Good Grief
Sam asked Kathy last night what would happen if he got to heaven and couldn't find Shadow and Max when he got there.
Kathy, of course, was a little unsure of how to answer such a question and it haunted me all day today. Kathy did her best to explain, but there really is no real explanation that suffices.
I ran into a co-worker on one of the job sites and explained Shadow's death and Sam's hurt.
"Can you imagine?" I asked. "How do you handle such a question from a young boy?"
The roofer I was talking with didn't miss a beat - "Tell him to whistle and call her name, the dog will come," he said.
Still I'm so tired of thinking about and trying to understand all of life's questions and for some reason today I thought of freaking Charlie Brown and the fact that they coupled the words 'good' and 'grief'.
I can see the grief written on my boy's faces and I can hear it in the cries of Melky as she tries to contemplate why Shadow is gone, and it seems like a well-orchestrated torture beseeched on me by someone who doesn't want me to work through my 'good grief'.
Yet children and dogs seem to have a window into how it all works. If Melky can feel the pain, and Sam can grasp much of the concept of heaven above, it gives me the hope to work through it all as well.
"Shadow and Max are together again," Sam said to me last night. "Can you imagine how happy Max is?"
"Yeah, and they're both healthy and they're probably running side-by-side like they used to."
"But they aren't running with Melky or me," Sam said. "And I really miss them."
Good-bleeping-grief
How do you answer these freaking questions?
Kathy, of course, was a little unsure of how to answer such a question and it haunted me all day today. Kathy did her best to explain, but there really is no real explanation that suffices.
I ran into a co-worker on one of the job sites and explained Shadow's death and Sam's hurt.
"Can you imagine?" I asked. "How do you handle such a question from a young boy?"
The roofer I was talking with didn't miss a beat - "Tell him to whistle and call her name, the dog will come," he said.
Still I'm so tired of thinking about and trying to understand all of life's questions and for some reason today I thought of freaking Charlie Brown and the fact that they coupled the words 'good' and 'grief'.
I can see the grief written on my boy's faces and I can hear it in the cries of Melky as she tries to contemplate why Shadow is gone, and it seems like a well-orchestrated torture beseeched on me by someone who doesn't want me to work through my 'good grief'.
Yet children and dogs seem to have a window into how it all works. If Melky can feel the pain, and Sam can grasp much of the concept of heaven above, it gives me the hope to work through it all as well.
"Shadow and Max are together again," Sam said to me last night. "Can you imagine how happy Max is?"
"Yeah, and they're both healthy and they're probably running side-by-side like they used to."
"But they aren't running with Melky or me," Sam said. "And I really miss them."
Good-bleeping-grief
How do you answer these freaking questions?
Comments