Using Disney to explain Death
Each night at bed time, Cillian asks for a story. Most of the time he wants a rehash of a Disney movie. The Little Mermaid is his most common request but the other night C asked for the story of The Lion King. As always, I started with Once Upon a Time and touched on the most important and dramatic scenes as I stared up at the darkened ceiling. I told about Mufasa’s heroed rescue of Simba and Nala from the elephant graveyard and then moved on to the rock in the gorge. C stopped me with, “But mommy, you missed the part where the kings in the sky were looking down on Simba.”
I quoted the scene to him in my best Mufasa voice. “The great kings of the past are up there…” and then I asked if Cillian knew who else was up there.
He smiled and his voice turned to a whisper as he hesitantly asked, “Miles?”
I smiled back at him and told him yes! I asked him what he would say to Miles if he could say anything at all.
Still whispering Cillian said, “I love you, Miles. I love you very much.”
With tears in my eyes I said, “I love you very much too, Miles.” And we went on with the story.
I really never thought that Disney, with all it’s tragic scenes and orphaned heroes would make talking about and understanding death easier for my three year but it certainly has. I hadn’t realized that even before Miles died we were laying the foundation for these conversations.
The first time C watched The Lion King, he was two years old. He saw Mufasa fall and watched as Simba told him to get up. His tiny baby voice said, “He’s sleeping!” I could have left it alone. Sleeping was gentler to explain and certainly easier to understand. But we’ve never lied to our kid about adult topics so I corrected him.
“No baby, he’s dead.”
Cillian didn’t question me. He responded with, “Oh, when is he coming back?” And I could have told him to keep watching and that Mufasa would indeed come back in the sky when Simba was older. But I mean it when I say that we do not lie to our kid.
“When People die, they don’t come back.”
When C watched Brother Bear for the first time, he had already read the book adaptation and he loved the part where Sitka turned into an eagle. When he saw it play out in front of him, he said, “Watch mommy! He’s going to turn into a eagle because he died and his spirit is going up to the sky to be an eagle!” And I just smiled at his understanding of the Inuit culture.
When Bambi ran from the hunters and his mom didn’t follow him, Cillian asked where she was. I could have made up a number of excuses for why his mom wasn’t around anymore but I didn’t. I told him that hunters shot her and she was dead. We watched Bambi cry.
Since Miles’s death, we have had a lot of similar conversations. C has announced that Miles’s spirit is a zebra in the sky. He has said that his body is in a grave but that his spirit is with Jesus. He has said Miles looks down on us from the sky. He’s explained that he is “Up up up, past the clouds and the sky and past space and the moon.”
I’m not 100% sure how his three-year-old brain works but I do know that I have never once regretted speaking openly about hard topics such as death. We can’t protect our children from all heavy conversations forever and we do them a disservice when we feed them washed up versions like Mufasa is just sleeping or babies come out of belly buttons. Sooner or later they learn the truth and it’s easier if they don’t also have to unlearn the lies. I just can’t imagine if, on top of telling Cillian that our sweet baby had died, I also had to explain what death was and how permanent it is.
Thank you, Disney, for making these conversations just a little less hard.