A lot of us have lost children, and, as I can attest, the pain is especially excruciating. To make matters worse, the healing seems to take longer than when we lose other family members or friends–not always, but generally. As for my journey through grief, this blog and especially the upcoming book has done a lot to heal me. In fact, I can now report that I don’t grieve over Erik’s death as much as miss him. I know he’s not gone. His body is. It feels like he’s off to some work-study program abroad. Actually, I guess he is. It’s just in another dimension. Plus he’s making all As in my opinion. I hope this post about children and their deaths helps some of you. 

Me: Today we’re going to talk about a very tender subject and that’s children. I love children, and a lot of people ask what’s it like for children to be spirits? Hi, Erik.

Erik: Hi, Mama. I love you.

Me: I love you, too. Hi Jamie.

Jamie: Hi.

Me: So tell us as much as you can about it.

Erik: Can I be included in being a child?

Me (in a very sappy tone): Yeah, you’ll always be my baby.

Erik: But I know what you’re talking about, Mom. You mean like under the age of, what, 15?

Me: Yeah, maybe even younger than that. Let’s say ten and below.

Erik: Ten and below.

Me: Before they get to that annoying stage.

Erik (laughing): The double digits age.

Me: Yeah.

Erik: So what do you want to know? If we’re talking about children’s struggles and deaths and processes like that, it’s so much easier for them than it is from 15 up.

Me: Why? Why is that?

Erik: Because they’re still connected to The Beyond. They still understand that there is a safety or some kind of security, a place for them to go and belong to. Mostly in these ages—and I’m going to talk in general because—

(Pause)

Jamie: I don’t have any idea what he just said. It was a little mumbled.

Me: He mumbles sometimes.

Erik: In general, the way our culture is in America, it used to be that every child belonged to a religion and, from a young age, they learned what that religion was. They had a language for it. They knew that certain belief structure or system. Nowadays, not every child is taking that path. Most of them aren’t. That leaves them completely open to stay attached to the things they could remember before they came into this life and even stay attached to those memories up until the ages of 6 or 7. I’m picking those ages because that’s when they get into the public school system—

Me: And become indoctrinated.

Erik: Yeah. They get taught linear time, that one thing is based on another and so forth, and they start to let go of what they carried in and what they knew naturally belonged to them. They then start to believe that they’re inferior, that there’s an authority figure and that they need to report to someone. External pleasing becomes more important than internal pleasing. Before this age, during illness and pain, they don’t ask, “Why me?” They just don’t have that desire to understand. They just know that’s their body and this is what’s happening. They might need to understand the disease and the process of what’s occurring, but in the death process, there’s no fear built into it yet. They just see it as a part of something that they’re going to do.

Jamie: He’s talking about documented cases of children with diseases who have transitioned, and it’s stated that the child would still be caring for everybody else around him, even the doctors, the nurses, the parents, letting them know that everything is okay with them.

Erik: They show this amazing amount of strength and calm. But it’s not that weird for them to find that strength and perseverance. As adults, that’s what we’re taught is required to get through those times. Really, they’re just showing acceptance. That’s all it is. They just have it innately. I’m not saying this is just for those who aren’t trained in religious beliefs. That’s not true. I’m talking about anyone in any belief system up until about 6 or 7. Then when you get above that like ten, you’re going to get more of those, “Why me? Why is this happening to me? Why can’t they fix it?” They’ve already been in the system, and we’re training them to think they’re independent, in control and if they’re hurting, it’s because of something that they did. They didn’t please someone; they didn’t do something right, so they get this sense of a loss of control.

Me: What’s it like for them when they cross over? They probably don’t have any kind of belief system to create their own afterlife.

Erik: No, but most of them know what a party is!

Me: Ah! Par-tay!

Erik: And that’s normally what happens. The party.

Me: Aw.

