Saturday, April 5, 2008

Hello

Well, we've had a nice week.
Two days ago Kaitlyn read one of the Winnie the Pooh books to me. She turned the page and looked at a picture of Pooh pulling a pot of honey off of his shelf and said "and he went to the cabinet and got a beer." Is it just me or is that just freakin funny? We aren't huge drinkers so I felt that it was appropriate for me to point out that pooh is just a little bear and he doesn't drink beer. Man, I told the story to Gin and we laughed our heads off together. Then Kait pipes up with "you guys stop talkin about that!"
Yesterday I was getting in the car with the kids and idly thought that my purse was feeling too heavy. I opened it up and saw a plastic egg inside. I picked the egg up and it was inordinately heavy. I opened the egg and found... you guessed it... no you didn't... a real honest to goodness boiled and dyed egg. I was puzzled but in too much of a hurry to do anything more than toss it in the dumpster. I recounted the story to Gin telling her I had no idea how it had gotten there and heard Eden snicker and say she knew. I pushed the phone aside and stared at her askance and she said "you did it." "ME?" I asked in disbelief. "Yes, on Easter I had it for the minister at church and you said "let me just put it in my purse and then we forgot it!" It was 100% true. That is exactly what happened though I want it known that I had NO idea that she had planned to present the minister with a hard boiled egg. A minister we had never even met.
Today life took a much more serious turn. Jody's grandmother passed away this afternoon. Jody called to tell me that she was near the end around noon so I told the kids that it looked like GG was going to die soon. Around 1:00 Eden had a complete breakdown crying that she didn't want GG to die. I comforted her and told her all about the fringe benefits of heaven. Kaitlyn tried to call Jody to tell him Eden was crying but he wasn't by his phone. Eden calmed down and I called my mom to tell her what was going on. She mentioned that I shouldn't be surprised if Eden knew when she passed. Jody called me around 3 MT to tell me she had died at around 3:00 CT. I feel that Eden could sense her great grandmother's spirit leaving. Eden wasn't technically named after her great grandmother but her name coincidentally so matched her name that in my mind she has become her namesake. Edith May and Eden Shea. She has felt this loss as a first true grief. I have watched her face as she searches me for a clue as to how we are to deal with this fact of life and death. I try to offer her the truth in a peaceful and surrendered way. I told her today that there is a time to live and a time to die and a time for joy and a time for grief. I helped her accept her GG's death by reminding her that in heaven her great grandmother will have full use of her hands again and be able to walk and play her guitar. She found peace in it. Kaitlyn is still two so she was completely content with waiting until she gets to heaven to see GG.
It's been a good week. We studied birds this week and ironically GG loved birds. We discovered that a ridiculous number of states have the mocking bird as a state bird. As many birds as we have living in this country, surely a few states could have been original.