Where the Fear Comes From
“How did I make this about me? Because I make everything about me. Christ.”
Today we’re rerunning an essay by A.J. about death: fearing death, embracing death, eating shredded wheat in an attempt to avoid death. Okay, it’s mostly about fearing death — and how weird it is when you do and your child doesn’t. Death is an unknown, and we fear what we don’t know! (A leaf in a picture book told us so.) Anyway — never a bad time to begin (or deepen) the process of becoming comfortable with what you don’t understand and so can’t control. With guest appearances by the highly divisive children’s book Love You Forever and the universally beloved Evil Witches newsletter.
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Love You Forever, Death, and Cocaine
Originally published April 11, 2023
My oldest son is in this odd, slightly unnerving phase where he’s become acutely aware of death. I wrongly assumed that he would be like most five-year-olds and either be terrified or, at the very least, sorrowful when he found out that all of us would perish, but he’s neither of those.
It began last year during his peak dinosaur phase, when every toy he wanted was from Jurassic Park, and every noise he made was an ear-splitting screeching roar. Then, once he learned about their extinction, he quickly calculated that humans — even his parents, brother, sister, and friends — would also no longer roam the earth one day.
But after my dad died a couple of months ago, he’s since found newer, more unsettling ways to work it into a conversation. Although he’s very bright and thoughtful, his interest and acceptance of death are not exactly Zen but more like a 12-year-old’s, one who has recently discovered Slayer’s “Reign in Blood” album. When I told him we had a new mailman, he wondered why. “DID THE OTHER ONE DIEEEEEE????” I told him I was sure he had just been assigned a new route, and he was visibly disappointed.
I don’t remember the exact age I began to understand the permanence of death, but it didn’t take long for me to be stricken with the terrible truth of it. The earth spun faster — the ground where my feet were once safely rooted suddenly turned into a mud puddle. I never spoke of it because I feared summoning an instant hell storm that would wipe us out instantly. I was devastated at the thought of losing my mom. Who would love me then? Who would I love? I was inconsolable.
Meanwhile, last weekend in my present home, I made a half-hearted joke about being an old man, and Ozzy reminded me that I wasn’t that old yet. “You’re 49!” I smiled at him. “Then you’ll be 50, then 51, 52 — then you’ll probably die.” He stopped to think more about it. “Well, you might live a little longer after that, but you’ll be close!”
He quickly returned to being hypnotized by his iPad game. Meanwhile I stared into a bowl of soggy shredded wheat, a cereal recently purchased for me by my wife because she said it was the “# 1 defense” against colorectal cancer.
*****
Most of our friends and relatives gave us books as baby gifts when our kids were born. And like most other new American parents, we were sent 17 copies of Margaret Wise Brown’s timelessly enchanting Goodnight Moon.
But the runner-up was by far Love You Forever, by Canadian author Robert Munsch. Depending on who you ask, the book is considered either a heartfelt meditation on the enduring power of a mother’s love or a horror story about a deranged woman who crawls across the floor into her son’s bedroom every night to terrorize him while he sleeps.
The first time I read it, I wasn’t a father at that point, but I was old enough to be one. I was touched because it had excavated all the sentimental, terrible feelings I’d had as a young kid, afraid of death and of losing my mother in the hell storm. I even bought it for her as a gift, but she seemed confused by the gesture. “Does this mean you still want me to rock you?”
I discovered that the most exciting part about the book was that its author, a bona fide beloved institution in Canada, was both manic-depressive and an addict.
In a stunning interview with Global Television in 2010, Munsch referred to himself as a “French-style drunk who is quietly immersed in alcohol all the time.” Then, at age 59, he discovered that a sure-fire way to keep up his energy to write his internationally beloved children’s books was . . . cocaine. The bipolar diagnosis came soon after, along with a heartfelt note on his personal website assuring children and parents alike that he was getting the help he needed, adding that he hopes “everyone will talk to their kids honestly, listen to them, and help them do their best with their own challenges.”
When we began to downsize the books soon after our third child was born, the Love You Forevers were some of the first ones to go since Julieanne was, to put it mildly, not a fan. “Who would give this as a gift to a mother who just had a baby? I don’t want to think about my week-old son watching me die.”
I wanted to hang on to one of the copies as a show of solidarity for another bipolar cokehead in recovery, but as I stared at the book cover, I began to see the baby on the cover a little differently — was it a little boy or was it a demon? I threw it away.
*****
When we showed up for his kindergarten assessment with his teachers at the end of January, we were told that Ozzy had shared with the class that his grandpa had died. I was concerned that he’d said something unkind or weird, but they assured me he was fine and that he had mostly stated facts.
I asked how we should proceed with talking about death, and they quickly forwarded us an email with some books the school recommended we read together as a family. One of them, a truly bone-chilling tale of seasonal despair called The Fall of Freddie the Leaf, should come with sedatives and its own hotline number:
One day, a very strange thing happened. The same breezes that, in the past, had made them dance began to push and pull at the stems, almost as if they were angry. This caused some of the leaves to be torn from their branches and swept up in the wind, tossed about and dropped softly to the ground.
