Cameron (7 with autism) and Tyler (5 without autism) often have conversations about when they were babies. They’re obsessed with talking about what they did as babies or what babies do and at what age they started doing things.

This morning, we were talking about an old television show that we all used to watch when they were babies and the strangest thing happened… Cameron was convinced nothing had happened before Tyler was born. In his mind, he was always and will always be 2 years older than Tyler and therefore he could not have been around at all until Tyler was born so that he could be 2 years older.

It’s a weird one to wrap your head around but in a weird way, from his point of view, I sort of get it. He relates almost everything in his life to how old he and his brother are. Because he’s 2 years older, everything he does is at a higher level or done sooner. But always with his younger brother.

So when I tell him that he was 1 and we would snuggle on the couch to watch television, he asks where Tyler was.

When I explain to him that Tyler wasn’t here, he wasn’t born yet, he didn’t exist yet… I get a chill from the emptiness in Cameron’s eyes as he looks at me like I had just explained quantum mechanics to him.

He doesn’t understand it at all.

Now death? Death he gets. You’re here… and then you’re not. You stop existing. You go to heaven, you go to sleep forever, you just blink out… what ever. I don’t think he’s given it much thought but he understands that once you’re dead, you’re gone.

But to not exist before you, well, exist, is an incredibly difficult concept to digest. How can that happen?

I think it’s especially difficult in that they’re 2 years apart, making it impossible for Cameron to remember life without Tyler.

It’s not like a quick birds and the bees talk can fix that either. Because in his mind, Tyler was and always will be there. Whether he’s satisfied with “he was still in mommy’s tummy” or not comes and goes but for the most part, I don’t think I can ever convince him that we did things before Tyler ever existed.

The scientific, logical side of me wishes that I could explain it better or help him to grasp it better or even, which is wrong of me, that he could be smarter so that he’d get it. I know he will one day, 7 is still young but hey, we wall want a Doogie Howser for a child.

But the more emotional, sentimental part of me is quite happy with him thinking of his brother as always being there. They’ve always been together and hopefully always will be. To him, there is no life without his little brother and I’m quite fine with that.

If Tyler had to be -2 when Cameron was born, then so be it. So long as they’re in each other’s lives.

Comments { 2 }

Making the best of it

For a long time in my life, I was very depressed. I wasn’t going anywhere, doing anything, I had no goals and worst of all, I felt that my life simply had no chance of ever getting better than what it was at the time.

Then I got married.

Strange huh? To go from depressed to married. Well, there was a lot that happened in between but those stories aren’t what’s important right now.

What is important is the vow I made. You know, the vows we all make through marriage… “good times and in bad, in sickness and in health”… I took those vows seriously. More so than that, I paraphrased them and made them my own new life motto: “Make the best of it.”

When my son was diagnosed with autism, I made the best of it. When my wife was pregnant with our second child and had to spend 6 months of it on bed rest, I made the best of it. When my wife was diagnosed with fibromyalgia and could barely get off the couch, I made the best of it.

People told me I would crack, have a nervous breakdown or worse, leave… I didn’t. When people asked how I handle the stress, I told them that I just take one day at a time and I, of course, make the best of it.

Now those days are behind me and my wife is gone. Our children are being split between us 50/50 where I get them for one week and she gets them for one week.

I’ve been with my kids almost every day since their birth and even more so in the last 5 months. With their mother working extra hard, my boys and I were glued together (other than school) every single day.

And after 5 months of that, they’re gone for the week. And this house feels ever so quiet now. No wife. No kids. Not even the dog.

So what do I do?

shrimp

Shrimp = Great snack food!

Well, I’ve been eating some foods that I haven’t had in years, due to the wife’s healthy diet, my son’s gluten free diet and our lack of budget. I’ve been watching movies I have been dying to see. I’ve been playing video games that I haven’t touched in almost a year. I’ve been reading and learning new skills in my field of expertise to better myself.

I posted some pictures on Facebook to which one person replied “you’re not supposed to be enjoying this! lol”

And I got to thinking.

She’s right. I’m not supposed to be enjoying this. What I’m supposed to do is feel alone and quiet and maybe even sad. After all, I do miss my boys tremendously right now. My wife too, but more so my boys since we were together so often for the last 5 months… just the 3 of us.

But why? Why do to that to myself just because I’m “supposed to?”

