Someday I will die.

Guin,

Today in the car we were talking.  We do a lot of that. You always come up with amazing questions, far beyond your years, and I have found myself stumped so many times as to how I'm supposed to explain the ways of this great big world to someone who is four.  Our conversation started like this:

G: "mom, how does someone get a step-mom?"
Me: "well, sometimes people decide to get un-married..."
G: "Oh! I wanted to ask you, if people spin and dance when they get married, when they get unmarried do they spin in the opposite direction?"
Me: "......something like that."

Then our conversation shifted.
G: "I hope you and Daddy never get unmarried."
Me: "me either, I hope we stay together for always."
G: "Until you die?"
Me: "Yep, until we die."
G: "Until I die?"
Me: "Well, I hope that you live longer than I do.  I'll be old before you will be."

You were silent for a long time.  And then you cried.  I immediately regretted saying those words.  We have talked a lot about death in the past, but today I knew you now had the realization that someday, I will die.  Chances are it might happen before you do.  I hope beyond hope that it does.

When we got home I pulled up in the driveway and turned the car off.  Willow was asleep in her car seat so I asked you to come sit in my lap up front.  You climbed up into my arms and you wept.  When I asked you to tell me your feelings you didn't talk, you just looked at me with your big tear filled eyes.  I couldn't help but cry too.  Every parent hopes that they out-live their children.  Very few children at the age of four realize that.  It's something I've thought about, and somehow you have the ability to wrap your tiny little mind around such an overwhelming idea.

I told you that right now, I'm not going anywhere.  I still have so much to teach you.  I told you that from the moment you started growing in my belly, I made the promise to teach you everything you need to know to be a strong adult who can face the world without me.  And I told you that someday, when I am older than all of your great grandmas, when my body just won't work anymore, and I have nothing more to teach you, that I will have to give my body back to the earth.  And I told you that you will miss me.  As I talked it was all I could do not to weep as you looked in my eyes, looking for some sort of comfort that I couldn't offer.

And then I told you that I can't die because you still have too much to teach me.  You always will.  You and your sister will always be my greatest teachers.  I asked if you knew you are my teacher.  You laughed at me and said "mom, I can't be your teacher, I'm a kid!"

Precisely.

As I write this, you are singing to yourself and stringing beads on a bracelet for your sister to wear, a little bit wiser to the reality of the world.  I knew from the moment you graced our lives with your presence that you are a wiser soul than I am.  It's these conversations that we have even at the age of four that give me confidence that someday when I am gone, that you will have the strength and wisdom to change the world without me.  And that both of us are better for spending our lives together.

Love,
Mom