Through a Child's Eyes

Ethan has brought so much joy to all of us along this journey. I just wanted to take a minute to share some of his thought processes over the last few days. When my dad passed away, we asked Ethan where Papa went. He responded, without any hesitation, "He's wis (with) Jesus wis his new body and he can walk all by himself and talk all by himself AND, he can fix cars!" He knows that Papa is in heaven.

After he went down for a nap Saturday afternoon, Ang left to go to the viewing at the funeral home. When he woke up from his nap he asked Frankie where his mama was. When Frankie told him that she went to see Papa's body, he broke into a hysterical crying bout saying, "I don't want my mama to go to heaven yet! I want her to stay here!" It took about 10 minutes of Frankie assuring him that his mom had gone to see Papa's old body, not his new body in heaven, and that she would be back very soon before he would calm down. Poor little guy! I can only imagine the panic that would have overtaken his little mind as he thought his mama had gone to heaven to see Papa.

Ethan's shining moment though, was definitely at the cemetery. Gerry shared a few comforting words with our family and encouraged us to share the memories and the funny stories. He said, "Sometimes he (my dad) was just crazy!" of course meaning, sometimes he was hilarious, funny, had wild ideas... you get the picture. All of a sudden, Ethan very loudly whispered to Mike with the sincerest concern in his voice, "Was Papa crazy?!" And then said, "Crazy like this?" and proceeded to make a "crazy" face to Mike by blowing up his cheeks, pulling on his ears and wiggling his eye balls around.

We all had to bite our tongues. It seemed like an inappropriate time to laugh out loud yet an appropriate time to allow joy to overflow from his little heart to ours.

Dad's earthly resting place is 1903A4, Garden of Heritage, Eden Brook Memorial Garden. I know... kind of a strange address to post but a few people had asked about it!