On Death and Dying

I've been thinking about death and dying a lot lately, especially as seen through they the eyes of J.P., 7, and Joe, 3.

I wanted to organize my thoughts, so I could write a cogent post on the subject.  I don't think I'm there yet.

Tonight, when I got home with takeout food from Martin's Barbecue after J.P.'s baseball game, I could tell he was down.  I was a bit surprised, since he played well in the game and was fine when we left in separate cars a little while earlier.  When I asked him if anything was wrong, he started crying and said "I miss Great."  (J.P.'s Great Grandmother, Rita White, died on August 6, 2015).  He allowed me to pick him up, which is rare these days, and he laid his head on my shoulder and cried.  Joe sat in the floor behind us. playing Candyland, oblivious to what was going on.

I held J.P. and talked quietly to him while Jude bustled about the kitchen.  I told him part of having faith - and part of the reason why we were in church almost every Sunday - was that we believe that Great is in heaven.  She's with her husband, Jim, whom she missed dearly after he died.  And she's not sick and she's very, very happy.  I also told him she watched over him (and us) every day and that she was proud of him.

I believe that.  I have to and I really do.

At dinner when we eat at the table in the dining room, we always say a prayer before dinner.  It's the same prayer, kind of a "White family tradition."  Sometimes - actually most of the time lately, anyway - Joe adds his own prayer at the end.  He prays for Grandpa's back and legs to feel better, for Meemaw's back to feel better and for Great's head and back to feel better.  He blissfully ignorant when it comes to death, which is how it should be at age 3.

When Joe and I go to Bongo Java most mornings before I take him to Children's House, he sometimes looks for Fudgecake (the cat that inhabited the Bongo Java grounds and the establishments on Belmont Boulevard on both sides of Bongo Java for the past decade).  Fudgecake died recently, not too long after Great passed away, and I just haven't had the heart to tell Joe or, especially, J.P.  Lately, Joe is asking about Fudgecake less and less, which somehow makes me feel even worse about his death.

To top things off and because bad things always seem to come in threes, I stopped in our neighborhood Kroger a couple of weeks ago and while I was in line, asked about our friend, Eddie, who has been a fixture in that store since we moved here in 2002.  The cashier and the bagger looked at each other, then at me, and told me that Eddie was sick - cancer - and would not be coming back to work.  Eddie has been so great to J.P. and Joe over the years on their many, many trips to Kroger.  The boys adore him.  Shit, I adore him.

And now he's dying.

I told Jude about it and the boys made him a card and dropped it off at the service desk at Kroger.  I hope he got the card and I hope he remembers who the boys are and, most importantly, that he had a really impact on their lives.  His kindness and friendliness toward them was a small thing, but it was a  huge thing, too.  I haven't had the heart to tell them that Eddie is terminally ill and that he's not coming back to work.

Unlike Jude, I am kind of an expert at losing people you love - people to whom you're close - when you're very young.  The loss of my father when I was 5 or 6 (strange that I don't know exactly how old I was) marked me for life in ways seen and unseen.  I know that.  I also lost my grandfather, Robert Ussery, and my mom's sister, Ann Miles, while I was in elementary school.  That's heavy stuff for a young boy to go through.

I think - no, I know - that when you're young, like J.P., and someone you loves dies, you experience a profound loss of innocence.  That's what makes me the most sad, for him.  He's 7 years old and much like me at that age, he realizes that nothing lasts forever and that people die.  People he loves will die and there's nothing he can do about it.  Again, heavy stuff for a 7 year old.  He realizes, I think, on some level that nothing lasts forever and that life is impermanent and fleeting.  He probably couldn't verbalize that notion, but I think it's what he feels.  And I think it's why he started crying tonight and on a few occasions recently, thinking about Great and how much he misses her.

I wish there was some way I could shield him from that reality, some way I could protect him from the loss of innocence.  But there's not.