Monday, August 03, 2009

Tender Topics

One of our favorite restaurants, the kind we go to AT LEAST once a week, is over the highway and past a very large cemetery. Sometime last spring, the focus of conversation in the car stopped being all the cars racing under the bridge and became the dead people sleeping in the cemetery. (These are the kids words, not mine.)

I have tried and can't pinpoint when or why this transformation happened... no one we know has passed, not even a pet. It just suddenly seems that we can't drive past this, or any significantly sized cemetery, without one of my children commenting about the dead people. That's what they call them... the dead people.

It wouldn't be such a big deal if we just were able to comment quickly and move past it. Each and every time is followed by a few questions about the people resting there. "Why are they dead? Who put them there? Why do we bury dead people? What will happen when we die? Where will the bodies go?" And so on....

Brianna handles all this well, she is able to conceptualize things without seeing them so seems to understand more and isn't scared by it. Grant on the other hand often ends the questioning session with a question or two vocalized in a shaky, fearful voice. "What will happen to me when you die Mommy?" was the one I had to face yesterday. Can you hear my heart breaking?

I think I put him off a bit by telling him that Mommy wouldn't die for a very (x30) long time. (Grant likes it when we repeat one word over and over to stress something.... it's a phase.) Then we played the "I love you more" game and he was on to a new topic.

One of these days I won't be able to distract him. The thought brings tears to my eyes.

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