Yesterday evening, my wife and kids surprised me with pizza and stromboli for dinner. <\/p>\n
“Daddy,” the four year old called. “We got you a special treat!”<\/p>\n
I ran down the stairs. “Oh yeah?”<\/p>\n
“Yeah,” he nodded. “Because you’ve had such a tough day.”<\/p>\n
During dinner, my wife excused herself to go to the bedroom. After a few minutes, I checked on her. She waved me away. “Go stay with the kids,” she said. “I’m fine. Really, I’ll be there in a little bit.”<\/p>\n
The kids were understandably confused and upset when I returned. <\/p>\n
“What’s wrong with momma?” one asked.<\/p>\n
“Is she going to be okay?” the other one chimed in.<\/p>\n
“She’s just sad,” I said. “She’ll be back in a little bit.”<\/p>\n
By the time she returned, the six year old had finished his pizza and was drawing a picture of a fish. The four year old was still eating. <\/p>\n
“I think we need to,” my wife whispered.<\/p>\n
“I know” I nodded. There are some things I simply am not ready to discuss with them. Unfortunately, my readiness is rarely relevant. I took a deep breath. <\/p>\n
“Okay guys,” I said. “We need to talk.”<\/p>\n
They ignored me. They always ignore me when I have something important to say.<\/p>\n
“Do you remember Uncle Ed?” I asked. Something in my tone or phrasing caught their attenton. Both stopped what they were doing and looked at me, eyes wide. I noticed my oldest son’s chin start to quiver. “He died this morning.” I said quietly.<\/p>\n
The six-year old’s mouth dropped open. “He died?” he whispered.<\/p>\n
I nodded.<\/p>\n
“So we won’t get to see him again?”<\/p>\n
I nodded again. A heavy silence settled on our little kitchen.<\/p>\n
“Well,” the four-year old said, gesturing with his hands. “There’s one good thing. There’s one thing that’s good. That is, there’s one thing, kinda good. What’s that place called again? That place?”<\/p>\n
“Heaven?”<\/p>\n
“Well, no. That’s good, but no. The place with the rocks and the writing.”<\/p>\n
“A cemetary?”<\/p>\n
“Yes. Now he gets to have his name written on a stone in the cemetary. And we can visit him there.”<\/p>\n
I shook my head. “I don’t think that’s such a good thing.”<\/p>\n
“Yeah,” my six-year old had recovered himself. “But it’s good that he’s in heaven.”<\/p>\n
“That is good,” his little brother agreed. “It’s really really good.”<\/p>\n
“Yeah,” the six-year old nodded. “We’ll be able to see him when we get there.”<\/p>\n
“Yes,” I said. “That’s true.”<\/p>\n
Goodbye, Ed. We all miss you, and I hope you had yourself a little chuckle up in heaven as you watched the kids try to reassure me.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Yesterday evening, my wife and kids surprised me with pizza and stromboli for dinner. “Daddy,” the four year old called. “We got you a special treat!” I ran down the stairs. “Oh yeah?” “Yeah,” he nodded. “Because you’ve had such a tough day.” During dinner, my wife excused herself to go to the bedroom. After […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[118,122,124],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-558","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-daddytales-c","category-daddytales-n","category-daddytales-sad"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p6DpYi-90","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.pat-matthews.com\/stories\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/558","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.pat-matthews.com\/stories\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.pat-matthews.com\/stories\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.pat-matthews.com\/stories\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.pat-matthews.com\/stories\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=558"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.pat-matthews.com\/stories\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/558\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.pat-matthews.com\/stories\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=558"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.pat-matthews.com\/stories\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=558"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.pat-matthews.com\/stories\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=558"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}