My kids are reaching a certain age, and they are finding stuff out. About six months ago my seven-year-old -- she will want me to point out that she was 6 at the time -- asked me if there really was or was not a Santa Claus.

She had asked the question before, but then it was with a look on her face that seemed to say, "You won't believe what some of the kids at school whose folks are divorced said." This time, the look said, "I already know."

So I told her. "Santa Claus is a disguise for all the moms and dads and grandparents of the world, who want to show kids how much they love them, but don't want credit for doing it."

Not bad for no warning, right? Anyway, she bought it, especially when I took her aside and told her that now she was on our side, and it wouldn't do to spoil the fun for her little brother, 3.

My daughter is a gentle soul, and she absorbs these changes gracefully. But I can't get over the feeling that I am only giving her one thread of the tapestry at a time. I am aching to spill the whole kettle of beans in one summary blurt-out to her. "No Santa Claus, God himself was a toss-up. And after we get old, or sometimes even earlier, we die."

I don't remember when I first learned about death. Probably a cowboy, shot from a rock, didn't get up afterward: TV death. But real death revealed its nature only with the passage of years. One night when I was 7 my mom had to pack quickly for a trip to Michigan. Her mom had had a heart attack and died.

Family life gave us the basics, but the nuns at school painted in the details. We die because of Adam and Eve's sin, they said. Had they not indulged themselves at our expense, we might live forever.

I spent at least a year cursing Adam and Eve's stupidity, until it dawned on me that they hadn't been given very complete instructions. God told them they would surely die. But what was death to them? And why were all the rest of us included in their fate? I can see Adam and Eve having to die, but what did I ever do to deserve to die?

By the second grade I had accepted the concept that someday, probably when I was old and didn't care much one way or the other, I would die. This was hard in itself; worse was the knowledge that I would almost certainly go to hell.

Hell? Yes. In its ancient wisdom my religion had decided that the death of the body was insufficient deterrent to wickedness. The soul must also be perishable -- it could be caught in the throes of death agony throughout eternity. A classic case of double jeopardy.

By age 9, I adopted a modified limited hangout strategy. On the day of judgment, I intended to make a dramatic plea for clemency -- on the grounds that I was weak, that I was sorry, that God had a special feeling about me.

I haven't told my kids about hell. It's bad enough they know all about death already. All those people on getting gunned down on the news, blowing up, and going over cliffs in cars. They know all about death.

Maybe. One day my daughter threw herself on the sofa. "I wish I were dead!" she sobbed. But when I asked her why she wanted to be dead, she said she fell and scraped her knee on the bus, and it stung when she flexed it. If she were dead, she figured, she wouldn't feel the sting.

I was glad she didn't know about dying. I went through a morbid streak when I was an adolescent, in which I lay awake for hours at night, certain a tumor was working its way through my head, certain blackness, oblivion, and unfulfillment were my destiny. It was all about me, that death -- only I would make that dark crossing.

When my stepdad died last fall, after a hard battle with cancer, I took the kids to the vigil. There lay my dear old dad, who had been a lion in life, always roaring about one thing or another, then sick and feeble, and now, all done up by the embalmer, well, he looked great -- noble, calm, patriarchal.

My stepdad was impossible generous, always doing for other people. Even when I was on the outs with my family he would slip me a few 20s when he saw me. When he came down sick with a real brain tumor, he surprised everyone with a sudden meekness and peacefulness of heart. Toward the end he let his white beard grew and became a kind of Santa Claus himself.

I held my young son against my chest as we viewed the casket. He did not disgrace me. He stared solemnly at his grandfather's face, said, "Poppa's sleeping," and absently raised the arm of his Donatello figurine.

I worried how the funeral might affect the kids, if they would have nightmares, or what. On the way back, outside Chicago, I noticed a tear in Daniele's eye. "Are you all right?" I asked.

"I'm fine," she said. "I'm just sad Poppa is dead."

Maybe that's how it is, then -- fantasy death giving way to the real thing, obsessions and compulsions giving way to grief, and life going on, like a young girl. We drove home singing the happy hiker song, and that night I dreamed of the body of Santa at night, reposed in soft snow, and high above the crisp, still sky, the stars of heaven sparkling.

Mike wrote this piece in 1992. Read more of Mike's essays at www.mfinley.com.

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