Death and Other Real Things

A long, long time ago, before Finn could really talk (which happened really, really early), I bought him a book about a snowman. There's a boy, and he builds the snowman, and it joins him on all of these adventures. And then it melts. Finn didn't have many words at the time, but he did know how to express his feelings. The book is mostly pictures, so he could get it without words. But after "reading" it, Finn simply said, "Sad."

So recently, a bird in Avery's class, I think it was named "Lemon" also died a peaceful death. Avery told me that they read a story by Margaret Wise Brown about kids who find a dead bird in the forest and they bury it. And then they buried Lemon in a heart shaped box, with a towel. He told me "Matthew wrote, "I miss you,' on a piece of paper and they put it in the box." Then, as a class, they buried the bird. I asked Avery how he felt about this, and he simply stated, "All living things die. This bird was just old. All birds die, you know, mommy. All birds."

So that is that.

So I am getting to something here. Today, Walker was reading the paper and read, "Oh, Solomon Burke died! Pop Tom loves Solomon Burke." So Avery ran over to Walker, and was very interested. He asked, "Who is Solomon Burke?," and, "What happened? How did he die? Where? Can I see the picture?" Then, he looked at him and asked, "Can I see the picture of when he died?" And we explained that they wouldn't show a picture of that. But he saw the bird, why not this?, he wondered.

These are just very big life lessons he's learning, and he's just four. And I remembered something Uncle Eric said when we were talking about the melting snowman when Finn was very young. I was concerned, I thought the book maybe was too intense. He said, "He needs to learn about death and other real things." So that seems to be just what is happening...