Dad, what happens when we die?
Please direct questions to one of the Three Big Gs: God, Google or Grandad.
It all starts with a question: “Should we have a baby?”
One seemingly simple query begets others: “Are we making enough money?” “What about our careers?” "Can we afford it?" "Do we have enough support?" “Is our apartment big enough?” “Should we move closer to our parents?” "What if we wait longer?" “What if we wait too long? “Will we be good parents?” “Are we ready?”
After days, months or years of debating, planning and preparing, you have a child. You have willed an entirely new consciousness to emerge into the world. Suddenly, all your certainties feel a lot less certain—answers you thought you were sure of replaced by an entirely new set of questions, chief amongst them being, “How do we get this thing to stay asleep?”
You make it work. You get through those early months, a plethora of new experiences to eventually transform into the long fog, a compilation tape named Raising a Baby, where rose-tinted highlights can be replayed at any time, the toughest moments washed away in an Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind-style wipe.
The questions you once asked will be forgotten. They’ll be replaced with a walking, talking tiny human with questions of their own, which they’ll hurl at you incessantly. Their sheer volume—in both meanings of the word, number and decibel level—will rock you. No sooner than they’ve uttered their first word, they’ll pair it with others, their very first clapback: “But why?” As their vocabulary grows, so will the difficulty of their questions: “Why is the sky blue?” “Why do I have to brush my teeth?” “Where does rain come from?” “Why do you have to go to work? Every so often—and always when you least expect it—you’ll be floored with a “So where do babies come from?”
You’ll yearn for those “easier” questions. Once their minds are open to the absurdity of this world we live in, this watery rock spinning through space at 67,000 miles per hour, their questions will only get more sophisticated and existential: "Why do bad things happen to good people?" "How did the universe start?" and "Where do we go when we die?" Questions that philosophers and theologians have wrestled with for millennia, now asked over the dinner table between bites of fish fingers, definitive answers expected before peas go cold.
In the months since my mum left us, questions about life and death have reared their heads regularly. Last year, I wrote about my youngest grappling with different religions and their approach to the afterlife:
The same week he asked us if “Nanny has decided what animal she wants to come back as yet.” I had to explain—no, that’s your Nani and Nana, who are Hindu and believe in reincarnation. Your Nanny and Grandad are Catholic, they believe in Heaven. You could see the cogs turning in his head.
In households where religion is integral, answers to tough questions can be provided via one of the Three Big Gs: God, Google or Grandad. But, for an increasing amount of us, that three-legged stool doesn’t bear weight. A 2024 Pew study found that 28% of Americans are “religiously unaffiliated,” describing themselves as atheists, agnostics or nothing in particular—up from 16% in 2007 and, if current trends continue, predicted to become the majority by 2070. But digging into that data indicated some surprising facts—to me, at least. 13% of “nones” believed in God, whilst another 56% believed in “some other higher power,” leaving only 29% who believed in neither. Only 41% said they “see no need for religion in their life,” whilst 49% described spirituality as important to them.
Whilst I’d file myself under “nones,” my children are growing up learning and practising the beliefs and traditions of Hinduism. We head to the UK annually to celebrate Navratri with my in-laws and their local community. My daughter will tie a rakri around my son’s wrist as a symbol of protection—a perfect gift from an older sister to a younger brother—for Raksha Bandhan, an annual celebration of siblings. These rituals are important to all of us and help my kids feel more connected to a religion different from the one I was born into. Having children forces you to rethink your long-held beliefs—or your conviction-fuelled lack of them. You may be amongst the 25% of marriages between those of different faiths, raising questions about what your children will believe. Or you may have spent decades outside of religion, only to feel yourself pulled back towards it—whether you’re a true believer or simply a better-school-seeker.
I’ve followed my own religious path: out of Catholicism, into militant atheism, its calmer cousin agnosticism, to arriving somewhere more open to not knowing, and learning to be okay with that uncertainty. My own approach is what I’ve started thinking of as an "emergent spirituality"—a gradual assembling of my patchwork quilt of resonant writings, non-religious rituals, and moments of awe and transcendent connection with these tiny humans entrusted to my care. I spent decades searching for answers. Lately, I’ve realised that asking the right questions can be just as fulfilling, knowing certainty will always be out of reach, but confident I’m on the right path.
I guess they call it faith for a reason.
We haven’t done this for a while, but I’d love to hear from some of you: Does this chime with what you’ve seen in your own life, and with your friends and family? What role do religion and spirituality have in your house? Does your faith help you be a better dad? What are some of the rituals that have become important to you?
3 things to read this week
“I Tried to Teach My Son Soccer. Here’s What He Taught Me” by Rory Smith in the New York Times. A British dad takes over his son’s football team, and chaos ensues. The pain in watching his son kick the football out of bounds and into the stratosphere is akin to watching your children play Mario Kart badly. “They are not there to win. They are not there to fulfil your dreams. They are there to feel the joy of playing, to love the game, to learn all it can teach about teamwork and endeavor and exercise.”
