Reincarnation...according to an eight-year-old.

"Mommy?"

"Yes, Gabriel?"

"Where do we go when we die?"

I look at my son in the rearview mirror as we drive down the long stretch of 680 southbound, and watch him watching the large semi trucks fall behind us, his forehead crinkled and his eyes pensive. He won't look back at me.

"Where do you think they go, buddy?" I've never imprinted on him any one religious or philosophical view. I've always shared with him what I've learned by studying with different denominations of Christianity, and that I don't believe one faith trumps another. Inviting him to question what people believe was one of the few gifts I could give him, a gift that was withheld from me early on.

This isn't the first time he has asked me this particular question. He has experienced loss more often than any mother would wish, and he hasn't come out of it unscathed.

"Well...I think we get born again into new people...or animals." Gabriel finally looks at me, and I can tell he's looking for more than my reassurance that this isn't just a silly idea, that his need to believe this idea is practically vibrating on his small face.

I choose my next words like a surgeon chooses the correct gauge of needle to begin the stitching of a large jagged rip in the skin. "That is definitely a possibility. Do you know that there's a word for that? Its called reincarnation."

"I've heard of that." Gabriel states.

"Its believed that our souls live on after our bodies die. That eventually, in no specific amount of time, our souls are reborn into another body. Most people who believe this believe that we only become humans again, not animals." I make it as simple as possible, as simple as speaking of the metaphysical world with an eight-year-old can be. "So that's what you think happens when we die?"

"Yes," Gabriel tries to remain stoic, but his face is like the glass front of an old antique clock, and I see the cranks and wheels turning and clinking together, as he works out this new dimensional awareness of self, however short-lived.

For some reason, I feel the need to add a disclaimer. "You know no one really knows for sure what happens when we die, right? The only people who really know, aren't around to be able to tell us. So figuring out what you believe is very important. Because no one can tell you for sure. Its called faith."

"Like Nana? And your Grandpa and Grandma? They know, right?"

"Yes, they know, buddy."

Gabriel pauses. "Bear knows too. I think Bear is happy now, Mommy."

My eyes burn and I blink rapidly to clear my vision.

"Know what I want to be after I die and come back, Mommy?"

"What's that?"

"Stitch."

And once again Gabriel is artlessly gazing at me in the rearview mirror, his bright eyes no longer shadowed with the weight of meditations aged far beyond his eight years.

"Stitch?? Oh boy..."