my daughter (6F) best friend died. How do I (35M) explain why her friend cant come over to play anymore?

OP, I don't know if you're religious - I'm not even religious myself anymore - but when my grandfather died when I was 7, the priest told me this story to help me understand what Heaven was.

It was about these little animals who lived under the sea. They were very curious as to what life was like above the surface, because every once in a while, one of them would claim they were ready to go explore up there, but no one had ever returned to the water to tell the others.

Eventually, they made an agreement: the next one who went above the surface, had to go back to tell the others what was up there.

Finally, one of them felt ready. He was old and had grown tiny legs, so he could crawl up on one of the plants that stretched from underwater and up above the surface. When he came up there, he grew a pupa (or cocoon, I don't know what the difference is in English), and after a while, he came out as a beautiful dragonfly.

The first days he spent flying around and getting used to his wonderful new life, but he never forgot the pact with his friends. When he felt the time was ready, he returned to the leaked he came from, but when he tried to get down to his friends, he couldn't. It was impossible for him to break the surface. He tried, and he tried, and he tried, but it just wasn't possible.

According to the story, that's why you'll often see dragonflies hovering above the surface of the water at lakes. They're trying to tell their friends about the marvelous life above surface, but none of them can break the surface from either side.

It helped me understand where my grandfather had gone, and why he couldn't just come back (from a Spiritual point of view, at least).

But obviously, as the guy above me said, that's only if you're teaching your daughter to believe in life after death. Otherwise I can only agree that it would be best to just be swift, clear, factual and supportive. 3 of my grandparents and my great grandparent died between my 7th and 8th birthday. My parents were obviously grievous as fuck themselves, and I was a quiet kid, so everyone just assumed I was really good at dealing with death at a young age. That led to some problems later in life - death anxiety and depression was especially hard on me and my parents, and it's dangerous, because it doesn't have to show immediately. For me, it kicked in around the age of 13-14. That's twice the age I was when the deaths actually occurred.

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