Ava, who is nearly four, is not so bothered about Daddy’s crippling monster toe, but great-grandma’s passing still troubles her.
She has calculated, correctly, that if great-grandma can die, anyone she loves is fair game.
Sometimes Ava defies the inescapable logic. She’ll tell a stranger, “My great-grandma died, but my grandma is never going to die.”
At other times, she plea bargains: “Mama,” she says, cuddling on the couch, “I don’t want you to leave me.”
She knows the happy part is that great-grandma is in heaven, but the sad part is that we don’t get to see her any more. And that she can’t talk. Or write letters. Or go to church. Or anything.
In short, she knows that dead is dead. And while she accepts the heaven part, the consolation is abstract.
Novelist Anne Rice lost her daughter in 1972. From the pain of this infinitely unfolding tragedy, she conceived a series of works about vampires, whom she portrays as god-like, immortal beings. In Rice’s vampire novels, a vampire seeking companionship in the dark night of eternity can confer “the dark gift” of immortality on a mortal by biting them just so. The series resonates in part because it darkly mirrors normal human experience. Life itself is a dark gift: every parent knows their child will suffer and die.
Our daughter is not yet on intimate terms with death, but the two have now met and exchanged a few words.
[tags]ava, family, growing up, death, glamorous, myglamorouslife[/tags]