Vicarious Rocky

Yesterday Indy asked me what the cemetery near our house was and in retrospect, I should have a said it was a park, or a field, or something else generic. But NO, I had to say, “That’s where we put our dead people.”

Well, the conversation developed, through his questioning, to reveal that the dead people were actually underneath the grass and dirt and leaves and that the cement markers showed where they were buried. It sounded rather ghoulish when I said it and since we’d just come out of Halloween where everything was not scary because it was “pretend,” it didn’t surprise me to hear him then ask, “It’s just pretend though, right?” To which I said, “Uh, no, ‘fraid not.”

I realize now my responses to his line of questions were not at all comforting. It went like this:
Indy: “Do I go in there?”
Me: “No, just dead people.”
I: “Will I be dead?”
M: “Yes, you will die.”
I: “Why?”
M: “Your heart stops beating and you go to sleep.”
I: “What happens when you wake up?”
M: “You don’t wake up.”
I: “What would I say when I wake up?”
M: “Well, It’s not like regular sleep. You don’t wake up.”
I: “You tell me what I’d say.”
M: “Well, if you did wake up from being dead, which you wouldn’t, you would say, ‘Get these leaves off me.”
I: (Not amused, Worried) “When don’t I wake up?”
M: “Don’t worry. You won’t die for a long time. Old people die.”
I: “Like Mommy’s and Daddy’s?”
M: (Now really rethinking this whole conversation) “No, even older.”
I: “Like Grammy?”
M: “Older than that too. Like your great grandma and grandpa at your party. The guy you thought was a witch.”
I: “Oh.”

That thankfully ended our chat, but as you might expect it left an impression because Indy asked Dad later that night, as if to fact check, “You know about the dead place, with the leaves?” Sage looked at me and I summarized, so he said, “Oh yeah, I know. What about it?” And Indy said something like, “Yeah,” the tone of which sounded a lot like, “OK, just checking.” Because let’s face it, that is one wacky, unfortunate piece of news. So, when your just-turned 4-yr-old asks what a cemetery is, tell him it’s a park. And if he asks about the headstones, I’d go with, “They’re signs.” Just saying.