After the visit to the aquarium, the children clamored for fish, for a tank the size of a football field, stocked with all manner of brightly colored specimens. The children’s thought journals were filled with elaborately detailed drawings of sharks and stingrays and piranhas. At the weekly meeting between the staff and the parents, Dr. Grind brought up the possibility of buying an aquarium with some fish.
“I’m actually a little stumped that we didn’t do this earlier,” he told the parents. “It has so many benefits. The children can learn about aquatic life and its environment, they can gain the experience of having a pet with minimal responsibilities, and there are studies that show that observing fish in an aquarium can greatly reduce anxiety, which would help the children further explore relaxation therapy, which, as you know, we’re doing more and more with the kids.”
“I could go for that, too,” Link offered.
Everyone agreed that pet fish seemed like a great idea and Dr. Grind tasked Susan and Asean with researching types of fish and aspects of care and equipment.
“We also have another reason for the fish, one that might be a little more alarming at first glance,” Dr. Grind continued, still smiling, which made his remarks seem slightly disconcerting, as if he were an evil scientist explaining the experiment he was about to perform on you. “We’re in the very early stages with the children, but we are interested in how they line up with the averages when it comes to certain concepts and their ability to grasp them. One of these concepts is, well, death.”
“I don’t like where this is going,” Ellen said, looking around for support; Izzy noticed that the faces of quite a few of the parents seemed to suggest that they agreed.
“It’s fairly harmless,” Dr. Grind replied. “In studying how death affects children, their ability to understand death, typically children under three have no real concept of how death works or even what it is. But by age four, children start to understand irreversibility, the fact that once something dies, it cannot come back. Between ages five and seven, they figure out nonfunctionality, the idea that a dead body cannot do things that a living body can. For instance, a dead person or animal cannot still eat. Then, finally, children learn universality, that everyone and everything dies.”
“I’m really uncomfortable with this,” Ellen said, her voice slightly trembling. “I don’t want Marnie to think about the fact that she’s going to die.”
“She might already be thinking it,” Link offered, not as helpfully as he might have imagined.
“Well, it’s not quite as problematic as you might think. When we buy these fish, there is a distinct possibility that one or more might die. This will allow us to talk to the children about death and gauge how much they understand. We won’t press the issue and we won’t fill them with existential dread. We’ll simply ask them questions about these deceased fish to see what they know.”
“But if the children ask you if they are going to die someday, what are you going to tell them?” Carmen asked.
Dr. Grind shrugged so softly that it seemed more like breathing than uncertainty. “We’ll tell them that, yes, everyone dies—”
“Oh, god,” Ellen said.
“But,” Dr. Grind continued, “we will explain that this will typically not occur for quite some time.”
“What about heaven?” Izzy asked, knowing that the project had been upfront about the fact that religion would not be a guiding principle in the study, which all the parents, all of whom were lapsed Christians or nonbelievers already, had agreed to support. “If they ask if there’s a place that they go after they die?”
“No,” Dr. Grind said. “We’re staying away from abstract concepts.”
“Death seems like a fairly abstract concept to me,” David said. “I mean, I still don’t fully comprehend the universality of death. Or perhaps I willfully avoid comprehending it so I don’t lose my mind.”
“This is a necessary component of development,” Dr. Grind told them. “It’s difficult, but we do it so that we will be better able to anticipate the needs of these children, to help them as they grow up.”
With some reluctance, the parents agreed. As the meeting was about to end, Izzy thought of something and said, “What if the fish don’t die?”
Dr. Grind looked at her with a kind of skepticism. “What do you mean?” he asked.
Izzy felt her face heat up, knowing that she was blushing fiercely, but she continued. “I mean, I know that fish die. I can grasp that concept. What I’m asking is, what if the fish don’t die very soon? What if they outlive the project?”
“Well, that’s tricky, Izzy.” Dr. Grind seemed pained, as if she was forcing him to reveal a secret that he had withheld for her own good. “If, after six months, a fish does not die, we will remove a fish from the tank and begin the process of talking about death with the children.”