For children, the topic of death can be much more stressful for adults to deal with, than it is for the child. Since we grown-ups form our fears through a vast database of memories – and the memories of the average child tend to be quite limited in scope – there's a distinct lack of empathy coming from the child's side, that renders many adults incapable of handling an innocent question, particularly because it usually comes unexpectedly.

 

I remember when I first asked about death. It happened on an ordinary evening in the family kitchen, when I was six years old. Prior to that moment, death was an abstract term that meant nothing more to me than what I saw in the pages of my favorite glossy book about dinosaurs that depicted fragments of bones set in stone, dusty hands whisking sand away from the snarling expression of a Tyrannosaurus Rex as it protruded from the side of an excavation trench, and an artist's depiction of presumably the same T. Rex tearing into the soft body of a terrified smaller dinosaur as it attempted to run away.

 

That's it. My vocabulary was limited to say the least, and I never gave a second thought to what happened to those dinosaurs, until a light bulb finally went off inside my empty little head. I remember the process clearly, the wonder that swelled up inside me as I connected the dots, and the astounding conclusion that we too, might be dead and petrified some day. So I asked my mom, who was washing dishes at the moment, and she did her best (as I recall) to hide her own fear, as she attempted to give me the “right” answer.

 

She simply told me that we all die, and my mouth dropped open. My mind reeled. Mommy will die. Daddy will die. Even my three-year-old brother would be dead some day. I immediately sought a second opinion from my father, who was in the study. He was not in a good mood, and my question didn't seem to warrant distracting him from whatever was bugging him at the time. He told me that he was busy, and I was sent away to blubber and whimper by myself in my room.

 

I don't blame my parents for their poor performance during this momentous time in my young life. Parenthood doesn't come with a handbook, and I am certain that my experience wasn't unique by a long shot, as I soon discovered when I turned to my cronies at school for their opinions on the matter, and through the years as I gleaned far sexier death-related content from Hollywood movies, for an explanation about how and why we die.

 

And that's what I hope parents out there will remember, as their own kids ask the question about 9/11 and what happened on that particular day in 2001. Life is busy and crazy sometimes, but it pays to stop and take the appropriate amount of time to handle questions that will ultimately set the tone for how memories are formed throughout a lifetime.