The night after Kenny died, our grandson Emory came home from spending the night with relatives. We couldn’t take him with us to the hospital because we didn’t want him to see his Papa lying in a hospital bed with tubes all over him and machines hooked up everywhere. Emory would have been terribly traumatized from seeing that and he wouldn’t be able to understand why his Papa wouldn’t wake up. No child should ever have to see or experience that.
We didn’t tell Emory that night that his Papa had died or what happened to him. He had just turned 4 a few weeks before and there’s no way he’d be able to comprehend what death is and the circumstances that led up to it. Kaitlin and I had talked about how we’d tell Emory that Kenny died and we were at a loss as to what to say. As much as we were all hurting we knew Emory would hurt in a much different way because he was 4 and he loved his Papa so much. The two of them were extremely close and Emory’s world would never again be the same.
When Emory came in the house that night we were all sitting in the den. Emory instinctively knew something was different and not right. He sat on the floor with his mom and dad and didn’t talk as much as he usually does. At one point he said out of the blue, “Papa’s not here”. We were surprised at his comment as we hadn’t said anything about Kenny dying in front of him.
Kaitlin asked Emory, “Where do you think he’s at?” Emory’s answer was, “He disappeared in the dark”. She then asked him what was in the dark and he replied, “The trees”. He said these things so matter-of-factly and it really stunned us. We all just looked at each other and didn’t know what to say. This 4 year old child knew his Papa wasn’t there anymore. He knew this without anyone telling him.
So, we didn’t have to tell Emory that night that Kenny died. Instead, he told us from a 4 year-old’s perspective. Kenny essentially had “disappeared in the dark” and he wasn’t ever going to be coming back.
As the days turned into weeks Emory asked about his Papa quite frequently. He asked where he was and if he was coming back. Kaitlin decided to tell him that Kenny died and went to live up in the clouds in Heaven. Emory didn’t really understand this but he accepted this answer. He talked about Kenny a lot and said so many times that he wished that his Papa could come back down from Heaven in the clouds. When he said that, we would tell him that Papa couldn’t come back down here and that Heaven up in the clouds was his home now. The look on his face when we would tell him that was of a quiet hurt. I can’t even imagine what was going through his little mind when he heard those words.
Because Emory had just turned 4 when Kenny died I knew that realistically he’d only remember him through pictures and videos. Thank goodness I took a lot of them together, even though it annoyed Kenny when I took pictures of him. I would show Emory the pictures and videos often to keep Kenny’s memory fresh in his mind. Kaitlin also had a little pillow custom made with Kenny’s picture on it. Emory calls it his “Papa pillow” and he sleeps with it.
Emory has said on several occasions that he wished he could set a trap for his Papa to come back down here from Heaven in the clouds. He says it with such conviction and I know he believes it’s something that could work. In his 4 year-old mind that’s all it would take to get Kenny back. I wish it was that easy. My heart has shattered into a million tiny pieces each time he’s said this and I have to tell him that his Papa can’t come back down here, no matter how much we all want him to.
I decided to start a habit with Emory where we throw kisses up to Kenny in Heaven in the clouds. We catch the ones he throws down to us and we put them all over our faces. We then give ourselves a big hug and throw that up there, too. We catch the hug Kenny throws back down to us and hug ourselves tightly with it. Emory likes doing this and I hope it helps keep Kenny’s memory alive within him.
Sometimes when we’re driving in the car Emory will ask me, “Is that the cloud that Papa lives at up in Heaven?” We’ll look at the different clouds and try to decide which one could be Heaven. When I asked him last week which cloud in the sky he though Heaven was in he told me it was the biggest one up there and that the smaller clouds were too little to be Heaven. I asked him what he thought was in Heaven and he told me toy trains. I guess to him that playing with toy trains is what people do after they die and go to Heaven. That must be a 4 year olds version of what Heaven is.
When I was a little girl my grandmother told me that the rays of sun coming out from the clouds was how you got up to Heaven. She died when I was 8 and every time I would see the rays of sun coming out from the clouds I’d think to my child self If I could just get to those rays of the sun I could climb up to Heaven to see her. The Stairway to Heaven is right there in front of us all, if only we could get to it.
Yesterday when I was driving to Wegmans to get a pizza for dinner like Kenny and I used to do for dinner dates, I looked up in the sky and saw the most brilliant cloud that had rays of light radiating up from behind it. Those beams of light from the sun shot out of the top of the cloud and reached upwards like the light from a lamp does shining up to the ceiling. The edges of the cloud were so bright it looked like it was electrified.
I was awe struck by this cloud and I just could not look away from it. It’s the kind of cloud you expect to hear angels blowing trumpets from. I took several pictures of it so I’d never forget how beautiful it was. I decided that this must be the cloud that Kenny lives in up in Heaven. This must be the one where Heaven is.
As I stared at this cloud and knew it was the very one where Heaven is at, and that’s where Kenny is, I realized it wasn’t an accident that I was seeing it right at that moment. Kenny was letting me know that he was still here with me and he’d be there for our dinner date, if only in spirit.