A Pathway Through Time

Mr. D is 8 years old and can be quite pensive at times (when he’s not in a verbal combat with me!). One evening while eating his orange jello (I think jello is gross, sorry jello fans) and joking around with me, he suddenly put his jello down and threw himself on the couch and began to sob. He finally agreed to whisper in my ear the reason for his sudden sadness. With a face still full of tears he said he was sad because after he dies he won’t be able to come back to earth. I hugged him and said, “Who cares! You will be with me in heaven and we will drive each other crazy like nuts!” (‘like nuts’ is his favourite saying that cracks me up because he says it with such a serious face. In a sentence it loosely means ‘so much’). I also told him he could come back if he really wanted to, but that would be a conversation he would have with God. To lighten the mood, I continued to joke with him about running away from heaven to get away from him to escape to hell for a little vacation. He said he would follow me. I feigned disappointment. He seemed better and started to laugh and be silly again.

Later that evening, after my kids went to bed, I started thinking about what could have triggered such a deep thought. He was happy, energized after rollerblading around the neighbourhood, and generally in a good mood. A blissful moment in childhood, abruptly marred by the thought of death and its finality. I suddenly wished I could take the moment back for him—to keep it as a purely content moment in time. Truthfully, it also broke my heart to hear him talk of his own death.

“I am an instrumental influence, but also just a simple instrument…”

I remembered having similar thoughts as a child as well—what would it feel like to die, what would heaven look like, what would it be like to not be part of earth anymore, and so forth. I don’t know how ‘normal’ these thoughts are at his age or if I should view it as a strange occurrence. The passage of time, I think, is a personal experience. The day to day humdrum of life fill our days until a flash of evidence of change suddenly yanks us to a full stop. Growing up, it was realizing that my worn out white fancy kitten-heel shoes—that I insisted on wearing to school with a dress as often as I could, were all of a sudden too tight—or I had outgrown my favourite sweater, or seeing my school picture from the year before and realizing how child-like I looked.

As a mother, the evidence of change could not be more clearer than when you are forced to clean out your kids’ drawers to make room for bigger clothes, or watching them learn to walk and then suddenly gain speed, or dropping them off at pre-school, incorrectly thinking ‘this is it, their childhood is over’. The kindergarten ‘graduation ceremony’ was a real tear jerker (why do we have to live through that rip-my-heart-out-why-don’t-you moment?!). Or the instant you realize you cannot protect them from the cruelty of this life—when their best friend since kindergarten, for instance, replaces them for the new shiny student in class, leaving your little one alone on the playground wandering around heartbroken with no one to turn to, wishing they could be home with you in your arms. I have to get off this painful memory train…

Whether Mr. D is unconsolable after realizing March break is only one week not two, or whether he cries after realizing that time passes us all by at warp speed—the simple truth remains—I am only his mother who will try to console him, but I do not have the power to elude or evade him from pain. It is their walk through time, their passage way through life on earth. My children’s journey is unique and suited for their own spiritual growth and development. I am an instrumental influence, but also just a simple instrument—one of many that they will use along the way—which I will gladly and humbly be for as long as I am living, and certainly beyond…