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I seriously cannot think of a time in my life, no matter how young, when I did not think of death. Oh, I don’t mean that it is every though in my head or that it is even a daily thought, but I feel certain that a week has not gone by that I can recall where it did not enter my mind.

I was nine when my father passed away. A terribly early age to have such a crashing trauma visited upon you but even before cancer took him I had repeated thoughts of death, so that tragic terrible event is not the genesis of my morbidly.

I don’t know how young I was when my puppy ‘snowball’, was killed by a passing car but that was my earliest encounter with death in the real world. Yet, I think, I feel, that the repeated visitation by thoughts of death preceded the dog’s passing.

I think my thoughts, my fascination with death, and with ghosts which have always been my most love form of horror, started before watching my puppy die on the road in front of me.

What I think really started this line of thinking, one which continues to the very day, is prayers.

As a child I was raised Southern Baptist, but the religion didn’t take hold. As an adult I have a lot of favor for a friend’s take on religion; “It’s Santa Claus for Adults.”

As a child in the 60’s I was taught a prayer say each night before climbing into bed.

Now I lay be down to sleep.

I pray the Lord my soul to keep.

If I should die before I wake,

I pray the Lord my soul to take.

I was boy with an active imagination that phrase If I should Die before I wake, proved to be a powerful catalyst.

My memories are very clear on this. Me in bed, wondering if I was going to die before I woke up. The clause had to be there because people did just up and die in their sleep for no reason at all. To this day I can be drifting off to sleep and the that seed planted when I was far too young to understand flowers, and I wonder about dying in my sleep.

Be aware of what you tell children, particularly those with powerful imaginations and vivid dreams for you may be implanting concepts that they will never shake off.