This excerpt is from our book, To Dance With Angels,
and is a conversation my three-year-old grandson had with my mother, years ago.
“Linda’s three-year-old grandson, Brian, gave
us quite a lesson in humility the other day. He was looking at a photo of his
great-grandfather, who died some years ago, and he asked Linda’s mother, Rose,
some direct and penetrating questions, as the young do best. “Where is your
grandfather?” Brian asked Rose.
She smiled,
understanding his confusion over relationships, and explained to him: “He was
my husband, your great-grandfather. He is not with us now.”
“Where is he?”
Brian persisted.
“He died,” Rose
replied quietly. “He is with God now, in heaven.”
“How did he get
there?” continued the prosecuting attorney, boring in for the whole truth. “Did
he drive his car?”
Rose laughed,
searching for the answer on a blank wall of her mind, then she bent her arms
and flapped like a bird, gazed skyward, said nothing.
Brian lost interest
immediately. “Oh,” he said, in closing, “my dad does that all the time.”
Mundane stuff,
Brian; you bet. No big deal about flying from here to there, not anymore.
Routine event. So is dying. So routine that it does not command the interest or
even find a model in the three-year-old mind. Heaven could be no different than
Cleveland or Disneyland
to our Brians. And death has no meaning to them. They may cry if Dad flies off
to Cleveland or Disneyland or heaven without them, but
the tears are tears of separation, not of tragedy, and the mental model of Disneyland for Brian is of roughly the same quality as
the mental model of heaven for Rose.
Rose does not know
with any sense of certainty where her John has gone. She cannot see him, touch
him, hear his laughter, feel his hand upon her cheek—she has but a vague and
shadowed trust or hope that he does still exist somewhere in some form and that
she will join him there one day. But she is in precisely the same boat as little
Brian when his daddy flies off to St. Louis or Kansas City or other
esoteric and unimaginable places.”
-Linda
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