Mortality Questions
Cartney has recently realized that his life on this Earth is limited. As parents, Jess and I don’t know what influences led him to this natural conclusion- maybe it was all the talk about skeletons back at Halloween time, or maybe it was something he saw on TV. But in the past few days he has been pestering us to take him to go see “Where all the dead people live and turn to skeletons.” And, “I want to walk and touch the ‘skeleton garden.'”
As parents, Jess and I have tried to be somewhat honest about the subject of death with Cartney. I for one, remember when I was a little older than he was, staying up late at night worrying about death- whether or not it would hurt- and having been raised in a Baptist church, I thought the idea of seeing Jesus everyday in a church-type of setting forever and ever was the most dreary and boring notion ever, and hoped God wouldn’t strike me dead on the spot for thinking such thoughts!
We have told Cartney that after you are old, you die, get buried in the ground, and your body turns to a skeleton. He had an idea that was what happened, and we were only affirming his suspicions. Yet he was insisting that we take him to a ‘skeleton garden’ for some reason- I suppose so he could investigate and explore what such a place was like.
And yeah, it was weird- we ate 7-11 hotdogs, listened to the Muppet Movie soundtrack on the iPhone, and drove to the cemetery in Herndon, VA, the region’s oldest and largest “skeleton garden.” And as soon as I turned to enter the cemetery, Cartney shouted from the backseat, “Don’t go in there Dad! Its a scary place!”
But we were committed. Visiting the cemetery was likely the only thing that was going to get Cartney to shutup about dying and turning into a skeleton, so we told him it was a quiet, peaceful place, and we found a place to pull over and made the kid get out and touch the gravestones. We read him some of the names and pointed out that whole families were buried together. We even showed him the motorcycle headstone, as pictured. He found the grave of a 29 year old father that had recently passed. One of the departed’s children had stopped by and left a Toy Story Woody toy on the headstone- Cartney’s instinct was to pick it up, but he understood to leave it undisturbed when we explained what it was doing there.
It was a chilly afternoon, and Cartney complained that the cemetery was “creeping him out.” So we went back to the car and meandered through the access roads on the way out. We paused for a moment next to a section of the hillside with small headstones with lambs on them- representing dozens of stillborn and infant deaths. One headstone was for a 6 year old girl, and it was inscribed with the words “Meemaw’s Little Angel.” It reminded Jess and I of how blessed we are to have a strong, healthy kid.