Erik: If they have a disease, and they’re going in and out [of their body] they will have already had dreams and connections with loved ones in other dimensional planes. They’ll have that awareness. The same thing goes for infants who don’t have [verbal] language where they can’t talk to you yet. Little guys. Trust me; there’s a language there that you’re not getting as the mommy, as the daddy. When they go to sleep, the family members, the angels of loved ones are already working with them and taking care of them. When they’re transitioning, whether it’s from SIDS or whatever, they’re not having those fears or struggle or panic because death doesn’t have that meaning for them. It’s just a different process. They’re still living every moment in their curious life learning something new with acceptance. So when this process of death comes to them, they’re accepting of it. When they get to the Other Side, Mom, mostly it’s celebratory. They’re already remembering that they’ve been there before. There’s this familiarity. There’s no fear or anxiety or “Where am I! Where’s Mommy?” I’ll see that with older kids, you know, they’re like, “Why? Where am I?” and they panic, trying to get back into their body because they’ve been trained to think that, “Death is not successful. You have to be alive to be successful.”

Me: Why do some people make it their spiritual contract to die young?

Erik: It’s going to depend on the people who are around them in their family and their life. Normally, infants—innnn general—they’re letting go of their lives to make an impact on their families, for their families to understand death and separation, to understand love, the importance of living in the moment, living in the Now. That’s normally what’s going on in things of that nature. Rarely, the infant will choose to die to experience incompletion, you know, they started something that they couldn’t finish to understand this [concept.] But usually, that young, there’s not a—

Me (rudely interrupting): Okay. What about in the cases of miscarriages and stillbirths?

Erik: A lot of those are because of the physical body—not designing it properly. Those don’t come with a contract, per se, for the baby’s soul. That’s more of a contract designed by the mother. It’s for the mother to experience, “I’m not good enough. I didn’t make it [happen.]” So it’s really a self-centered lesson that has nothing to do with the baby’s spirit. In those cases, the infant’s soul is not inside or struggling with that [death.] They don’t experience the death process because they didn’t come into the physical body. We call that riding sidesaddle.

Jamie (laughing): We do! The little spirit is sitting sidesaddle.

Me: So in these instances, it’s teaching the mother something. Is the child here to teach the mother or parent something?

In other words, is it a mutually designed contract?

Erik: No, but the spirit will help with the lesson. It’s not there to teach, though. It’s not coming in with independent knowledge to give the mother. It’s coming in to give the mother an experience and helping her accept that her body has a level of intelligence in and of itself, so it’s not anything that she ate or did or didn’t do or didn’t know. There’s a lot of trust that needs to happen.

(Pause)

Jamie (to Erik): Really?

Erik: Sometimes a kid will come in. They’ll hop on a pregnancy—

Jamie (laughing): His terms are so funny. Sometimes they make me stop.

Me: Like hopping aboard a train?

Jamie: Yeah, like, “Here I goooooo!”

Erik: And they’ll follow through with the miscarriage so that the mother will trust the body better. In the second pregnancy, they won’t come into it with more fear. They’ll come in with, “Okay. The worst has already happened. Let’s go.” And when the baby comes the second time, the third time, the fourth time, there is this, “You have arrived” moment. “You are here, and you are special.” You are a survivor in a sense when really you just had a healthy normal pregnancy (or maybe it was a difficult but successful one.) This helps the child to build a certain bond with the mother.

Me: Okay. That would probably be an even stronger bond, if that were possible, after the loss of other babies. The one carried to term would be very special.

Erik: Yes, and some experience that train ride 4 or 5 times before having a full-term pregnancy.

Me: We souls, we spirits, come into each other’s lives to teach something or to learn from each other, of course. Children must do the same thing, but do they teach us something different than an adult spirit would?

Erik: Yeah!

Me: Like what?

Erik: There’s so much to take in on this!

Me: Well, for example it might be a lesson in loss because losing a child is just so horrible. That loss is so much deeper than other losses. So would that be an example?

Erik: That’s a great example. Trust. Trust is a huge one because this kind of trust between parent and child comes with a certain kind of knowing and understanding because, you know, you wanna hold tight, but at the same time, you can’t. You have to let loose. You can’t do both at the same time. There’s gotta be a middle, and in that middle is the perfect amount of trust. That’s what [the child] is giving.

Jamie: Erik went on to talk about the beauty of having a child and not having a [verbal] language to communicate—just physical language, physical cues, noticing the smell, the look, everything else but the [verbal] language.

Erik: Try that with your sweetheart or your lover later today. Pick an evening when you can’t talk and see how deeply [your connection] becomes.

Me: Okay, that’s an exercise for all of you guys. We’re going to call this Part One. I don’t know. Y’all’s attention spans are probably too short to go on. I know you guys! You’re like me!