'Tis very certain the desire of life prolongs it

The artist has almost finished her latest piece and amazingly enough looks ten years younger. What is going on here? The artist’s son, my son, sits next to the artist’s husband, me, on the bright red sofa and there is a small plastic toy by his foot. His eyes wander the room and he soon catches sight of the wooden coffin on TV being loaded by four large men into a long black hearse. ‘What’s in the box?’ asks our son. He is squeezing his big toe and the tone of voice is wary. I tell him - without prevarication - that it carries a dead body. ‘Is it a real body?’ interjects the artist’s daughter. I smile gently at her and say I think it is. ‘Why do you have a box?’ asks the son. I think about this a while - he is eating a banana – and wait as he chews. ('Finished,’ he says as the hearse door is shut and the banana devoured.) I look him in the eye and tell him that one reason for putting a dead body in a box is because when a person dies the body after a short period of time will give off this terrible smell. (The language is like this because I am after all in the company of a 5-year-old and 8-year-old.) ‘Anyway, what about in places like heaven?’ asks our daughter, not quite sure where she is going with that one. The TV changes tack and goes back to life again, but I am still deployed on the frontline of more questions about death - the difference between cremation and burial for example is discussed. Moments later, our son looks up at me slowly and without saying a word, then he looks down at the floor again. But then he looks up again: ‘If you bury the coffin and someone finds it, what would they do? Would they put it in a history museum?’ he asks. His eyes water with a kind of innocent embarrassment at his own question for some reason. I reassure him and tell him this is a very good question, which appears to allay any fear of imminent infant mortality or an accusation of stupidity. ‘What would you do?’ I say, trying to make real light of it. ‘I’d put it on my bed,’ he says without any hesitation. ‘No, no, I wouldn’t,’ he corrects himself: ‘I don’t want my bed to get yucky.’ He looks at me deeply. He shrugs his shoulders and smiles. I am so proud of him. I am so proud of them both. I wonder if they pick up on the fact I am proud of them. An hour or so later, the children are in bed and by coincidence the old school building housing the artist’s former studio ten years ago is on TV. (The artists were booted out and speculators moved in.) The programme is about people thinking they're defying death by making themselves look ten years younger. (As I've said, no need for that here.)