My daughter is the queen of questions. Her little mind goes a hundred miles an hour and she loves to inquire about, well, pretty much anything. Today, while we were driving around town running errands, we were having a nice little chat about the world around us. (Well, as nice as you can have yelling from the front of a minivan to the way back seat.) In the midst of this nice little chat about the trees and such, she pops up with one of those questions. You know the ones. Those questions their curious little minds come up with that stop you dead in your tracks, fumbling for the right words. Today it was…

“Mom, what’s a soul?”

May I remind you that I have to yell for her to hear me in the back of the vehicle? Not the best environment for such a chat. So I try to summarize as well as possible that God gave people a soul and that is what makes us so very special and that our souls in a way connect us to God. This seemed to work and she proceeded to ask about different parts of the body. What’s a heart do? This I can handle. What are bones for? No problem. Then the world came to a second screeching halt.

“Mom, does death smell bad?”

Oh dear. Now, I have a background in Hospice so I could explain several details about the dying process, but I’m pretty sure it is all stuff a four year old doesn’t need to know. So to buy myself some time to form a good answer I say, “What, honey?” To which she responds somewhat irritated, “Does gas smell bad?” Oh thank goodness. We had just passed a gas station! I am so glad I asked her to repeat herself and didn’t launch into a discussion on death! I can just picture her deer-in-the-headlight eyes after that. Pretty sure she would have been convinced mom had finally gone off the deep end!