celebrating something sad

Today would be my brother’s birthday; every year since his death, I’ve gone to the beach with the little guy, and we’ve tossed flowers off the end of the pier and talked about my brother. When Miss Baby is a bit older, she can come along too. I prefer to commemorate this date rather than the anniversary of his death.

On the way to Balboa, the Little Guy asked to hear some gospel music — we like this album from Starbucks. This naturally brings up some theological discussions, and he was a little pensive on account of the event. He likes Alison Krauss (I told you he was smart), and asked if her “In the Palm of Your Hand” is a sad song, and it got us talking about Jesus’ death and resurrection, and heaven. When I repeated the line about “The one who died for me,” the little guy asked, “Wait, Jesus died?… oh, but he came back. He’s the only one, though.” And I reassured him that because of that, we don’t have to be afraid about death. “Yes, but it’s still pretty scary around halloween. But I don’t know what heaven looks like, so we should try not to die.” I agreed that we should try not to die. A little later, “People Get Ready” by the Chambers Brothers came up, and he was delighted by the train imagery. He liked the idea of the train to heaven, but thought “it’s a pretend train.” I told him that when we believe in God, we are getting on the train and trusting God to be the engineer and take care of us and take us all the way to heaven. His response was beautiful: “I hope that’s what Uncle David was thinking when he died.”

I hope so too.