This week you are in for a special surprise, we have a guest post. It happens to be my hubby, but he wanted to post this. It became more than a Facebook posting once he started writing it and he mentioned write a guest post for my blog. I told him to go for it. So here we go.

The other night held an interesting talk with Aden. He came out of his room and said he was sad because he missed Drake, which happens occasionally. I went in to talk to him, asking what he was thinking and how he felt. He is usually sad that he never got to see Drake or play with him. The previous time he was sad because he wanted two brothers to be with.

Last night he asked what we did with Drake’s body when he died. We knew this was coming, he’s been showing interest in cemeteries and headstones recently. And zombies too, but that’s a little different. We’ve never lied to him, we have omitted things and changed the subject at times if we felt he wasn’t ready for certain facts, but we go with truth in this matter.

He wouldn’t let me put off the answer, trying to answer his question another day, so I told him that we had Drake cremated.

I had a great plan! It was going to be easy. Using the storyline from How To Train Your Dragon 2, **spoiler** when the father dies and they do a Viking funeral in a boat and light it on fire with flaming arrows.

No dice.

Aden thought they only had the helmet on the boat. So I had to explain that his dad was on the boat also. Then Aden thought we put Drake on a boat and burned it. “No, there is a building that does it in a box.”

As with any conversation with a 5-year old, questions on the topic roamed around and back again at various points. The questioning came to what was left over after the fire, so I brought Aden out to the living room and showed him Drake’s urn. It’s a small, light blue box with his name on it. It took a lot of explanation about what is left over after the fire.

“How did you get him into the small box?”

“I want to see his insides, is that what is in the box?” Assuming the fire only burned Drake’s skin.

The next example I used to explain what happened is the ashes in our fireplace. When wood is burned there is not much left except some ashes. It’s the same with a body.

Aden noticed there were screws on the bottom of the urn. He wanted to open it and see what exactly it contained. That is something Marisa and I have not done and as of now do not plan on doing any time soon.

There were many pregnant pauses and hesitations on my part. I thought I’d be ready to answer his questions about Drake, but Aden came up with ones I hadn’t been prepared for and I’d rather take time to answer than avoid the questions or throw out an answer that may not be true.

Did I mention it was an hour past Aden’s bedtime? Yes, almost 100% of the times he gets sad about Drake are when he is in bed and he gets up to tell us. Is he faking? Does he just want to stay up and spend time with us? Is it just that he has time to stop moving and think about things? Has it become a habit to think about Drake while he is in bed? I don’t know the answer to any of these, it’s probably a combination of all of them. But one thing I do know is that we won’t lie to him about Drake and won’t push away his questions. Unless it’s way too late and he needs to go to sleep.

If this seems a bit disjointed that’s probably because it is. It is also representational of the conversation with Aden and the questions going everywhere. I’m guessing Aden probably didn’t understand or retain a large portion of the conversation and I’ll be as woefully unprepared next time as I was this time. A closing thought I will say is that I love that little boy with both his intense curiosity and deep love for both of his brothers. I’ll put up with the questions and getting out of bed to encourage both of those aspects of his personality.

Joel

Thank you,

Marisa