So I’m Driving Along… Sayin’ Prayers
(I’ve been wanting to blog more – about my actual life – but couldn’t settle on how. Just now it occurred to me that 97% of the stories I tell start with “So I’m driving along…” followed by some gem of a conversation with one of my kids or brilliant thought of my own. So here we go, let’s call this series “So I’m Driving Along…” Frequency dependent on my kids’ entertainment value and my own fluctuating genius.)
So I’m driving along with my almost-four-year old and he announces to me, “Prayin to heaven is kinda like talkin’ to that person in our house.”
Hard brake.
“What person in our house?!”
“Dat person… dat person we can’t see but she talks to us. Me not member her name.”
We’ve had quite a few conversations recently about heaven, death and prayer since our sweet old lady dog is, well… she’s on her way out. (We all are. Act accordingly.) (There’s never an inappropriate time for a Jack Nicholson quote.) Anyone who has a fur family member knows how hard this stage of pet ownership is. If you don’t, I won’t try to explain it, but trust that it is dreadful. We’re doing our best to help the kids prepare and process and for our family that includes discussing heaven which inevitably means increased conversations about other heavenly entities, prayer etc.
So that’s how we got here – to random comments about “prayin’ to heaven.”
How we got the person in the house that we cannot see was less obvious.
Now, if my kid sees dead people, I wanna be cool about it. Supportive, while providing the appropriate resources. Like psychiatrists or priests or crystals or something. Whatever.
“I don’t think I know that person… When do you talk to her?”
“Me talk to her lots of times!”
“What do you talk to her about?”
“Me tell her when me need tings.”
“Oh… like how we pray to God when we need help with things?”
“Yeah! Me pray to her when me needs a diff-er-ent show on the tv or when me wants to hear her do toot noies!!!”
Silence.
“Alexa. You’re talking about Alexa.”
“Yeah!! Dats it! Me does praying to Alexa and she helps me, just like God and Jesus!”
Amen, kid.
