I'm glad that the ladybug (and hopefully the worm too) in my previous post didn't succumb. I would have had to talk to the kids about death again. Something--this fall, Halloween, memories of our friend in Chicago whom we visited this time a year ago, the noticing of cemeteries--has spurred a lot of conversation with the kids about death and burial. They're the ones bringing it up. Not in a morbid way, they're just curious.
"Mom, what is that?" Bud asks.
"It's a cemetery. . . where people are buried when they die."
"Hmmmm. Are you going to be buried?"
"Something like that." (note: I want to be cremated. But I'm not explaining that to them now.)
"Are we going to be buried?"
Okay, let's not go there. "Yes, probably. But much later."
"When we're old?"
"Probably."
Just a representation of conversations I have had this week. Bud especially is interested, though not scared, of the concept. I think it all started when the cats knocked the picture of our Chicago friend off the mantle and he found it. He wants to visit her apartment, her cats, her partner Miss K, their musical instruments; he had such a good time on that trip and really liked M and K. He wants to send Miss K a card. He says he misses Miss M. And then he wants to know how you die, how bodies get sick or break, who gets buried in a cemetery. The only thing he hasn't asked is what happens next.
I don't know what happens next, either after death or with these conversations.
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