If you become ole, den yu die?

Death has become a big big big topic of discussion in the Manral home these days. It started with good old Batman Begins wherein, the young Bruce Ween (as pronounced by the brat) drags his parents out of an opera which has bats on stage and thereby resulting in them getting mugged and killed. "They is killt and then they is died?" the brat asked mamma. Yes, replied mamma, hoping against hope that this would be the end of that discussion but this was not to be. "How dey diedt?" Mamma decided that biology was the way to go. "Their heart stopped beating and blood stopped flowing through their arteries and veins." The brat digested it for a moment. "Den wot happenz when dey diedt?"
Mamma looked heavenwards for an answer, and ran towards her handy bible, Dr Spock. "They stop breathing." Unfortunately the brat has seen enough movies with folks on the ventilator to debate this. "Den wai dey nod pud the tube in the throat to help dem breed?"
Mamma sighed and said something to the tune of all the body parts shut down and then the body dies. And then folks have to be burnt or buried. The brat took his own sweet time digesting this information. "Den wat happenz to dem? After dey die? Wat happenz to their mind?"
To be honest, mamma was totally stumped. She spoke vaguely about their soul going to God up in the sky. Yes, yes, in space from where Superman came, from far beyond earth. "Which God dey go to? Jezuz or Jai Jai Bhagwanji?" Mamma explained that all Gods were the same God with different names. "No, no dey is lookin diffrent. All Jai Jai Bhagwanjis are wearing lods of jullery."
That discussion got diverted to jullery. And sitting on a snake in the middle of the ocean which was infinitely more fascinating than people dying and going up into the sky. The next time death was discussed was during a movie where folks died and people threw themselves on the corpse and sobbed their hearts out. "Why dey is crying on dat uncle who is sleeping?" Mamma explained that the uncle in question had died. "An he is gone to God? In heaven?" Yes, mamma replied. "Den why everyone is crying?" Mamma explained that they were grieving because the person in question would not return from the realm of the divine. "Den dey's getting a new uncle?" Ermmm. Not really. Once someone dies, they die forever. "Dey don come back even after 20 days? Even after 100 and 100 days?" No. Maybe they might get born again. As new babies. "To udder mamma pappa or same mamma pappa?"
Mamma then rolled up her sleeves and got down to explaining the concept of an eternal soul, and rebirth and such like. That death was not the final call for a soul, but for one life. Rather like the brat passing through various grades in school, he finished with nursery and kindergarten and now was in Grade 1, similarly the soul passes through many classes and each time the soul dies, its like passing from one grade to another. "An whu takes the assessment? And wot marks yu have to get? And what if you fail the assessment?"
No one fails an assessment in life, mamma said. If you really dont do anything nice in this life, then you go back to a lower grade. To come back to the topic, last night, the brat lay next to mamma his head on mamma's chest, listening to mamma's heartbeat. "Mamma, you wil nod die na. Yer heart is beating very loaudly. Den who will be my mamma if you die?"

How do you answer these questions on death and the afterlife with your children, without getting into religion?