I'm looking for some comforting words to tell our 6-year old son. We don't believe in an afterlife and don't want our children to believe in this either. (We do allow him to believe in Sinterklaas, a close Belgian/Dutch/... relative of Santa Claus, but that's rather beside the issue.) Our son can get really emotional, shedding hot tears, when he is confronted -- or confronts himself -- with the realization that his so far happy life will inevitably come to an end. He's also recently been to a science museum where he heard that the sun will explode. While we explained to him that the latter won't happen any time soon, he understandably finds it too hard to swallow that not only will he die but that the entire world will be destroyed, wiping out all life on earth. In his words: "So by then, we'll have been dead for longer than we'll have been alive." That's a very sobering thought for such a young child. What we think he needs is some of the reassurance that the stories of old (about heaven and eternity) could offer children in the past. What could we tell him?