A child does not possess the experience required to appreciate life and death in all its complex meanings, or to have experienced a life which amounts to meaning or legacy.
The completion of life for someone who has truly lived can be as beautiful as it is tragic. Many cultures, including Christianity, celebrate death in some capacity.
Of course death is never desirable, but it is certainly possible for it to be not undesirable in the right context. People who have had near death experiences and lived recount a sublime experience of understanding as if every part of their life and history, every part of reality is exactly in the place it belongs.
I don't imagine this experience is typical for a small child being prodded by strange people in tyvek suits speaking in metaphors about sleeping and telling them white lies about feeling better... So all that is possibly left is the tragic experience of death.
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A child does not possess the experience required to appreciate life and death in all its complex meanings, or to have experienced a life which amounts to meaning or legacy.
The completion of life for someone who has truly lived can be as beautiful as it is tragic. Many cultures, including Christianity, celebrate death in some capacity.
Of course death is never desirable, but it is certainly possible for it to be not undesirable in the right context. People who have had near death experiences and lived recount a sublime experience of understanding as if every part of their life and history, every part of reality is exactly in the place it belongs.
I don't imagine this experience is typical for a small child being prodded by strange people in tyvek suits speaking in metaphors about sleeping and telling them white lies about feeling better... So all that is possibly left is the tragic experience of death.