conversation with S about death

On the way back from his school field trip, My younger son and I sat together in a school bus. As the bus passed  a large cemetery, he pointed a large field of graves on the hill and exclaimed, "There are so many graves!"

He then added,"Would you like me to bury you or cremate you when you die, Mom? 

"You can cremate me and throw my ashes into the ocean,  replied. 

"Mom, you know that Einstein was burnt when he was dead, but his brain was removed and saved for research."

Children who grew up here talk about death easily, as if it were of no consequence. As a child, I would have been beaten if I had talked to my mother about death as my son did to me.