How did you get to sleep when you were little mummy?

Rosie Scribble has written a really good post about her daughter asking whether she will die.

I commented on her blog because my son has asked me the same question. It's funny to talk about on other people's blogs what I don't talk about on my own. It's nice that others talk about what I don't.

Why don't I? I dunno really.

I've told my son yes he'll die and so will I one day and hopefully it will happen in the natural order of things and I'll go first. From there we have had quite a few conversations about it. Hard ones, it's a scary concept. With him I use old toys he was gutted to lose; Quack Quack and Cordy Mouse. I say they're together now. When I go, I will always be in his heart. My mum and dad will be in mine and so on.

Fortunately the conversation doesn't crop up too often. Fear of death is, well, put it this way, as an adult, I'm trying to learn not to be scared of it. Not so much my own, but other peoples, his. (Fuck I posted on terrorist attacks and Haiti yesterday - our children are growing up in very difficult times)

Work in progress, shall we say. Chewing the cud with my son is no bad thing, I hope.

This morning though, I think I've totally fucked him up... Posting on Rosie's blog, whose daughter is going through what my son is going through, has well, woken me up to this fact.

He's not settling to sleep very easily. This is not uncommon.

In the past I've said to use the opportunity to dream nice things; fun with me, his dad, his cousins, pretty flowers, no not power rangers, running streams, nature.

This has moved on to telling him to listen to his breathing, for this is what I do.

This morning he asked me what I used to do when I was a child. He caught me by surprise. We were outside The Toilet, on our way to school.

Now I, I'm not sure why, but I would pretend that I was in a coma, seriously ill in hospital and about to die. I'd lie there stock still and imagine my parents at my bedside.

I wondered for a minute whether I should tell my son this or make something up.

An alternative wasn't presenting itself.

"I was a bit older than you and I'd pretend I was in a coma, in hospital, not very well and I could hear grandmere chatting to me."

"Oh."

That's the thing with my son. When I give him an answer he is happy with, he says "oh" and leaves it at that. Things like sex, he comes back to it. Same with death.

My son doesn't know what a coma is.

He may ask me tonight as he lies in bed.

It may herald another conversation about death.

I think I may say, regarding the whole sleeping thing: "You just have to find anything that works for you. Breathing works for me."

Death... My dad used to say it was like those hours between falling asleep and waking up when you're fast asleep and know nothing. Nothing. Time means nothing. I quite like this personally, that it's like sleep with no dreams or nightmares, but I think I'll perfect my delivery of it before I tell my boy. May even wait a few years.

(Must very quickly tell you there is a stunning sunset outside my window. A kind of mauve graduating to a deep pink into a paint brushed orange. Really stunning. A bigger tower than my own is to the far left, so silhouetted against the whole sky are the tops of winter branches.)