Death and Children

We've buried a number of fish and rodents in our backyard. In fact, we have a hamster and a mouse in the freezer right now waiting for a weekend with enough open time to have a good service. When these creatures die, my daughter always asks me, "Did [Sally] have a happy and long life?" Usually I can assert that they did. (Sally the hamster in fact probably had a happy but short life, cut short by a careless swing of a startled, bitten child's arm, so I said I hoped it was happy, but it wasn't so long.)

My own father died while my first child was in utero, right after the 18 week ultrasound. I learned that one may be overwhelmed with the great exultation of new life and the great loss of life's end and neither feeling diminishes the other, nor actually breaks the heart. The demand of the new life keeps the blood flowing. Some how, the heart grows to expand more feelings. I'm just glad I called to share our awe at hearing the heart beat for the first time, a month or so before that.

Certainly having a child and seeing their tiny fragility makes one realize how fragile our bodies are. I have always striven to live in such a way that if I died today, I'm just glad for the interesting things I've gotten to be a part of. Dieing at 22 or whatever would have been regrettable, but not really a tragedy, as they were an interesting 22 years. The last 18 years have been interesting as well, but, with these tiny unprotected beings growing around my ankles (as it seems), I just can't die this year.

And the kids better not die. What with the many articles on SIDS thrust on new parents, and the horribly ubiquitous cartoons of babies being smashed by air bags that litter today's world, the thought of death is never too far from the new parent. My daughter grew up learning how to walk on Carroll Avenue, inches from the insane Washington drivers. I curse drivers so vehemently that for a while I was about to teach my daughter that "car drivers are evil crazy people" which given that we ourselves drive and I don't want to teach about evil people so much as wrong deeds would have been very counter productive. We go hiking near the steep cliffs at Great Falls on our better days, and fear clenches and releases my heart, as people wobble toward and away the edges.

I can't talk about these fears for myself or them with the kids, of course. But death is still talked about plenty. For a while, in her never ending experimentation towards successful social interaction, my daughter discovered that asking people if their mother had died almost always produced interesting results. I winced each time, but heard so many touching stories from so many people I'd never probed so deeply into. Occasionally, my own relatives will be asked about when they will die. Periodically, I'm asked if I'll die before my daughter is married. I've been asked to predict whether I or my beloved life partner will die first (a topic I avoid thinking about by assuming I'll be the fortunate one to die first), and I had to admit that no one knows what will happen in the future.

I read "The Year of Magical Thinking" by Joan Didion, written after her husband died. It is a good book, wrenchingly honest about what awaits many of us. (It also inspired a bit of jealously - she and her husband were always flying off to Paris or Hawaii or California, essentially without having to save up for years. Oh well, it pays to be movie people, I already knew that.)

When we do our pet burials, and my daughter expresses the feelings in her ways, I can't help but find myself hoping that we are practicing for what will occur at the end of my own life. I will be able to assure her, and everyone, that I have had a long and happy life. Especially if I get at least the youngest one into college, and preferably much longer.