Lately we’ve been talking about death in the Petti household. Cheery, I know.

It’s another thing I like to discuss openly so my kids don’t have a, “Holy shit I’m going to die one day” moment like I did while I was 9 years old.

I was dancing along with Debbie Allen to the beginning of Fame. After Debbie recites the following mini speech mid-theme song …

You’ve got big dreams? You want fame? Well, fame costs. And right here’s where you start paying … in sweat.

… and pounding her walking stick on the floor like the badass she is, I jumped off the couch and sang, “I’m gonna live forever!” that’s when it hit me that, uh, no I wasn’t 😳

It was probably my first brush with depression. It hit like a ton of bricks and I couldn’t stop thinking about it.

I spent a lot of my life feeling that ton of bricks whenever I thought about dying. Sometimes it wasn’t so bad but other times I’d obsess over it. It is not good times.

Because I’m the queen of projecting, I just knew my kids were going to feel the same way and I didn’t want that for them.

To try and nip it in the bud, I make death sound as everyday as going to the grocery store; like, “Yes, we die and this is what I believe happens next. What do you think?”

Sometimes I didn’t even fully believe what I was telling them. I’d be hoping and wishing for a beautiful Heaven where you see everyone that died before you, but I was still doubtful.

You can really mess up your mind if you think too much about all the details like I do. Meaning, how does it all work out? What if you fell in love twice in your lifetime?

For example, the movie Titanic.

*Spoiler alert for the 1 person on Earth who hasn’t seen Titanic*

Rose meets dead Jack in the ballroom at the end when she dies. What about the guy she married and had kids with after she let poor Jack freeze to death by not sharing the floating headboard she was on? Is that guy shit out of luck and has to spend eternity alone? I mean, it’s Leonardo DiCaprio so I don’t really blame her, but still.

I found this story on Facebook a few years ago and it was very enlightened for me. It was originally written by Henri J. W. Nouwen, but this condensed version went around on social media:

In a mother’s womb were two babies. One asked the other: “Do you believe in life after delivery?”The other replied, “Why, of course. There has to be something after delivery. Maybe we are here to prepare ourselves for what we will be later.”

“Nonsense” said the first. “There is no life after delivery. What kind of life would that be?”

The second said, “I don’t know, but there will be more light than here. Maybe we will walk with our legs and eat from our mouths. Maybe we will have other senses that we can’t understand now.”

The first replied, “That is absurd. Walking is impossible. And eating with our mouths? Ridiculous! The umbilical cord supplies nutrition and everything we need. But the umbilical cord is so short. Life after delivery is to be logically excluded.”

The second insisted, “Well I think there is something and maybe it’s different than it is here. Maybe we won’t need this physical cord anymore.”

The first replied, “Nonsense. And moreover if there is life, then why has no one ever come back from there? Delivery is the end of life, and in the after-delivery there is nothing but darkness and silence and oblivion. It takes us nowhere.”

“Well, I don’t know,” said the second, “but certainly we will meet Mother and she will take care of us.”

The first replied “Mother? You actually believe in Mother? That’s laughable. If Mother exists then where is She now?”

The second said, “She is all around us. We are surrounded by her. We are of Her. It is in Her that we live. Without Her this world would not and could not exist.”

Said the first: “Well I don’t see Her, so it is only logical that She doesn’t exist.”

To which the second replied, “Sometimes, when you’re in silence and you focus and listen, you can perceive Her presence, and you can hear Her loving voice, calling down from above.”

May be this was one of the best explanations to the concept of GOD.

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My youngest son asked me yesterday what would happen if gravity stopped working.

Me: “We’d go flying off the Earth and into outer space.”

Him: “What if it was only 10 seconds?”

“We’d still be in trouble because 10 seconds is longer than you think.” as I set the microwave timer for 10 seconds. We imagined how high we’d rise and then – splat!

Then we talked about how weird gravity is. I said I feel like science is God’s chemistry set.

Of course I believe in science, but who created science? That’s where God comes in for me.

PJ and I have been watching Surviving Death on Netflix. Some of the stories are total bullshit; if you’re watching too – I’m talking about the ectoplasm lady 🙄 but some of the others seem so undeniable that it makes me believe that there’s life after death.

I hope the story about the twins in the womb helps you as much as it helped me. It really makes so much sense and makes you view things with much more of an open mind. We just don’t know what we don’t know, right? There could be colors we’ve never seen, sounds we’ve never heard, senses other than what we already know. I hope we get to fly. That would be pretty cool.