By age four, I had seen plenty of dead people. At our church, whole families went to every funeral. So lots of little kids filed past lots of coffins.
We’d stand on tiptoe to look at the dead grandmas and grandpas. They’d lie there, hands folded across their chests and eyes closed as if in deep, peaceful sleep.
They probably like it in there, I thought. They’re probably tired of creaky knees and bent backs and hobbling around with a cane.
I never once thought, though, about how these grandpas and grandmas died. Not until one sunny afternoon when I was riding my tricycle. I had just passed the milk house, when I heard a tiny scream.
On the sidewalk, a mouse writhed in pain. Under the paws of a farm cat, its grey fur was laid open. Blood stained the sidewalk.
I covered my face with my hands. But unable to look away, I peered between my fingers until the screaming stopped and the mouse went limp. And I knew the mouse was gone.
The blood could never go back into the body. Never again would the mouse take a breath or nibble on cheese or run across the grass or hide under a leaf.
I might have seen lots of dead people reposed in their coffins. But the screaming mouse awakened me to the pain of mortality. It showed me that, though death might be like sleep, as the Bible verses so often said, dying was sometimes terrible. And at the next funeral, I was not so quick to assume that dying was an easy answer for the old.
How had those grandpas and grandmas died? How would my mom and dad die? How would I die?
I went to my parents with questions about how to live with hope when I knew they would die someday, when I knew I would die, when none of us knew how we would die.
They helped me begin to understand that death is a natural part of life and that, like life, dying can be hard.
I didn’t like what I was understanding. I had hoped all the grandmas and grandpas fell gently into death without pain. This new knowledge did one good thing—made me feel more grown up. And that helped. Though not enough to keep the screaming mouse out of my dreams.
But despite those dreams, I quit asking questions. I somehow felt I didn’t want to grow up anymore. At least not for a long time.
Apple to Apple 