As Usual, The Lad Has a Point

Last weekend, Daniel, as is his wont, asked me how many days I would be off from work. I told him I'd be home on Saturday, Sunday and Monday, and technically I wouldn't be going to work on Tuesday, but I also wouldn't be home that day, because I had a funeral to attend, for an old friend who had died.

Daniel's showed very appropriate horror at the recurrence of death among people in our lives:

"Again?!!! ...That's too bad."

I told him that people actually die every day. But Daniel wanted to see if there were a way to contain the statistics, even if they could not be eliminated, perhaps for at least as long as a day or so:

"Well Daddy, on any days, does just one person in the whole wide world die?"

Of course, the good news is that people are born every day as well. But it's refreshing to hear someone express a proper abhorrence for death itself - even of people we don't know, in a world where we usually treat this fact as something of a statistic, most of the time.

(January 14, 2012)