You could say that a young child is one of the most convincing lenses through which man can glimpse immortality.

What parent doesnt feel a mysterious dj vu in looking at their infant and sensing that the childs returning gaze is reaching far beyond the present, spanning time immemorial.

What parent isnt comforted and made whole by an infants sudden smile, a smile in which acceptance, love and forgiveness are as palpable as the anguish of that infants tears.

What parent, whose child is at the point of experimenting with language, isnt startled by the childs unorthodox arrangement of words, arrangements that sometimes touch at the universality of life with stunning and refreshing simplicity.

Parents Kelley and Richard Van Der Meer, friends of Rachel Gaillard Smook, a psychologist living in Shrewsbury, have come to understand that a young childs timeless gaze, cherished smile and simple erudition are among the universal and lasting manifestations that tell us, or should tell us, that life is much more than our physical and vulnerable form.

For the Van Der Meers, who live in Holland, but with roots in Missouri, such a realization was affirmed when their 2-year old daughter, Isabelle, passed away unexpectedly last year, after a brain seizure.

She went from being a perfectly healthy child, to dying unexpectedly in a matter of a couple of days, Ms. Smook said.

That is a mothers worse nightmare.

It is, but the Van Der Meers are being consoled by the universality of Isabelles life, like the joy she would get from blowing bubbles, from the reading of her favorite books and from cuddling with her favorite blanket.

Since the loss of their child, they have established a pay-it-forward program, Bubbles for Isabelle, through which more than 500 children in Joplin, Mo., have received blankets, the same type as that of Isabelles favorite. The tornado that ripped through Joplin following Isabelles death brought home the universality of loss and suffering, according to the Van Der Meers.

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Children show life's meaning