It's always difficult to deal with personal tragedy on the news, especially when the fact that it is on the news means that the media have already made it a very public event. To deal with the matter too unfeelingly, perhaps too philosophically is seen as not being sympathetic enough to those grieving at the heart of the occasion, and even worse, to suggest that you don't share their pain can be interpreted as belittling it. Yet although I know that Laura Davies and Gemma D'Arcy were two little girls who died young, I can't even remember what they died of, let alone what they looked like. That is the difference between the rest of us, some of whom had to talk about it in public,  and those who were actually involved. There were always times when writing Thought for the Day made me feel like a professional hypocrite.

So death has finally taken Laura Davies, and all of us mourn, though none of us will feel the grief of her family or friends. We can't share the impact of their loss. For some of us, of course, her death will remind us of the loss of loved ones closer to us, and that loss is always more severe when death comes to a child. Nonetheless, it is those left behind who suffer now. For Laura, death was the end of her suffering.

Recently, the mother of Gemma D'Arcy, another wee girl overwhelmed by death after a long hard struggle to survive, pointed out that Gemma obviously didn't enjoy the pain of her sickness and treatment, but she was never afraid to die. It is we who consider ourselves to be grown-up who are the ones afraid to die.

And what are we afraid of? If there's nothing after death, there's nothing to be afraid of. If there's punishment and paradise, there's only punishment to fear. If we are innocent, like children, we can expect the Garden. "Shall the recompense of goodness be other than goodness" says the Qur'an. It is our dark side that we feel deserves punishment that makes us fear life after death.

Science refuses to recognise an Afterlife. It's something that can't be proved, and so it's dismissed as superstitious nonsense, like miracles and magic. But even grown-ups can still feel the magic of a sunrise or the miracle of a birth. When death is a condition that we all must face, why do we fear? Does a caterpillar fear its transformation into a butterfly?

Children have no difficulty in understanding that life goes on in a new and different way after this strange experience we call death. For them, each day is an exploration into the unknown, a succession of strange experiences, and all of life is a magical event, including death.

What we can learn from the deaths of children like Laura and Gemma is not just scientific advancement in the magic realm of medicine, but also when we come to look him in the eye, how to face death ourselves.