I thought back to the bed rest, the diagnosis, the struggles with money, the decisions and sacrifices we’ve made and I thought to myself… no, I’m not going to do what I’m supposed to do.

I’m going to make the best of it.

I have the house to myself, I’m going to keep myself busy in the best way I know how and when the week is up, my boys will come back to me. And again, during that short week that I get them… I’m going to make the best of it again.

happy cat

My cat – making the best of an empty house

The way I see it is, when times get hard or life throws mud in your face, you have 2 choices:
1. Do what you’re supposed to do and let it get you down.
2. Make the best of it.

It’s kind of like that whole “when life gives you lemons…” cliché, except, I’m going to make myself a steak and watch a good movie with my lemonade.

Because life is to short to do what you’re supposed to.

Instead, make the best of it.

One day you’ll look back on your life and be glad that you did.

 

Comments { 2 }

The stick man

cameron stick figuresCameron drew this great picture today. He’s really quite proud of it.

Can you tell what it’s a picture of? And who those people are?

I’ll let you know if you’re right at the bottom of this post.

The point of this post though, is that his drawing got me to thinking and for some reason, I just couldn’t let it go and it dawned on me that this is really very important.

The Stick Man

A circle for the head. A line for the body. A line for each arm and a line for each leg. That’s it. Big deal. Right?

Well, consider this; every single child, ever, has started out by drawing a stick man.

Most of you are probably thinking “ya? so?” while some others will be processing it for a moment to either form an argument to agree or disagree with that assessment.

A small, very rare portion, of you are probably dawning on just how significant that really is.

Think of it

When you stop and do the math on that, it’s really quite remarkable. Let’s say we focus on only the population we have now, not the population through out history. Just the people on Earth right now.

That’s just over 7 billion people, living on several continents, in hundreds of countries, with a variety of skin colours and languages, rich and poor, religious and not, special needs or not, high and low IQs… everyone!! And they’ve all (or at least very close to all) drawn a stick figure. Whether it’s in the sand, in stone, on paper, an etch-a-sketch or what ever means they have… children draw the stick man.

Sadly, this isn’t a post about world unity, give peace a chance, joining with our brothers and sisters and so on.

No. It’s about you. You and your child.

The first step

The real significance in this is that this is a common first step in what becomes a world of endless possibilities. Some of those children become astronauts, athletes, musicians and the ones that really love those stick men continue on to become artists.

But when you think about the greatest people in the world, whether brilliant or athletic or seemingly “born with talent” individuals, they all sucked at drawing the human form!

Even those who go on to be widely regarded as the greatest artists in the world, sucked at it at first.

The last step

I also consider the stick man as the last step in what makes us all the same.

From that stick man on, we stop doing the same things that everyone else on the planet has done. We keep on drawing or we find other interests. We persevere or we give up. We make decisions every single day that forever shape and alter our lives in ways that have never happened to anyone else, ever.

It’s humbling to think that we all started out with the same talent (or lack of talent, depending on how you view a stick man) but it’s also monumental to think that it’s the last time that any of us will ever do something that every single other person has done too. (I mean, aside from bodily functions and other such humanity type stuff we need to do)

Possibilities

When I look at my son’s drawing, a bunch of stick man figures together, I think of all the people that came before him, doing the same thing. How their parents must have admired their work too. How they must have progressed from that stick man to works of art that became priceless.

I think of presidents, rocket scientists, athletes and everyone else in the world that all started out with a stick man on a piece of paper and how they started out just like my boy.

No, not everyone has the same support in life along the way nor does everyone have the same challenges but in that stick man drawing is a beginning. And it’s a very big world and there are going to be many, many more steps taken after that first one.

And if any of those other people can go from a stick man to becoming anything they want to be, then so can my boy. So can anyone!

So when your child draws a stick man and hands it to you and says it’s you, or your spouse, or a friend or what ever it is… don’t just say “that’s nice” and put it on a shelf or in the recycle bin.

Really look at it and appreciate what’s coming next. Whether big or small, record breaking or not, what comes next is the rest of their lives and it’s going to be amazing!

The Answer

I did promise to tell you what it was that my son drew in that picture. I didn’t forget.

It’s The Avengers!

Hulk, Iron-Man, Thor, Captain America and some pink girl he decided had to be the villain.

 

Comments { 1 }