What's the Answer? HALFWAY DOWN

It is challenging when we are asked a question about death by a young child.

What is death?

Where do people go?

Are they in the sky?

Will I go there?

Why do we bury people?

You probably have a list of questions you have been asked by your children, grandchildren or little friends. It is always a quandary for me of how much to answer. Children want answers, not dissertations!

I read a lovely article recently by a dad who was asked the death questions by his 5 year old daughter. Being an intelligent man, he called his mom, a retired educator.

She suggested A.A.Milne's poem, Halfway Down. It is in When We Were Very Young. Having grown up on Winnie the Pooh and Christopher Robin I looked it up. It describes the middle spot we go to think, feel safe, a nice place to rest while we figure out what the answer is to these deep questions we get asked and ask ourselves.

Let me know how it sits with you.

HALFWAY DOWN

Halfway down the stairs

Is a stair

Where I sit.

There isn't any

Other stair

Quite like

It.

I'm not at the bottom,

I'm not at the top;

So this is the stair

Where

I always

Stop.

Halfway up the stairs

Isn't up,

And isn't down.

It isn't in the nursery,

It isn't in the town.

And all sorts of funny thoughts

Run round my head:

"It isn't really

Anywhere!

It's somewhere else

Instead!"