My youngest son never fails to amaze me. I sat them down earlier tonight and told them that we’d be going to Kay’s for a little while to help her take care of her mom, who everyone calls Nana. Her eventual death will be the first human death for either boy to experience (we’ve already been through the drama of losing the family dog but they were both very young) and I wanted to be sure that they aren’t blindsided as to what to expect. I’m no good at this ‘talking about your feelings’ bullshit, so I’m pretty much flying blind.
Anyways, after going through the rigamarole of questions regarding heaven and other fairy tales that we tell each other to make ourselves feel better (hehe), my youngest says something that broke my heart.
“Has Nana’s hair fallen out like the Skin Horse said it would?”
It took him a minute to make me understand what in the hell he was talking about. When he was born, Nana gave us a huge boxed set of books with coordinating stuffed animals of the main characters of the books. We still have Stellaluna, The Very Hungry Caterpillar and The Velveteen Rabbit animals and books on the bookcases in the kids’ room. When he was little, we read those (and many other books) over and over again, but the Velveteen Rabbit was always his favorite. For those that haven’t read the books 30 gazillion times, this is a pertinent quote:
“Real isn’t how you are made,” said the Skin Horse. “It’s a thing that happens to you. When a child loves you for a long, long time, not just to play with, but REALLY loves you, then you become Real.”
“Does it hurt?” asked the Rabbit.
“Sometimes,” said the Skin Horse, for he was always truthful. “When you are Real you don’t mind being hurt.”
“Does it happen all at once, like being wound up,” he asked, “or bit by bit?”
“It doesn’t happen all at once,” said the Skin Horse. “You become. It takes a long time. That’s why it doesn’t happen often to people who break easily, or have sharp edges, or who have to be carefully kept. Generally, by the time you are Real, most of your hair has been loved off, and your eyes drop out and you get loose in your joints and very shabby. But these things don’t matter at all, because once you are Real you can’t be ugly, except to people who don’t understand.”
Some how, in his 8 year old mind, he equated ‘becoming real’ as dying. The saddest part to me is that, not only did Nana give him that book, but the description of what happens when you become real is exactly what is happening…with the exception of the eyes dropping out bit.
Through the wonders of science and chemotherapy, Nana has lost most of her hair, has no strength and, to a child, will look very, very shabby.
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