"Where did the Mommy go?"

Like a lot of five-year olds, Ellie has been asking us a lot about death lately. She asks us about where we go when we die, and how old we will be when that happens. I think this all triggered when her friend's grandpa died. We were straightforward about it, and it seemed to get her thinking. At random times she asks about death and heaven. Usually out of the blue.

This morning she asked us what happens to our stuff when we die, and through the course of the conversation she decided that when she dies she wants her cousin Isabelle to have her Frozen Lego set she got for Christmas. "To make her happy."

Then we decided to watch a new movie they got for Christmas, "The Land Before Time." I haven't watched this since I was a child, though it was a favorite in our house. My little brother even had a Littlefoot stuffed animal as a boy.

I forgot how incredibly sad it is. And full of death.

Right off the bat the girls wanted to know where the Daddy was. (The dinosaur is born to expectant mother and grandparents).

I was working on a few other things on the couch next to the girls, and as the movie progressed Ellie got more and more worried. There's a scene where there is a huge earth shake which puts a huge divide in the land, and the young dinosaurs get separated from their parents. When the mom died, Ellie started crying. And crying. "What happened to the mommy?" "Why are they not with their parents?"

By the end of the movie, Hazel had declared the movie too sad and had checked out, playing with toy cars instead. Ellie was snuggled on my lap. As the credits rolled, and she considered the movie, tears rolled down her face again. "But why did the Mommy die? And where was the Daddy? Maybe he died before the movie started?" What's a mom to say? It was heartbreaking to watch her so upset.

I've never seen her so impacted by a movie. The girls get "scared" at other movies. They haven't watched Cinderella for a long time because the stepmom is too mean (and the sisters). They've actually only watched Frozen a few times, because the "Marshmallow" scary snowman is too scary.

It's fascinating to watch your child grow and start to think about these topics. The baby and toddler stages have their own difficulties, but now I have to start thinking about how to answer these difficult questions, questions I don't have the answers to. As a mom, I can't help but feel pressure to answer these questions well, whatever that may mean.