“Can I Bring My Switch?” by Paul Murray in The Guardian. I missed this one first time around: Irish novelist Paul Murray wrote in 2023 about bringing his family for a holiday in New York, wrestling with the Nintendo Switch inseparable from his son’s hands. A meditation on what we think our kids want versus what they truly need. “Parents don’t get to decide how your mind is blown; in fact, that may be the point, that they’re banished to the sidelines, that the world is speaking to you in a register they can’t understand.”
“The Anti Social Century” by Derek Thompson in The Atlantic. This link drew the biggest conversation in The Dadscord this week, with Thompson investigating why Americans spend more time alone than ever and how it’s changing the fabric of society and our relationships. “‘A fundamental paradox at the core of human life is that we are highly social and made better in every way by being around people,’ Epley said. ‘And yet over and over, we have opportunities to connect that we don’t take, or even actively reject, and it is a terrible mistake.’”
Spiritually curious? 👀 here
I get emails asking me to promote all kinds of things in the newsletter. And I have, to date, rejected 100% of them. But a few weeks ago, someone got in touch from Nearness, a collective dedicated to fostering deep connections between spiritually curious folks outside of traditional religious structures. This year, Nearness will run Rooted in Values—an eight-week workshop for parents of children aged 4-12 to "learn how to share important rituals, stories, and other family traditions to help ground your kids in your core values, outside religion."
This course is entirely free. Costs are covered by a grant from the John Templeton Foundation. Sign-ups are open until January 31st. If you miss that, it'll happen again in May. Nearness kindly offered to make a donation to the Therapy Fund out of its funds. I asked in The Dadscord if anyone had come across them before and got some very complimentary replies. I have since met Alec and Mathilde, and what they are doing feels very aligned with TNF—they told me if you write "The New Fatherhood" in the "Where did you hear about this" question, they'll do their best to ensure that TNF dads get paired up in the course together. Sign up here.
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This is very much alive for me.
I will say though firstly, that nothing in my mind can transcend the response to the question, "what happens when we die" than what Keanu Reeves once said as an magical mic drop:
"The ones that that love us, will miss us".
My background is Prussian Lutheran (mum's side) and non-practicing CoE/Catholic on my dad' (Irish and Welsh)side. They raised us with nothing, no rituals other than German folk ones (Christmas, Easter) and in recent years I've found a lot of meaning and purpose from absorbing some of the older rituals and practices from the Celtic traditions. I'll given an example I think speaks to the larger thorny problem of 'what happens when we die' and Keanu's response.
Halloween is a crappy holiday nowadays, but the festival of Samhain to me is ripe for meaning and value. It's the Celtic New Year, when the 'thin places' between the living and the dead open up. It's the time when the year has died, the dead come back and can visit us. We wear the masks and costumes to hide ourselves from the spirits we want to avoid, and celebrate the liminal moment.
I'm raising my 4 year old with the Celtic and astrological festivals because I don't hold much faith (!) in the fact that Christmas will ever look like the Christmas I was raised in or is presented to us (it never snows, its increasingly not even that cold). A breakdown in climate means the regular cadences of seasons is not a prospect for her. This gives me the existential willies.
So in an attempt to buffer against those willies, I'm finding solace in the fact that the earth will continue to spin, the sun and moon will continue to rise and fall, tilt and return. That's a constant. I can call the moon a Goddess, or a celestial spirit or a satellite. There are many festivals through the year that root to the rise and fall of the celestial bodies, and despite everything else, that won't change. That's something to raise a child around in my opinion.
What matters is that in that example, is there's a language and a festival and a sense of time that during Samhain, we can bring our dead out and remember them, and take a small moment in the year to miss them, very explicitly. It's rooted in my culture, my families generational traditions, so feels right for me. I'm thinking about how to make the most of the other times in the years and find others who enjoy it too. Because doing it with others I think is important, because we cannot hope to answer or engage with these big questions inside one family.
So that's what I'll be doing next Halloween, build a shrine for our loved ones gone, and speak their names, tell some stories, so that my daughter knows who they are. It won't require any bags of sweets or costumes, but it will hopefully connect her to something bigger than herself, which I think in time is the best we can ever hope for.
We are Hindus, of the Upanishidic variety ie the focus is on understanding the true nature of our selves and the universe. Our 11 yo girls have been having a tough time seeing my dad on late stage palliative care. It’s been impossible to answer their questions about why their grand dad of all people has such a rare disease, and why is it so unfair. I don’t think I can answer any of these, and I don’t know if answers will help. I don’t think my beliefs come into it. The only thing I can do is to acknowledge what they are feeling, assure them their feelings are valid, and keep reminding them that I am pretty lucky and massively proud to have such compassionate kids as my daughters.