Our six year old is fascinated with all things death and destruction as of late. She loves the story of the Titanic and wants me to read and re-read the part about the iceberg. She loves the sheer terror of it all.
"But why are they running for the lifeboats, Mommy?"
I once read that children at this age are just learning to get a handle on things permanent and things not so lasting. They have come to a place of understanding that death transcends life and that people pass away and things pass on. That is, she is now trying to reconcile things that fade in this world.
Today on the way home from her swim workout she began asking questions about cremation. Questions such as "How is it done, Mommy?" or "What exactly are the ashes, Mommy?" and "What do people do with dead people ashes, Mommy?" and then, "Do the ashes just blow away?"
All of this questions were tolerable until the question came, "Mommy, when you die, do you want to be buried or cremated?"
"Cremated. Can we change the subject please?"
"Mommy, where do you want your ashes to go?"
"Honey, I haven't really thought about it. Some people choose the ocean, some people want to be left atop a mountain..."
"But YOU, Mommy, where do YOU want to be left?"
Not getting the point that I was trying to defer specific questions as a result of my lack of preparation and discomfort over this issue, I again tried to evade it by making it more general. She was having none of this.
"Oh, Dolly, most people simply choose somewhere they really loved in life, a romantic spot where others might think of them in coming years..."
Again because I hesitated, she blurted out, "OH! I KNOW! Mommy! Maybe your ashes should be put in a STORE! Like where you LOVE to shop!"
As comical as this was at the time, I tried to dispel the laughter I was choking down by explaining that it is totally inappropriate to scatter ashes at the mall and that it should really be somewhere out in nature and creation, etc. I told her that our bodies really mean nothing once we die, that it is our spirit that lives on and that I won't need this body once I am dead, that it will be irrelevant.
This seemed to satisfy her for a moment until I could pull in the driveway, pull the kids from the car, and shuffle them up to showers. But, her questions stirred something in me. Something I am still not really sure I understand how I feel. This idea of permanency versus gone. It really is the idea of the evolution of change in our lives and how we handle it.
I sort of feel now that our family is standing in the threshold of this place in our lives. We have been waiting so long to make a move in our future. Do we move to Florida, or not. Okay, we are going, but what now with the house? Okay, the house sold, now what? Which city? Which schools? What to pack? What about the cat? The cars? The questions are endless and the answers are just as long.
How can the days be flying by when I keep wishing away the time to find the answers to more questions as they arise? How are there just not enough hours in each passing day, but the days on the calendar are slow to move forward while we look to what our new lives will look like? We keep waiting, watching the clock, wishing the time away to get settled into a new city. I can't help but wonder, is this what life is?
That is, are we just spinning our wheels here, waiting for a change, wanting something new and adventurous? How can we savor the days more while we have them? Life is so fleeting. Why am I so anxious to step over the threshold and into the next thing? Why, I beg the question over and over and over again, WHY leave San Diego when our lives have been so happy and good here? We have friends, and family and a wonderful routine. Why venture out? Why? I guess the only answer I can come to is the inertia of change. We are being swept into it, resisting it little, this change. And, I kind of feel like we will have to be Reborn to survive. We will have to reinvent ourselves in Florida in order to live again. Certainly we cannot replicate what we have here in Cali, so we will have to look for some romantic place to leave our memories behind here as we travel into the unknown. Let's just hope in this process we don't get swept away by a hurricane. I feel like I need a lifeboat right about now.
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