You have three months to live, a five year old child, and you just told her. And she tearfully asks: "When you're dead, will you still love me?"
How do you respond?
I found my own reply, although it took me longer than that hypothetical child would have waited for it. I'm more interested in yours, but mine follows below...
"Look, I hold you with these arms. My arms extend from my right hand to my left hand, so this much is my reach. When I walk over here, I can't hold you - but I still love you. There's only distance between us, that doesn't change the love. But there's not just space, there's also time. In time, I extend from my birth to my death, like from my right hand to my left hand. So again, outside this time from birth to death, I can't hold you - but that doesn't change the love. There will only be time between us."
In that situation I would have gone with a straight "yes", nor would I feel myself to have lied. I'd consider it a case of choosing to speak figuratively rather than literally.
I don't think that what you did say was misleading or that the child would have, in essence, misunderstood it. In fact, under the circumstances I think it was a very well-expressed, even a beautiful, answer.
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