Craig Daily Press

Christina M. Currie

Christina M. Currie's Touch of Spice column appears Fridays in the Craig Daily Press. E-mail her at director@craig-chamber.com

My girls have been pretty preoccupied with death lately. It was something I was getting a little concerned about until I realized that they were less concerned about the actual process of dying and more concerned about the concept of heaven.

I have no idea what launched their fascination. In answer to my question, both say, “I don’t know, I just heard it somewhere.”

Talking about heaven with your kids is sometimes hard. I know what I think, but I’ve got only intuition to back that up, and I will not present my opinion (at least on this subject) to my kids as fact.

Kids on the other hand, don’t understand why I don’t know and why I can’t just give them a straight answer.

“I don’t know what heaven is like. I only know what I think it’s like.”

Yeah, that doesn’t make any sense to small children.

“Can you do anything you want in heaven?” 7-year-old Katie asked.

Wow. That’s a hard one.

I said yes. That’s what I believe.

“You mean, like if it’s not lunchtime, you can still eat?” she asked.

Yep.

Wow. That set off a chorus of cheers.

“I want to go to heaven real bad,” 6-year-old Nikki decided.

What’s life like when the best thing you can imagine doing is eating when you want to instead of on some schedule?

A little too regimented, I think.

So, I’m easing up a little on what we consider “dinnertime” and what’s considered “snack time.” That’s easy for me to do. Sticking with a set schedule isn’t my best thing anyway.

I thought I had a firm grip on this heaven thing, discussing our ideas of what perfection would be like.

The problem is that the picture we’re drawing is a bit too appealing.

The girls and I were discussing the consequences of certain actions — riding in a car without a seatbelt, for example — and I kind of got stymied.

When I explained that, if you get in an accident, it could be really bad and you might die, Nikki replied, “That’s OK, we’d just go to heaven.”

I don’t want my children to ever fear death. I don’t want them to welcome it, either.

I knew I couldn’t argue that staying here was better than being there, so I held out for my ace in the hole.

“I would cry so hard and miss you so much if that ever happened,” I told them. “You’d better not ever leave me.”

Then Nikki cinched it.

“It would be OK, Mom. We’d wait for you there just like you’d wait for us if you got there first.”

When they’re leaving and I tell them how much I’m going to miss them, Nikki’s the one who says, “It’s OK. I’ll be right in your heart, mom.”

I changed my mind, that’s my idea of heaven.