“Will my daddy come out of the moon and pat me on the head and tell me goodbye?” asked Kat, my best friend’s 5 year old daughter, when she learned her father had died. How do you explain death to a 5 year old? How do you make her understand that she will never again see her father a.k.a. her super hero?

Nathan, her father, was killed while riding his bike. The man who hit him was drunk with one DUI already. The collateral damage of addiction…a fatherless 5 year old.

I watched as she tried to wrap her mind around absolutes like “never again” and “forever,” her little heart splintering with each epiphany. “I will never see my daddy again.” And the tears came…the keening…the pain so deep she could not fathom. “So he’s an angel now?” she asked, attempting to write this in a way that makes sense to her. And we try to get her to believe that he’ll always be with her…he will always be in her heart…he will always watch over her.

I remembered hearing the same cliches when my mother died and believing them at the time. They gave me comfort, until the loss was undeniable. Nothing can replace the touch, the love, the voice of a beloved parent. Her tears were my tears, and I shed my own for this little soul on the verge of becoming lost right in front of me. I wanted to tell her so much, but I couldn’t…I wanted to tell her of the void and the isolation and the desperate emptiness that follows after a parent’s death. Things that she wouldn’t understand now, but she will live later.

I wonder if Kat will follow in the path he started her on and continue to play multiple musical instruments. Or will it be too painful of an association? I wonder if she will be an artist, like him. I think about the pain she will feel when he’s not there for the good things in her life – her graduation, her wedding, her own children. I think about the abyss that will threaten to consume her when the bad things happen and she rages and weeps for Daddy.

Kat is fortunate, though. She has a large and loving family, functionally dysfunctional (like all families). So many people who will love and take care of her. Give her strength. Guide her. The sad thing is, as I know well, there will be moments when none of this matters for she will have lost the one person – the only person – she wants right then.

Nathan will always be her hero. He died before Kat discovered he was human, before he could disappoint her. He leaves her the legacy of unconditional, perfect love.