19/6/98

Kiss of Death

My wife and I are idiots. We tell our children the truth about death.

    Seven-and-a-half-year-old girls need assurances about death, but the last place they get it is from their parents. (I am presently a big expert on seven-and-a-half-year-old girls.)
    My daughters want to talk about death, but they don't want to know the truth; I want to tell them the truth, but I don't want to talk about it.
    When they ask if I'm going to die, what should I say, ask your mother?
    So I tell them. It's the end of life, and you don't come back, it's final. And that's a big relief to them, because when they hear the words "And that's final!" they know you can always wangle out of it.
    Death is their major obsession these days. That, and tushies. And kissing.
    Interesting that those are also the major obsessions of TV.
    Now, I don't think my girls will have seen 16,000 TV murders by the time they're 18, as estimated in this here magazine recently, because they have other things to do than watch the box. They won't see many kisses either; a man and a woman merely have to eye each other, and my girls start shrieking with horror, saying "Yuck!" or "Oh, noooooo!" and covering their eyes.
    We watched ג€œThe Ten Commandmentsג€ recently. Thousands of people were swallowed up by the sea, and my kids didn't flinch; but when Moses embraced his mother, they were behind the couch, screaming "When's it over?!"
    "Aw c'mon, she's his mother," I said, "and anyway, it's only TV, it's not real."
    But it is, they explained. "They really hugged, and she's not his real mother in real life."
    I didn't want to start explaining the facts of life because at present I'm the only male they'll kiss, and for as long as that lasts, I'd rather not share this bonanza with anybody.

WHEN THEY were younger, they came to terms with mortality quite nicely with Snow White's tidy, comfortable burial. They were very enthusiastic about spending an afterlife rosy-cheeked, wearing a frilly dress, lying above ground in a sparkly crystal coffin. And the finality of it can be compromised by a kiss from a handsome prince, though frankly, they'd rather stay dead than be kissed. I'm assuming they'll grow out of that. 
    Being serious parents, my wife and I are idiots. No, we told them, it's not really like that. Yeah, we told them the truth.
    "Bugs?! You mean bugs eat your body?"
    "Worms, actually."
    "Ichsa!"
    I think what grossed them out the most was the thought of having your body consumed and then being kissed back to life.

THEY NOW understand losing a loved one isn't all bad.
    "Daddy, when you die," Donna said to me recently, "can I have your magnifying glass?"
    That kind of caught me by surprise. I said yes.
    "Oh, goody."
    They have, in fact, experienced grief first-hand. One morning, I awoke to horrific wailing. Recognizing the anguished cries as unlike the ones that usually wake me in the morning -- caused by Nomi wearing Donna's rainboots, or Odelia getting less than precisely one-third of the French toast at breakfast -- I was out of bed like a shot.
    This, I could tell, was serious.
    And it was.
    The family ladybug had passed on.
    It was worse, a couple of years ago, when the butterfly died. My girls, you see, go out into the wilds of Ya'ari Street, trolling for creatures to bring home, not unlike our cats. And one day, they trapped a lovely butterfly.
    It wasn't really difficult, because the butterfly was already dead.
    Odelia refused to listen to reason. She doted on it, made a home for the little feller, talked to it, played with it. Until finally, one day, all its parts fell off.
    The dead butterfly died.
    You can't believe how much Odelia wept.
    The girls became very worried that our cat might someday die. I trotted out the usual reassurances, which, of course, did not mollify them. So I promised that when it happened, we'd go straight to the pet shop and they could choose something else.   
    That's what you're not supposed to say, because nothing on earth can replace a beloved pet. However, what we have is a bad-tempered, melancholic black cat you don't want to get near unless you're wearing armored mail.
    "New pets? You mean, like a gerbil? A dog? A rabbit? A hamster?"
    "Yes, but as long as we have Rovie..."
    They immediately suggested we get rid of her.
    Couldn't do that, I explained, jumping at the chance to impart a little morality. You don't abandon a pet, it's wrong, and anyway she's been part of the family since before you were born, and she trusts us, how would you feel if blah blah blah.
    Some time later, they started asking odd questions.  
    "Daddy, let's say if some poison accidentally fell into a cat's water bowl, would it die?"
    "What would happen if we stopped feeding Rovie?"
    "Daddy, if Rovie somehow fell out the window..."
    "Girls, are you suggesting we kill Rovie?"
    "No! But what if?"
    Well, we solved the problem by getting a second cat, Milky, who's been trying to kill Rovie since the first day. 
    Every so often we get little glimpses of what goes on inside those little minds (the kids, not the cats). When they were five -- I was fighting cancer at the time -- Nomi dreamed that I was "placed in the earth like Yitzhak Rabin," and then a fairy made her and her sisters small, and returned them to their Mommy's tummy so she could get married again.   
    More recently, on my birthday, Odelia came up with a most enigmatic thought. She'd been mulling this over; you could practically hear the churning in her brain as she grappled with this quandary.
    "If you die on your birthday," she finally said, a look of profound contemplation on her face, "do they put cake and balloons on your grave?"