From December 6, 2014
The traffic light changed as I drove up the street approaching the assisted living facility where my father had spent the last six months of his life. William, my three – going on 27 – year old grandson had been quiet in his car seat behind me.
“Where’s Great Papa?”
Did you ever feel like a lightning bolt has hit your spine and is traveling through your upper body?
“He’s in heaven”, a quick and knowingly inadequate response to his question. William has the same questions… questions without answers that we all have.
There was quiet in the back after my answer and I silently hoped that my response would satisfy him, all the while knowing that it would not.
Then, after a moment of reflective silence: “What do they eat in heaven?”
When William was two he had a baby brother Benjamin. There was a great deal of fanfare leading up to his becoming a “big brother” and when Benjamin was born William in his “Big Brother” shirt posed with his new healthy beautiful little brother.
Benjamin died at 18 days of age and suddenly… with no explanations… no more big brother talk… and most significantly no more little brother.
William is now almost four and has been nibbling around the edges of this dilemma: “Mommy what happens to babies who go to heaven before their mommies and daddies? Who takes care of them? ”
William is now a big brother again with one-year old Ian as his little brother.
More recently: “Mommy do I have a another brother?”
We’re all inadequate to answer William’s questions because we don’t know how. None of us know what they eat in heaven and for many of us life after death is more of a hope than an assurance.
How do we explain the fact and inevitability of death to a pure and innocent child when we have no understanding of it ourselves?
As adults, a dead eighteen day old baby is something we experience, grieve, accept and move on with our lives; an occurrence that is unfathomable even at the deepest level of spiritual or religious insight.
Our experience of death, as we know it, is from this side of the grass. Soon enough, after that fleeting interval we call a “lifetime”, we’ll have a perspective from the other side of the grass… or not.
The fact of your mortality weighs heavily on you as it does on all of us. The fact of death is less troubling then not knowing the reason we live.
“What do they eat in heaven?”and “What happens to babies who go to heaven before their mommies and daddies?” are legitimate questions for all of us, real questions articulated through the thought process of a young child.
I guess that in heaven they can eat whatever they want.