madeira

Hi guys, My first post here My 6yo old daughter asks about what happens when people die in a sense what is going to happen to HER. The discussion started perhaps 1 year ago when we talked about how long people leave, how a person grows up and becomes adult, then old and then person dies. She related this to herself and asked how long will she live and me and my wife explained that it will be a very long time for the parent to become old and for her it will be VERY VERY long time. But still she asked what will happen when she will die. As heartbreaking it is I tried to explain that it will be like going to sleep without dreams and never wake up. The dialog was as follows (we are foreign, so translated to English as closely to original as possible": HER: "What I am going to see?" ME: "Nothing, it is like a sleep with no dreams" HER: "Will it be dark, will there be no dreams?" ME: "Nothing at all" HER: "But it will be boring. How long it will be?" We spent some time discussing this and it seems hard to explain that she will not be feeling anything when dead. Then she asked what will become of the body. Seems like the fact of the burial was shocking, she asked "why to bury the body, is it because it will be a nuisance for others?". At this point our other daughter (4yo) said "I don't want to die and I don't want to be buried in the ground" It is tough. We parents are both with PhD in science and look at death from this point of view. Once synapses in a brain cease, there will be nothing at all. My wife seeing how it upsets our oldest daughter started to say that we don't know exactly what happens after death and some people think that there will be a place where after death people become angels with wings, but seeing the reaction in my daughter's face of happiness totally broke my heart and we discussed that it is definitely NOT true. So this topic comes back occasionally I try to explain matter-of-factly with no much fuss. It seems like the only thing that calms her down is that she will live for very very long time. What do you guys do in similar situations? Madeira