Oh Boy...

The boys and I were in the car, listening to NPR news, when the announcer reported that a policeman had been killed (in another country, by a bomb, as I recall). Henry let out an enormous gasp and said, "A policeman has been killed??!! Oh, that's bad."
Yes, I replied and I waited.
He started asking questions. How could this happen? Why did this happen?

I took a deep breath and tried to explain a little about war. It wasn't going well. I tried to explain that sometimes people fight a lot for power - well, then I had to explain power. I took a different angle: sometimes people fight over religion. Had to explain religion - and I did pretty well with that. But we weren't making much headway. Finally, I stuck to the fact that while people fight sometimes, I don't like fighting and I don't like war.

Henry started talking about death and dying. Then started talking about "bad" people: people who hurt others. It got so confusing because then I tried to explain that while I don't like fighting, one doesn't have to be "bad" to fight, and reminded him that good people fight too. I tried to distinguish between people and their actions.

"It's sort of hard to understand, isn't it Henny?" I asked.
"Yeah," he agreed.
Yeah, no kidding.