Tonight Rabbit was asking me the difference between a baby and a toddler.  When I told her, she said, “You’re good at thinking.”

She was looking at pictures on our refrigerator.  She held up one of herself, as a toddler, wearing footie pajamas, a red scarf and a red hat.  “Why am I wearing a hat with my jammies?” she laughed.

“Oh that was Christmas!  Great-Grandma Betty sent you that hat,” I said.  “That was her last Christmas,” I added, before catching myself.  PC’s grandma died shortly before the following Christmas. 

“Why was it her last Christmas?” Rabbit asked.

“Oh, honey, she got really sick and died right before Christmas that next year.”

So we talked, as felt natural in a kitchen where rolls are baking in the oven and nobody is grouchy, about life and death and the way things go.  Rabbit asked how people die. I said their hearts stop beating.  And of course, she asked but why do their hearts stop beating?

Well, sometimes they get old and sick.  And sometimes they have a bad accident and get hurt.  And sometimes their time is just over.  And sometimes, some very sad times, a person gets sick when they are young.

Rabbit stared at me.  She knows about old people who get sick, from hearing me talk about my dad.  But by the look in her eyes, I knew that THE THOUGHT had occurred to her. 

She looked down at her hands and twisted her fingers together, and when she looked up, her eyes were swimming with tears.

“Mommy, I don’t ever, ever, ever want you or Daddy to die.”

Well, hell….how do you just serve dinner after that?  I said “Well, honey, it’s not going to happen for a very long time.  We’re all going to be very careful and take good care of ourselves and be good to each other and you won’t have to worry about that until you are much, much older.  So please don’t think about it tonight.”

Silence.

“Okay?  Rabbit?  Don’t think about it right now.”

She sighed a shuddering sigh, and then buried her head in my waist, her arms around my hips. “Okay.”