Childhood innocence
This is a true story about a child who becomes violently ill and passes away on a hospital bed before being revived by doctors. The suffering of a child is strange when juxtaposed to the innocence of the child, which the authors (parents) notate. They love the child and know that because the child has not really arrived at full independence, the child is purely innocent. They struggle to understand why their beautiful child could suffer this much, and the dilemma makes them question their faith.
Sickness and hospitals
The hospital imagery is important to the family, especially to the child who finds the new environment perplexing and entertaining. The hospital offers an imagery of consultation and recovery, as well as sickness and the fear of death. The hospital is diverse in many ways, because the people are diverse and their illnesses are random, but the imagery is unified by a quiet urgency and a craving for health and life. The child is sensitive to these things.
Death and the afterlife
When the child dies, he comes back with a story about death. This story offers a kind of "book of the dead," detailing what happened to his consciousness after death. Because he was a child at the time, this true story is complicating and hard to understand. He explains the passage from his body to another place, commenting that he observed his body and family from other points of view before escaping through a portal to be one with God.
Christian imagery
The boy describes his experience of life through the imagery of Christianity. He sees a man on a throne who is Jesus Christ, and his mother next to him—Mary. In an astonishing confession, he tells that Jesus pulled him onto his lap and chatted with him, explaining that his entire ancestry was there in heaven, eager to meet him. He even lets the boy talk to his deceased grandfather. The use of Christian imagery is not perfectly orthodox; the boy says he gets to sit on Jesus's throne with him, raising wonderful theological questions.
