Howdy,
How can you ever really be ready to be a parent?
How can you be ready, at the drop of a question, to answer anything a six-year-old may think to ask as the world comes at us at the speed of our moving vehicle?
Driving along this morning, discussing the sight of the sun — hung clean as a pencil-drawn circle in the full fog, able to be eyed directly through the screen and unfrayed at its edges and looking more like a perfect full moon — we turned a corner in the country.
And Jasper asks, “What are all those?”
The four-stop turn had us pass the Denair Cemetery, and Jasper was referring to headstones standing tall in the fog when he asked, “What are all those?”
I said, “Those are headstones,” not sure how exactly I’d proceed in a way that would make sense and might be helpful.
“What are headstones?”
“Well, that’s a cemetery, and—”
“What’s a cemetery?”
Interestingly, we’ve been passing those headstones seen in the Denair cemetery every school day since early August. Why today? I don’t know. How can you ever be ready?
So there I was, in the driver’s seat, but having to explain a cemetery and how one gets there to a six-year-old …
Definitely a good time for your child to know Jesus and about Heaven. For death to have lost its sting, ultimately.
But still, there’s death, loss of this life, and caskets and burial (or tougher yet, as I found out from stumbling into it, cremation).
“What’s a casket?”
Do you know how crazy something like “a box the size of a person for burying them” sounds when you start to explain it to a kid?
Clunky and crazy is how it sounds coming out. I pray it makes some sense going in.
Life and death.
Just driving along, parenting.
—Billy
Reading. Writing. Living.
Word Count: 51,236 / On Pace: 51,150 / Year’s Goal: 200,000
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