When I was a kid my parents put me in a daycare while they went to work. I met two of my closest friends at that daycare. Thinking back on those days gives me an unusual feeling in the pit of my stomach. Remorseful, for the childhood that I will never have again and yet accepting. The daycare was at a church, though we weren't a religious daycare. It was just where it happened to be. I remember walking around the church, the somewhat sterile air that hung about it's halls. I recall the pictures of religious figures that were painted on the walls and the bibles that lingered over our shoulders each day. We weren't usually allowed at the alters and actual church part of the building, but my friends and I always found a way to sneak there and play on the long benches and stare at the stain glass windows.
However, my most prominent experience in these areas had nothing to do with playing. I recall one particular summer day when a teacher (that is what we called the daycare workers) took us to the alter. My friends sat on the floor cross legged as she took a seat in a plastic chair. She had short dirty blonde hair that clung in curls to her skull. She was an older woman with a mother's figure and a mother's eyes. She looked at us for a moment and told us that a boy from our daycare had passed away.
Now I don't remember much about this boy. I can't remember his name or his face unfortunately. I recall that he was handicapped. I had not played with him much. He seemed happy though, despite his disability.
Some of the kids began to cry, others were silent. The room seemed heavy, even though we were all so young that we hardly knew what death was. All I knew was that death was not good. When I was a few years younger, my great aunt passed away. My mother took me to her funeral. I was only five, so when I saw the adults mourning her death I felt unsure. I held my mother's hand as we approached the open casket. As I looked in the box I saw my great aunt, her hands folded onto her chest and her looking alien. She looked alien to me. It was enough to haunt my memory to this day. I stood there looking into the ghostly visage thinking "that's not her." And as the adults cried, I knew that whatever happened to her was a horrible thing. The word "death" began having meaning to me then.
But even as I sat on the floor looking at the friendly woman I felt unsure. I think we all knew by then that death existed, that people did not like death. However, we didn't know what we were mourning. We were too young to have asked ourselves what happened to those people, what happened to their spirits when they passed away. As silence weighed down the room, the woman sighed and began to tell us a story.
There was once a river filled with happy river beetles. The water was their home, and the beetles were happy there. Although some of the beetles had ventured to the surface to see what was unknown, they had never returned to the river. The beetles could only assume that the place above the water was not good and the very thought of going there terrified them. One beetle, who I will name Lily, decided she was curious above the surface. She had spent a long time in the water and felt that it was time for her to see what was on the other side. Lily began climbing a cat tail, despite all of the stories she had heard about the surface. As Lily climbed, she became tired. It was a long journey and when Lily had just reached the surface she fell into a deep sleep. When Lily woke up the world looked different. The world was bright and clear and as she looked upon it she felt a great joy. Lily watched as dragonflies flew by her as she rested on the cat tail. She was amazed at their great wings and bright colors.
"Lily!" The dragonflies called out, "Lily, spread your wings!"As Lily heard them she realized she recognized them as friends from the water who had left. Lily looked over her shoulder and saw a set of wings and shuddered them. Lily had reached the unknown. She had become a dragonfly.
As Lily flew around with her friends she said "We should tell the other beetles about this place!"
"We can't..." One spoke up, "We can't go in the water anymore. We would have told you but we can't go back in there anymore, so we just have to wait for the others."
The woman looked at us and said, "That is what has happened to him. He has gone to a better place but he can't come back tell us about it." As we took in the story the room fell silent again. I didn't feel better knowing that the boy had gone to a "better place." I didn't understand what that was. I sat there thinking about what is the better place. Surely the boy hadn't turned into a dragonfly. As a kid, I couldn't grasp the idea of an afterlife. Some of the other's accepted this concept easily and when they did I felt like I was being absurd. Maybe I wasn't smart enough to figure it out yet.
But even as I sit here typing today, I find that the idea of an afterlife like the one the woman mentioned is absurd, not me. I have spent years listening to people talk about better places and the unknown as if we know what it is, but really, we don't. Even as a child I doubted the concept of this because it contradictory. I simply cannot accept that we know what the unknown is. This whole concept of the afterlife seems to be more of a bad rumor to me.
"I heard there was a heaven from Julie who heard it from her friend Mary."
Something that has been interpreted in a million different ways and all but one of those interpretations is wrong. That day planted the seed of doubt that grew in me as I became older.
Although I do not personally believe in these things, I don't really think it's my responsibility to say that everyone else is wrong. As I said I don't know because I can't know because it is unknown. I wish I had been inspired by that story, I truly do. I wish the story had brought me peace with my thoughts about the boy and death but that is simply not how I work. I wish I could believe in a beetle that reached the other side but at the end of the day, these stories seem to be what people tell us so that we can sleep at night. In the end we don't know until we reach the unknown.
Not too wishy washy today at least.
Best,
Anna Belle Lee.
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