Peter Murphy once sang, Death is the surname of sleep / But the surname unknown to us / Sleep is the daily end of life / A small exercise in death / which is its sister / but not every brother and sister / are equally close. “Shy” from the album Deep.

Yesterday morning, I overheard Julien telling Ari that he had a dream that I died. Ari said, “Oh. But you know it was just a dream, right? You know that daddy didn’t die, right?” And he said, “Yeah, I know. But it was a sad dream.”

At some point that afternoon, Julien asked Ari, “When you die, will you die on fire or will you die in pieces?”

It’s perfectly normal, nay healthy, for a 4 year old to be putting together the logistics of life and death. For the last four years, he has been the center of his universe, and that degree of self-centeredness must at some point present clues as to the self’s vulnerability, its mortality. Frankly, I would be worried if Julien wasn’t talking about it. Still, hearing this from Ari made me instantly replay the last week–I was trying to recall signals in my conversations or pictures from the t.v. that would have given him the indication that fire or pieces were two possible forms of death. I know he saw the second explosion because he was sitting on my lap during one of the replays of it, and I pointed it out to him. But he really didn’t show much comprehension of it at the time. Regardless of what I perceived to be his reaction, computations were being made, he started to put two and two together, and what comes after the equals sign is just too fuzzy.

The only honest answer to his question is, “I don’t know.” I mean, it’s the biggest unknown, right? We honestly don’t know how we will die. We may know exactly what’s killing us, but how we will actually perish is one thing that will elude us until that moment.