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Comment by anexprogrammer | Hacker News Reader

Have you had an inconsolable five year old who lost a close relative or even pet? I prefer to use analogies and explanations they can understand and accept to help them understand the reality. It's not the same as presuming they have no concept of death. That's a very long way from shutting them down with lies, avoiding the topic, or "protecting" them from it. It's trying to be age-appropriate. I make no claims to be a perfect parent however.

When they're a little older and have more capacity to understand a fuller, more accurate, discussion is possible.

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I lost a brother who has two girls. They were very young when it happened. It was a sudden death. Gone in less than a day. You never get an answer to the why. The Lego analogy works because it tells the child that life ends. It doesn't explain why. Just the fact. And that's ok. Why did my brother die? Everyday I ask myself that very same question and have yet come to an answer. His daughters have asked me why too. I never answer and hug them. Life is but a gift. It's not logical. But makes sense in a way. Worth living and worth dying for.

Only thing I can come up with is to wish everybody health and a long life.

>It doesn't explain why.

The aspect of it that people are objecting to is that it does try to explain why. It says "Your father needs to go back in the box so we can make other people", which simply isn't true.

I do understand that and I'm not making a religious statement. Merely stating facts with Legos. The matter we are made up of are the Legos. We are the sum of the parts. When we die those parts go on to be part of other things. Now why that happens is that science has not yet caught up :)

Obviously you try to explain, but what was objected to above is making excuses for death. Death sucks, and trying to pretend there's some good to balance that out is a lie.

That said, I'm not a parent, and I realise it's easier to be idealistic in theory.

But there _is_ some good to balance death out, it's called life. And the lego analogy captures this idea perfectly and quite appropriately for a 5-year-old.

Actually, all of life is contingent on death, not just the good in it. We sustain ourselves by consuming other dead beings, be it animals, plants, fungi, etc. They themselves lived thanks to the death of other beings and so on.

The lego analogy expresses the fact that we are not different from these other beings, and that we too must die so that life can continue. The death of an individual in this chain is always painful, but as part of the whole, it is just as it should be.

> "It's the circle of life..." - King Mufasa

That's not what I meant. The good in life is not inherently contingent on death.

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