A DAY AT THE CEMETERY

One day when my youngest son was about five years old I found myself in a deep conversation with him on a number of subjects during a long, roundabout walk home from the auto repair shop. It was his idea to walk.

"We need to spend some time together, Dad," he said. "Why don't we walk home instead of calling Mom to pick us up?"

Perceptive, huh? How could I refuse, even if I had wanted to?

Our walk took us by the city cemetery. It's one of those lovely old graveyards with stands of mature trees and shrubs and lots of markers and monuments stretching out across acres of verdant grounds.

"Hey, Dad," my son said excitedly, "look at all that grass. That would be a good place for a picnic, huh?"

"It's a pretty place for sure," I said, "but we shouldn't have a picnic here."

"Why not?"

"Well, because this is a cemetery," I replied.

"What's a cemetery?" he wanted to know.

You see? They always catch you off guard like that. Have you ever had to explain a cemetery to a five-year-old without the Internet to back you up? But as almost always happens, I was on my own.

"A cemetery is a place where they bury people when they have passed away," I said. "There's someone who has passed away under each one of those markers."

Simple explanation, I thought. That should do it. But it didn't occur immediately to me that most of what I had said, and the words I'd used to say it, had no meaning to my son.

"What does 'pass away' mean, Dad?"

"It means to die."

"What does 'die' mean?" he asked.

Hmmm. I wonder why we say that someone "passed away" instead of the straight forward truth, that he just up and died? Which is easier to explain? It would have been so much more uncomplicated if everybody still lived on a farm and had the every-day chance to see the cycle of life up close.

My brain was flashing ideas to explain this phenomenon of death. Hey, we had a cat that got run over by a car. There's the quick answer, I thought.

We had stopped walking by now and were sitting on the low block wall surrounding the cemetery. I pulled him close and began. "Do you remember when Junior, the cat, got hit by a car the other day?"

"Yes," he said with a sniffle as he remembered his dear friend.

"Well, Junior was dead. He had passed away. He had died. That's why we dug the hole in the back yard and buried him.

Suddenly my son's demeanor changed. He looked over his shoulder at the grave markers behind us. There was a hint of panic in his eyes as a new realization dawned on him.

"People die, Dad?"

It had not struck me that he could understand death on one level relating to his cat, but that I had just given his young confidence a jolt by suggesting to him that all living things shared a similar, common fate. This called for a delicate touch, something I'm not famous for.

"Everybody dies sooner or later," I began as I hugged him closer. "Just like cats and birds and horses. Everything that lives has to die."

"Like Junior?" he asked.

"Yes."

"So, Junior is gone forever and is never coming back?"

I didn't want to deal with this. "Well, his presence is gone," I began. I wasn't even sure what I was talking about, but my son's expression told me that I was starting too far up in the clouds.

I tried again. "His body is gone. But the real Junior will always be with us. In a way you can have him with you whenever you remember him and how much you loved him. So part of him is still with us, you see?"

During the few silent moments that followed this pronouncement I wondered it it had sounded as plausible to my son as it had to me.

"But I won't be able to see Junior though, will I?"

"No."

"He'll just be in my heart, huh?"

"Yes."

His eyes began to widen as this information sunk in. After a few seconds he asked, "Are you gonna' die, Dad?"

Ah, the moment of truth.

"Yes, Pal, someday I'll die and be buried in a cemetery, too," I said. I didn't want to get into all that other stuff like cremation and being lost at sea and "dust-to-dust." Why ask for trouble?

His next response was quicker. "What will they do with all your stuff?" he wanted to know.

"What stuff do you mean?" I asked

"Oh, like your glasses and your books. Stuff like that."

"Well, I won't have any use for those things after I die," I explained. "All those things will be given to you and your brothers, or to other folks who need them."

That seemed to satisfy him for a few minutes. Then he leaned away from me and looked over his shoulder at the grave markers again.

"All those people out there are dead?" It was a statement as much as a question.

"Yes."

There were a few more moments of silence as he surveyed the cemetery. This death business is tough, and I admit that I'm still trying to understand it.

Finally he said, "Does anybody ever dig 'em up just to check on 'em?"

          -- From a book I'm working on called "The Car Wash That Ate the Green Wrinkle", a sequel to "I Only Laugh When It Hurts".