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This is kind of a personal little essay, a description of our family’s
grieving process, that I wanted to record and share but I don’t really want
reblogged out of context, so please don’t. Don’t read if you don’t care to,
certainly, it’s just that I use this as a personal journal and wanted a
record, but I also thought it was an interesting and sweet story people
might want to read. If you want to respond that’s fine but this isn’t a
plea for condolences either; y’all have been wonderful and that’s
fantastic, I’m sort of writing this for me and to share and it’s fine,
however you respond. Just don’t reblog or repost it. (You can link people
here if you know someone else dealing with loss and young children if you
think it’d be helpful, that’s fine too. This shit’s rough and a lot of
people are having a tough time.)
So Monday night we moved Dad’s urn from the dining room table into the
living room, installed him on a coffee table so we could fit everyone
around the table to eat.
Farmkid finished eating first, as usual, and was excused and ran off to
play. We could hear her thumping around, and could hear her voice, and then
she was laughing uproariously at something. She’s an only child, and spends
some time alone, so she’s used to playing by herself and doing all the
voices herself and such, not unusual.
When we were done with dinner, she came out to the kitchen and someone
asked her what she’d been doing, and she said she’d been telling Grandpa
jokes. He loved them, she informed us.
(the jokes, and some photos of what came next, behind the cut, including a
fun and sort of odd little ritual Farmkid conducted of her own volition
with our slightly-bemused participation.)
[The three jokes: 1) Q: What bees make milk? A: Boo-bies! 2) Knock knock.
Who’s there? Interrupting cow. Interrupting cow wh-MOO! 3) Knock knock.
Who’s there? Interrupting chicken! Interrupting chi– BUH-GAWK!]
He would love them, is the thing, so she’s not wrong.
Then she asked her mother if she’d lie down on the roll of butcher paper my
mom keeps in the house so Farmkid could trace around her and then color her
in to be Grandpa. Out of all of us, Farmsister is probably the closest to
Grandpa’s size; he’d been six foot when i was a kid, but by now he was more
like five nine or ten, and Farmsister’s five nine. And Farmsister had
inherited Dad’s brand-new (late October birthday present) sweatpants and
sweatshirt, because they fit her. So Farmkid is aware that Farmsister is
about Grandpa’s size.
So my sister obliged, and lay down on the paper, and Kid got the marker and
traced around her. We do this a lot; there exist numerous portraits of
Farmkid made this way, and at least one of her 6′2″ father.
(Farmsister has a funny expression because she’s trying to make sure the
paper isn’t crinkled. I went and fixed it for her just after this.) [image
description: a lean-built white woman with short hair, fitted jeans, and a
bulky blue handknitted cardigan is lying on her back on a piece of wide
white paper coming off a roll on a wooden floor with a small child holding
one end of it near her feet. The woman’s hands are over her head.]
once she was traced, Farmsister and Farmkid got a box of crayons and drew
in details to color the tracing in to look like Grandpa.
[image description: a small child in a purple shirt and a woman in a blue
cardigan are both kneeling on the wooden floor coloring with crayons on a
life-sized outline of a person made with slightly wobbly blue lines.
(Farmkid clearly traced extra tightly around the thighs, which are
excessively skinny.) The feet have been extended to be in brown boxy
slippers.]
Farmkid gave Grandpa a fictional sweatshirt that said “Love” across the
front (Dad preferred not to wear clothing with logos or slogans, if
possible) and she also colored in his cellphone holster bright orange and
moved it to the front of his belt, when his was black leather and he wore
it on his hip (and sometimes there were two and one of them was actually a
concealed-carry gun holster, because Dad had his concealed-carry permit; I
knew this and hadn’t quite realized it until I held it in my hands while we
were inventorying the contents of the gun safe to ensure everything was
present and in compliance with the license).
Farmkid also gave him wild plaid pants, which I think she was imagining,
but Mom confirmed he’d actually owned (and worn) a pair of plaid pants,
which she had made for him. Several pairs; I know of some from photos and
some from my memory.
[img desc: the woman and the child are kneeling at the top of the photo,
the child in the woman’s lap: in front of them is the tracing of the
person, colored in with gray hair and a moustache and a watch on one wrist
and plaid pants and a blue sweatshirt with the word “LOVE” across the
belly, and an orange sun by the head. Next to the woman, on the floor, is a
wooden box with a brass plaque; this is the urn that contains my father’s
cremains.]
When she was done, Farmkid had Grandma write the date– “Write it the short
fancy way, Grandma,” she said, and so Mom wrote it 12/28/20– and then ran
and got the box of Grandpa’s ashes and set it down next to the portrait.
“Do you like it, Grandpa?” she asked, and then immediately in the deepest
voice her almost-7-year-old vocal chords could manage, she said, “I like it
very much, [Farmkid]!”
We all gathered around and agreed it was pretty great. Then Farmkid asked
if she could put cookies on Grandpa’s urn. Now, we don’t come from a
culture with a strong recent tradition of ancestor veneration, so I don’t
really know how it specifically works (and I’d love to hear from anyone who
does; I don’t want to try to enter any closed traditions or whatever, but
it seems so commonplace in many places. I’ll have to research it), but I
pointed out that many cultures do put food and drink offerings on the
graves of ancestors but many also will offer less-tangible things, such as
paper replicas. The way I explained it was that since the body does not go
to heaven, then physical things to sustain the body don’t go either; you
want to offer the spirit of the thing, the idea or essence of the thing you
want the relative to have. So I suggested a paper cookie.
So she drew a cookie into the hand of the traced effigy, and then also cut
out a life-size replica of a cookie from the edge of the paper, and brought
it along when we put the urn back on the coffee table, and set it under the
corner of the run. Then she was struck by the fact that Grandpa always
quietly boasted of how much he loved his hand-knit socks that kept his feet
warm, so we ran upstairs and with Grandma’s help, picked out a good pair of
his hand-knit wool socks out of his sock drawer, and set them atop the urn
as well.
[image description: a reddish wooden box with a brass plaque bearing my
father’s name and birth and death dates, sitting on a marble-topped coffee
table with a neatly-folded American flag tucked behind it. Atop the urn
sits a carefully-but-childishly hand-drawn replica of a chocolate chip
cookie, and a lovely pair of hand-knit wool socks in blue and green and
charcoal self-striping yarn, balled neatly up one inside the other.]
Throughout all of this, Farmkid was cheerful and earnest and amused, and we
all thought how well she was taking all this. Shortly after, it was
bedtime, and she went home and went to bed.
And her mother had to get in the bed with her, and they lay there and
sobbed and sobbed together, and Farmkid cried, “I’ll never be whole, Mama,
I’ll never be whole again.”
No, none of us will. That’s how this works. I’m sorry, kid. We’re all sorry.
I’d sort of been wondering if she really understood– I was pretty sure she
did, but that puts that to rest. No, she really understands. She knows
exactly what’s happened, and that she will never see him again in this
life, and she completely understands what she’s lost.
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