The meaning of mortality

"I'm searching for something
Which can't be found,
But I'm hoping."

-- Everything Dies, Type O Negative


As I was standing at my closet the other night picking out clothes to wear to my grandfather's viewing today, not only was I disappointed in my lack of appropriate (re: stuff that I still fit into) funeral attire, but it suddenly occurred to me: I will have to take Zoe.

I rifled through her closet and found something acceptable. My sister called not very long after, as if reading my mind.

"What are you going to tell Zoe about the viewing?"

Hmmm. I dunno. Maybe that her great-grandfather had too much Halloween candy? Aunt Kelly suggested a much more forward-thinking view: "Tell her he was bad and Santa sent a lightning rod down for him."

But really, what to tell her? We thought over the realities and I decided that I would do it on the fly, and I did. Right before we were leaving tonight for the viewing, I handed her an outfit and said, "We have to go say goodbye to someone."

"Who?"

"My grandpap."

"PAP PAP?"

"No, MY grandpap. My... Pap Pap."

"Do I know him? Where is he going?"

I explained to her who he was, and then I had to break it to her, in case she wasn't quite getting me: "Zoe, he died."

"NOOOOOO! How?"

I told her that he was old, and that his heart was old and that it stopped beating, and trying my best not to use my best defense mechanism they call sarcasm, I tried to answer her questions and explained how the heart carries the blood that carries the oxygen to all the fingers and toes, and what happens when the heart stops working.

"So then he died? Like a dinosaur? Did his heart fall into his stomach?"

OK, I'm in over my head, I'm thinking. The talks about my mom go much better than this.

I took her to the funeral home and she was curious about the body once she realized it was lying there. She walked up to it several times, sometimes escorted by someone in the family; other times she just wandered over herself, getting a little too close at times for me.

It wasn't the big trauma for her that I thought it would be, and I kept checking to make sure she was OK with everything. At the end of the viewing, when everyone was saying goodbye to Grandpap, she stepped up on the kneeler and felt his hand. Like everyone else was doing.

And I was so touched. There was a compassion in her at that moment that was just a little bit past curiosity about touching a lifeless body. It was probably imperceptible to everyone else but her mom, but I could tell that in her own way, she understood there was some gravity to this, and that she cared.

And despite her previously bouncing like a pinball among all the people she hasn't seen in a while, I was very proud.