Last weekend I had my 4 year old granddaughter, Melody, stay with me for 4 days. She kept me busy the whole time. We went to the library, swam at the YMCA, went to the park and she even got me to eat at McDonalds twice.
As we were sitting at the table eating breakfast, she started asking me questions about photos I have sitting on my bookshelf. The photos are of my mother, aunt and grandmother. She wanted to know where they were so I told her they had died. She stated they must be in heaven with great grandpa. She stated that it would be nice to go to heaven and see them all, but then she'd like to come back to my house. The rest of the weekend was peppered with questions about death. Here are a few: Will I die tomorrow, the next day, the next day...........? Will you and Mommy be in heaven to take care of me? Why does every one have to die?
When I told her that most people die when they get old, she started crying and said, "I don't want to get old." We watched Charlotte's Web and when Wilbur said he didn't want to die, her response was, "See, he doesn't want to die, just like me." Luckily, she seemed to miss the part that Charlotte died.
As a grandma who wants to make every thing okay, I knew that the reality is every one does die so I couldn't sugarcoat it and tell her it won't happen. So I answered and comforted the best I could. She appears to be a deep thinker like her grandma which can make for many hard questions.
Thoughts for the day: Our death is not our end if we can live on in our children and the younger generation, for they are us. Our bodies are only wilted leaves on the tree of life.
Albert Einstein
Life and Death are balanced on the edge of a razor. Homer