All the leaves became frightened.
“What’s happening?” they asked each other in whispers. “It’s what happens in Fall,” Daniel told them. “It’s time for leaves to change their home. Some people call it to die.”
Julieanne read it along with him. Ozzy was fine. She was not. I read it by myself a few weeks later and tried to figure out if I was near the autumn of my years. I’m in September, maybe a week or two after Labor Day. How did I make this about me? Because I make everything about me. Christ.
*****
Or maybe I’m just ill-equipped to handle these conversations with my children. I might be. So, I took it up with a professional. My friend Claire Zulkey, editor of the parenting newsletter Evil Witches, told me about her experiences having the death talk with her two young boys.
First, we send our kids to Catholic school, so we outsource many of our teachings about death. I am only sort of kidding. It’s nice to have a framework in place. I have complicated feelings about the church, to say the least, so I want to leave the door open for them to question things and accept that minds change. A friend told me that she tells her kids, “Well, some people believe this happens, and other people believe this.”
I remember being terrified of death at nighttime when I was a kid and how let down I felt by my parents, who couldn't put me at ease over it. My dad would tell me to “Just pray.” I knew I would never be like that with my kids, and I was 100% wrong. I am not proud to say that when my more anxious kid has popped out of bed with questions about death, I am not much better than my dad was and have even encouraged him to pray as an attempt to get him to think about other people instead of in his own head. It’s hard to explain in writing without sounding cruel, but I can tell the difference between really wanting to talk about death vs. the nighttime in-the-dark anxiety dump, and when it’s the latter, I’m more interested in getting the kid to sleep, his mind at rest, than trying to give him a theological guidepost that will quiet his spirit and also get him the f to sleep.
But not long ago, my older one ran this curveball by me around dinnertime: “Mom? Why do women give birth if the people will just grow up and die?”
My actual first answer was not maybe my best one: I said that traditionally, parents die before their children, so we don't typically have to think about our babies growing up and dying. This is historically untrue, first of all, and then as I was saying it, I was like, I guess I am addressing children dying and this strange deal that it’s OK to saddle someone else with mortality if you get to hit the ejector seat and die before they have to . . . ?
And the weird part is that he seemed to get it. Then I tacked on a maybe less helpful answer — something about biology and the desire/need to procreate. Finally, after these first two attempts, I said something more warm and fuzzy about how and why his dad and I decided to have kids.
*****
Don’t get me wrong: I go to bed mainly feeling at peace with whatever comes next, whether there’s a tomorrow for me or not. I have too much recovery pumping through me not to. “The life beyond my wildest dreams” guaranteed by AA’s Big Book is currently being lived by me, and I’m full of gratitude and love on most days.
So, where does my fear come from? One of Freddie the Leaf’s friends unhelpfully said that all fear came from the unknown, and then a few seconds later, that leaf was ripped in half by a menacing November wind. But that’s it, mostly — I’m afraid of the uncertainty. I’m afraid I won’t die in my sleep one night in a warm bed decades from now, full of love, but that I will be ripped off a branch, screaming, begging for more time or a prolonged goodbye. I must accept the certainty that it will end before I’m ready.
*****
My son’s lack of fear of death is somewhat surprising since he’s definitely afraid of many things. Right before I began writing this, he yelled for me from the bathroom to get rid of a cricket he thought would leap onto his face while he was in the tub. My boy.
However, when he fell asleep on the couch a couple hours later, I became aware of how different he is now and how much time has passed. I picked him up and carried him to bed, but his legs were so long and gangly that it was like trying to carry a giant telescope. He’s become too big for me to lift into his top bunk, so now I roll him into the bottom one. He’s no longer the meaty baby boy, but he’s not a full-grown man yet. I’m in no rush. I will carry him forever, for as long as I can.
ALL ILLUSTRATIONS BY EDITH ZIMMERMAN
MORE FEAR:
Mexico
My father began to go bald when he was 16. He found this out in the cafeteria lunch line when the jerk classmate standing behind him said he could see his scalp. After that, he was mortified and ashamed, but despite all his daily prayers, his hair was completely thinned-out by his senior year, and by 22, he was completely bald.
*****
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*****
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This is The Small Bow newsletter. It is mainly written and edited by A.J. Daulerio. And Edith Zimmerman always illustrates it. We send it out every Tuesday and Friday.
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A POEM ON THE WAY OUT:
Rapids
by A. R. Ammons
Fall’s leaves are redder than
spring’s flowers, have no pollen,
and also sometimes fly, as the wind
schools them out or down in shoals
or droves: though I
have not been here long, I can
look up at the sky at night and tell
how things are likely to go for
the next hundred million years:
the universe will probably not find
a way to vanish nor I
in all that time reappear.
*****
Interesting, as always!
My first thought when you threw away the book because you couldn’t tell if the image was a boy or a demon was that, perhaps, that was the inspiration for your own logo. A demon who looks playful and fun to be around, rather than the scary ones of childhood nightmares.
Have a great weekend!
I love this essay. About kids books, it always disturbed me that so many are about happy smiling farm animals. Another on-ramp for the death talk and more.