I was not yet 2 years old, and had the habit of climbing out of my crib and crawling into bed with my mom every morning. So I did that as usual one morning, but I was shocked to see that there was someone else already in bed with her. I immediately tried to wake her to warn her, saying "Mommy, who’s that man in your bed!" He had come home very late, after I was already asleep, so I had no idea who he was. I have always loved my dad, but looking back, I can see signs throughout my time with him that there was always this feeling in the background of having to "share my mom with this man." He may have felt some disconnect too, because he often did special little things for me, although we rarely did things together with just the two of us.

One of the stories Mom told was that he would sometimes bring me a balloon when he came home from work. These were not the shiny Mylar helium-filled ones of today. They were large air filled balloons, shaped and decorated to form cartoon characters and standing upright on cardboard "feet". They would lose their air after a day or two and have to be replaced. So I would remind him in a sing-song voice at the top of my lungs as he left for work…."Dad--dy, don’t forget to bring me a balooo--oon!" One day he came home with a beauty, a likeness of Mickey Mouse. It was very impressive to me, since it was a familiar character and noticeably taller than I was. But alas, tragedy struck poor Mickey almost as soon as he arrived. He accidently got slammed in the door and POPPED! At first I didn’t know what happened, and couldn’t figure out where he had gone. When I saw the remains, I cried, and they practically had to give him a funeral for me to accept that he was gone. But then my dad brought me other balloons so the grief quickly passed.

My grandpa was a surrogate for my dad while he was overseas, so I was the favorite grandchild. He and I were very close, and that continued even after my dad returned, until Grandpa died suddenly when I was four. My parents explained the whole "he’s gone to heaven" scenario, and we visited the grave so that I could see that he was gone. I was sad and I missed him, I but didn’t cry about it much. Then after a couple of weeks when we were going somewhere in the car, I suddenly announced to my parents very matter-of-factly, "Grandpa’s been dead long enough now, let’s go dig him up". When I think about all the folks I have lost since then, including my dad a short 4 years later, I wonder if that set the stage for my views that have formed around death and dying. That the people are not really gone, even when they are suddenly slammed in the door and disappear. They are alive somewhere and still care about me, and do things for me. And I can still talk to them even if I can’t see them. I guess that is just the grown-up way of saying "let’s go dig him up".