Words I Was Ready For

My son goes through the ebb and flow of missing his father.  Weeks can go by with little to no mention of him.  Then, for no rhyme or reason, he can't make it through three nights in a row without crying.  It is something that I have come accustomed to.  Even though my son was only 20 months old when Dale passed, as he has gotten older, he has gotten more aware.  He knows that other children have a father and he doesn't.  He is working through all of that and is trying to make sense and accept that.  It breaks my heart to see him upset and cry, but he never really had the chance to grieve him when he did die, because he was so young.  It seems perfectly natural to me for him to go through this process.

I also readied myself for words that would be completely logical to a child and words that I finally heard two weeks ago.  "Mommy, I want to die so that I can see daddy."  If I hadn't prepared myself for this, I would have lost my sh!t.  But it seems like a reasonable request at the age of 6, when you don't quite understand what death really means.

Now if you don't think that there was a part of me inside screaming at the top of my lungs, then you're crazy!  But, since I readied myself, I told him that I missed daddy too and how wonderful it would be to see him again.  However, I told him that if he died, then that means that I would never see him again and that would break my heart.  We talked about all of the wonderful things that we do in life that he wouldn't be able to do or see again.  He seemed to understand and had to settle for feeling daddy in his heart instead.