Heaven

Today we went to play at the Slater household and we went a new route which took us up and over Burnside. We were admiring the beautiful trees with all of the fall colors on a sunny October day. If you know Portland, you know that there is a huge cemetery at the top of the hill. As we were driving by, the boys couldn't help but be curious about all of the big headstones.
"Mommy, what are those?"' (here it comes, the big death question. They had asked before when we drove down Fremont, but this time they really wanted to know.)
"Well, those are headstones. They are for when people die. It's where they go so that they can go on up to heaven."
In their very pragmatic 31/2 year old brains, it didn't make sense.
"Are there stairs to get up there? I don't see any!" "Is there an elevator?"
"Well, no, you get up there by kind of floating and drifting in the sky". That's enough info. for this age.

Lots of thinking going on in the carseats behind me.
"I don't' want to go there, I reallllly like it here on the earth". " I like our planet."
Nate was really trying to make sense of it all. He remembered that grammy is there, which Dan has talked about with both boys.
"I realllly like it on the earth, I don't' want to die." Nate kept saying.

What do you say to that?
I told him that hopefully it will all happen in a long, long time, and that everyone has to die someday. But for now, we're really happy being on the earth and this planet.
Some things are just really hard to make sense of, especially when you're only 3 1/2.