Anatta, or whatever

I vividly remember being two, three, four, and so on. When I was four, I was taken with the paralyzing fear of death. Often-- and only late at night-- I would sit in bed and cry about its specter. Maybe it was the darkness of the hour shadowing my mind. Maybe it just stemmed from an acute fear of boredom. I didn't like going to bed. Down the hall, light peeked out from under my sister's bedroom door, and after I'd had a good two-minute cry, I would be comforted by that golden strip and go back to bed.

Recently, I visited my little nieces in Texas. S was so excited to see me (she, having grown expectant of the Santa-worthy bag of loot that accompanied each trip, to be faithfully delivered upon arrival) but stopped short after giving me a big squeeze.

"You're older," she examined.
"Just a little bit, S."
"Are you gonna have a baby?"
"Not yet! Why, does it look like it?"
"You look older, and when you look older and are married, you get to have a baby."
"Eventually S, not now."
"Oh." She thought for a moment.
"When you get older, you die." Her brow furrowed as she puckered out her lower lip and sighed a heartbroken sigh.

My heart broke a little too as I remembered being four, but a moment later, she was racing off to see her new wand.

Is this primal fear an expression of our appreciation for life, or an intuitive sense of what's to come?

However you choose to look at it, the (damned- or blessed) sense has followed me my whole life, tempering my whimsies and plaguing my pursuit of religion. How can you explain or comfort away intuitive fear that falls outside the confines of tabula rasa?

Ben once told me "The way I see it-- if we are to personify our 'nonselves'-- we were floating around before we were born, blissfully unaware, totally at peace with our nonexistence. So why would it be different after death?"

Of course, he can lie to me too and I would be comforted. "Of course we'll be together after death. With our stuffed animals too."

But let's face it- my stuffed animals are not coming with me into the afterlife. So... while you embrace life and reject the creeping willies, what's your crutch?

I am open to thoughts and apologetics.