Connor's Question

I didn't realize that a 9 year old boy could be such a "deep thinker".  This morning we are driving Connor home after he slept over with us (his Mema and Papa) when he asks, "what is the purpose of life, if we're all going to die anyway?"
Wow! I certainly was surprised to hear such a question coming from a child.  I felt so sad.  Does a person have to deal with the reality of death at such a young age?  Won't there be plenty of time for this in years to come?  I felt a bit overwhelmed as I scrambled to find a satisfactory answer. 
I told him that death is a birth into another life and it isn't the end of us.  I told him that when a baby is in the Mommie's womb, it probably doesn't want to to leave because it is so at home there, but then when it is born, it is happy that it entered this new life.  I said that when people have to die, they don't want to leave this world because they are so at home here, but then when they do die and leave this life, they enter the next life and they are very happy that they entered this new life with God.
I wonder if this was a good thing to say.  I don't want him to be too eager to go to the next life. 
And, as you probably know from my previous blog entries, I really just hope and pray for the realities I shared with him today since they are none too clear and concise in my own mind.   Even my faith-filled father had uncertainty.  I was trying to offer some comfort to him as he lay dying by saying, "Daddy, you'll be seeing Mommie and Charlie and little Joseph and your Mom and Dad and he answered me a bit too clearly, "I sure hope so".  
 Still I want Connor to have hope.  I also wonder what he is being taught about life, death and infinity at St. Pius X School?  
Tonight I'm trying to fall asleep and I start thinking of the Baltimore Catechism answer:
"God made us to know Him, to love Him and to serve Him in this life and to be happy with Him in the next".  I'll also have to tell Connor that the purpose of life is to Love God with his whole heart, his whole soul and His whole strength and to love his neighbors as himself.   I think this is the very best answer.  I sense this at my core when I experience love.  I don't doubt that, I just don't have a clear, concise mental picture of what the next life will be.   I also think the word Him is not the best description of a Being who is beyond description. 
The photo was taken this morning shortly before we drove Connor home.  He is standing with Nancy Krueger, a woman we know from Ridgewood, Queens.  She was visiting for the weekend. We have known Nancy since 1973 when Bob & I taught her in a "religious ed class" at St. Matthias Church.