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Still Working On It
May 5, 2011 by The Next Family
Filed under Barbara Matousek, Family, Single Parents
By: Barbara Matousek
“Where is Grandpa Jim?”
We are in the car and we have just driven past a cemetery, the same cemetery we drive past twice a day, every single day, on our way back from town. We have never talked about this particular cemetery, and my father is not buried there. But somehow Sam has made the connection.
“In heaven.”
There. I said it. I wasn’t ever going to talk about heaven in such concrete terms. But any parent will tell you that there are lots of things that you swore you would not do before you actually had kids, and I have run out of ways to explain death to my 3-year-old.
“Where is heaven?” he asks.
“In the sky.” I cringe when I say it, but I can’t stop myself.
“Where? I don’t see it,” he says, looking up at the thick gray clouds that threaten rain.
“It’s invisible.”
“But where is it?”
“It’s hard to explain. I’ll have to get a book to help you understand it.”
“No, Mommy! Don’t buy a book.” He is three. He yells things like this at me frequently. He wants what he wants, how he wants it. And he always wants it right now.
“Okay,” I say.
The spring rains have left the fields to our west a muddy mess, and the wind is pulling the car on the road. I push the button to open the garage door and hope he will be distracted by the sight of his bike.
“But what is heaven?” he starts again. “I don’t know what heaven is!”
“It’s where people go when they die.”
“But where is it?!”
[sigh]
Last week I struggled with “What is February?” and “What does salty mean?” A few days later I explained my friend’s father’s multiple sclerosis and the fact that we were walking to raise money for a cure; Sam wanted to know what “cure” was. Cure is an easy concept compared to Death, and Sam now knows that we walked to “try to fix Kelly’s daddy.”
I’m still working on Death.
.
[Photo Credit: Flickr Member John Seb]
Barb–I once had a prolonged, frustrating, downright painful conversation with Lucas about which was bigger–a mile or a pound. He couldn’t understand the concept that they measured two different things and neither was “bigger” than the other. Sometimes we have to explain things to kids on their level. I think you did a great job. As he gets older, you will be able to better explain your beliefs on heaven and whether or not an afterlife exists. For now, he just needed to know why his grandpa wasn’t with him anymore. I think you did great!
Poignant my honey … and beautifully written, as usual. What a wonderful mother, and writer, you are!
Yes, Josie has recently been a bit pre-occupied by death too. Her preschool teacher took another job and she asked me one morning if Sami died. Broke my heart. Sometimes she’ll play dead or tell me that she’s going to die before I am which, of course, kills me. I’m having trouble getting her to understand the permanence, that its no just like sleeping. I just keep saying the same things and hope that when she’s developmentally ready, she’ll get it. Sounds like you handled it perfectly. Now, how DID you describe salty? That is one I have not encountered.
Believe it or not, salty was much easier than February.
Great job Barbara. So many questions with so many possible answers. Get used to it, it goes on forever, I’m afraid. The questions become much harder to answer as the kids age because then they question your answers, thoughts, and all things “Oh Mom”.
Around age three, my son began asking about every cemetary he saw out the car window. I told him they were parks with special rocks (later, I taught him the word “statues”–I’m so not ready for “gravestones”). Of course, he wanted more explanation. I told him families put special rocks in the parks to remember the people they love. “Like Grandma?” he replied. Yes, like Grandma. Except that our grandma lives forty miles away and we have lunch with her twice a month, I think the conversation went quite well
@Lara your comment had me laughing.
I think it was easier for me since Dad died when Zack was 2 and a half, so he sort of got the concept… And yes, grandpa is up in heaven, taking care of Bumpus, and Chama, and Wiggles, and Oscar, and Blue Fish and Steve and eventually all of us. Sigh…