Yesterday, we were driving to preschool. Elliot is playing with a plastic Halloween skeleton he picked up in the garage. He asks if the skeleton is real. I say, “No, it’s pretend.” Then he asks, “Where skeletons come from?” And I say that when we die, we become skeletons.”
“Why die?”, he asks. He doesn’t know what, how, when, who very well and often just says “why” instead. I think he is asking “who dies?”.
“Everyone dies. Me, Mama, Maxi, Elliot.”, I say.
“No, that’s a joke, Daddy. That’s a joke. That’s a joke”. He keeps saying it until I repeat him — “Yes, that’s a joke”, then he says, “Uh huh” in that same inflection he’s used since he could first speak. I was not sure how to respond. But I know he can learn about it later. I still remember how hurt Max was when he learned about it. And I know I wrote about it in either this book or the Maxi book.
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