Children's prayers

dg5 prayed tonight. He was reverent the quickest. The boys are now racing to see who can be reverent first. It seems like an oxymoron. Dg5 got there first tonight and said the prayer.

Dg5 prayed for Grandma Daisy first. Interesting since we told him she died last night. We talked about her death today and dg5 said he was sad. "I'm sad too," parroted wg3.

Nh said this morning she was glad for Grandma Daisy. That wasn't an emotion I'd thought of yet. Gladness. She said, "Grandma isn't having trouble breathing. And she isn't hurting anymore. And she can stand up and walk around." My wife is very wise.

We made arrangements to travel back today. Sis is bringing the boys and we're all travelling out together on the same flight and sharing a car. We've asked kk if we can crash with her and the gang and she said sure and that she had plenty of room. I'm excited to see kk and gang, but it will be a sad trip I think.

I cryptically texted km17 today, "It is finished." I knew she'd know what it meant. She called later that day to see how I was doing. For the last several weeks I'd been trying to get km17 to visit her great-grandmother, explained she was ailing, that Grandma Daisy would like to see her. Maybe I failed to teach her the right thing; she never went. She was never close to Grandma Daisy.

I remember my Grandma Lola. I used to play checkers at her house when I was a kid. She was a chain smoker, but an X-ray in her late 80s revealed clear lungs. We eventually found out the old bird never inhaled; who knows why. She suffered from dementia at the end. I remember one time when the police found her miles from her home wandering in the dead of night in her nightgown. Shortly afterwards they put her in a nursing home. In the nursing home she had a cabbage patch doll she called Elvis. I went to visit her once and she called me by my Dad's name. She called a nurse a curse and told her to lose some weight. Then there was the time we ate ice cream on the lawn when someone my Mom knew drove by and honked, my then 90-something great-grandma Lola shot them the bird for their trouble. She was a spunky old fart.

She died Dec 21, 1987 shortly after I moved away. It felt like it wasn't part of my life, like I wasn't connected. Oh the questions I'd riddle her with now though. I should have known better, should have been wiser. I didn't trust that visiting her mattered, but I know now it did. I pray my own children will be wiser. Thanks to my Mom for the visits we did make. I wouldn't have made them on my own.