Reflections

Reflections

Jeremy was just over 2 1/2 years old when his baby brother died. I thought he was too young to understand anything, and was also in too much shock to really think of him during the death time. I wish I could say I was a good mom then, but as long as he was being taken care of by someone else, I thought I was doing the right thing. Actually, doing the right thing didn't even occur to me.
A friend has told me that I did take him into a room and tell him Jacob was dead, and that we wouldn't see him again, but I don't remember.

Now I know many things. It has only been in the past few months that I have realized how much Jeremy did absorb. I think that he had to get older in order to have the ability to express his feelings or thoughts. His vocabulary level and my listening level just wasn't able to accommodate his need to tell me how he felt or what he thought. I had read all the books and I wanted to do a good job in handling the situation, but I was often frustrated, because he couldn't talk the way I wanted him to.

The only way he was able to tell me he was having thoughts of Jacob, was by constantly asking me every time we drove by the hospital "lets go up and see Jacob". I would explain patiently that Jacob was not there, nor at home - he was in a special place called Heaven for dead people. Then he would get concerned about himself getting sick and dying, or his mommy or daddy dying. I would then explain how Jacob was different - his body was not strong like his or mine or his daddy's.

One day, in response to his usual question, I took him up to the hospital and showed him the intensive care nursery, the pediatric floor, and we "looked" for Jacob. Since Jeremy was very familiar with the place, he had to check every room before he was convinced that Jacob really was not there. Then I let him play in the playroom, while I walked around, trying to convince myself.
The trip to the hospital seemed to help for awhile, but then he started in with "let's go see Jacob in Heaven". I was at a total loss. One time I said he couldn't unless we died too. Wrong. He became whiny and clingy. If I explained about God, he didn't' want to go to Sunday school cause God took Jacob away and might take him or mommy or daddy away too. It was too much for me. I didn't have the answers for myself, much less a two-three year old. I simply did not know the answers, and so I really flubbed up much of the time. I knew he would not have been so persistent, if I had been able to sort out my own feelings enough to explain it to him. It was definitely a crisis of faith of some sort.

A few days after losing my temper with him about it one time, a friend called. Her cat had just died, and she was going to take it to the pound, would I watch her kids? I told her to hang on, I wanted to bring Jeremy over. I showed him the dead cat, pointed out how the tummy didn't move in and out anymore, how the body was stiff and cold, and how the eyes didn't see anymore. He wanted to know what we were gonna do with the cat, and I told him some people bury the body, and some people cremated the body. He asked what cremation was.  Geez.  I told him Jacob was put in a special machine that made his body into ashes, like an oven, but he was dead, so Jacob didn't feel it. I told him Jacob was cremated and we were gonna take care of the ashes someday.

I told him that although Jacob's body was all gone, his soul was up in heaven. A soul was like Superman's cape. Without his cape, Superman was just normal human being. With his cape, he was special and could fly. Jacob's soul was like Superman's cape - the body was normal but the cape made him able to fly up to heaven.

It helped. That night, all of a sudden, Jeremy started crying. He was sad about Jacob, he said. It was the first time that I felt he really understood why he was crying. Before he had cried, but mostly because I was, or because he could manipulate me by being "sad". It was a bitter-sweet moment for me - it was the first time someone with me understood missing Jacob so much.

There are some things that I wish I had done differently. I should have remembered how it felt to be treated like a child.

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