Learn the anxiety and relief of a parent who wonders how her child will react to her first encounter with death and a cemetery
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| Cemetery 2 |
| Yesterday, while I wrote at home, my husband and two-year-old daughter went to the cemetery to put flowers on my husband's grandparents' graves. This is the story he told me when they returned. |
| "She helped me put the flowers down and I explained that granddaddy and grandma weren't actually there, but we were showing our respect and love by visiting. When we left, she wanted to say goodbye. I told her that we couldn't really say goodbye with our voices; we had to say it with our hearts and our minds." |
| My husband placed his hands over his ears, bowed his head, and closed his eyes. |
| "She did just like this, and then she said, 'Goodbye! Goodbye!'" |
| As the saying goes, out of the mouths of babes. My daughter never ceases to amaze me. When they left that morning, I wondered how she would be at the graveyard. Would she want to run around and have to be held in check? Would she become bored and fidgety? Would she get scared and cry? |
| Of course, as has become her usual, she displayed an incredible insight. My daughter found her own, truly special way of communicating with the dead. I am sure that with time and enough outside influence, she will develop more typical reactions to visiting her ancestors' gravesites. But I hope that she will keep at least some of her ingenuity, her absolute childish wisdom. And I hope that I will have the presence of mind to keep some of it, too. |
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