You’re pretty old,” Teresa said to me. “Yes,” I agreed. To someone who is 5, being in your mid-40s is pretty old. “Does that mean you’re going to die soon? Because if you do I’m going to miss you. But then when I die, I’ll see you in heaven.” Such confidence. And so many things to respond to. First, I tell her, I don’t think I’m going to die any time soon. While I may seem ancient to a preschooler, the actuarial tables would indicate that I most likely have at least a couple of good decades left. Second, I would miss her terribly if we were separated for any reason, but even if I died, I would still love her. That’s just the way love is. And when we die, because all people die eventually, I very much hope to see her in heaven. Cardinal George’s passing brought Teresa’s questions about death back to the forefront after a few months when she didn’t seem to think about it so much. Earlier, she had lots of questions and thoughts about death, a topic that in my experience fascinates most young children. In her case, she probably thought more about it because her Papa died just after she turned 2, and while she might not have clear memories of him, there are pictures of him holding her and other mementos throughout the house. There are pictures of other relatives who have died as well, and pictures of pets that were once members of our family. She doesn’t have the squeamishness about their deaths that adults seem to. “That’s Kirby,” she says, looking at a photo of a dog we once had. “He died.” She’s also joked about death, testing the boundaries of what she can say before someone stops her. “Frank? He’s not here. He died,” she said once, while Frank was working on homework in his room. Teresa was at Papa’s wake and his funeral, and has been to a handful of other wakes since. For the most part she treats death matter of factly, just another part of life. Far from being frightened of the casket at my grandmother’s wake, we had to remind her and her young cousins that they couldn’t play hide-and-seek behind it. But she sometimes asks if older people we know are going to die (yes, we all are, but we don’t know when) and what made people we know die. She’s asked what happens to our bodies when they get buried, and what, precisely a soul is and where it is located. This Easter, she was interested in the difference between Jesus rising from the dead and our belief that the souls of the saints are in heaven. Throughout the rites surrounding Cardinal George’s funeral, we were reminded that death is the beginning of eternal life, and that in the days leading up to his death, the cardinal expressed curiosity about what comes next. An obsession with death can’t be healthy, but maybe we would be better off if we could approach it a little more like a 5-year-old.