Tonight, the second to last night of 2012, the girls are watching a movie upstairs, my husband is playing cards with friends, the dog is stretched out on the chair and I am half-watching tv, half-perusing the internet.

Last night, two of our nephews spent the night. They happily played with legos, ate pizza, colored, watched a movie, devoured pancakes, ran circles around the kitchen, ate lunch and went home. The younger of the two fell asleep in the car on the way back to his house. Just how we like them, full bellies and exhausted.

It has been a good year. We have welcomed a brother-in-law and four nieces to our ever-expanding family and said goodbye to a dear family friend after a painful - and thankfully - short battle with cancer.

We welcome 2013 without any negativity, with only good thoughts and plans, with happy, healthy hearts and a good balance for life.

Our dear sweet darling seven year old has asked some hard questions lately.

 

Why do they bury people in clothes?

 

Because an open casket at a funeral would be really weird if the person that died was naked. (laugh) Funerals aren’t really so much for the person that had died as the people that are left behind. It helps people feel a little bit better about someone dying and having to bury someone they love if they know that the person is buried in a certain sweater that they really liked. It’s kind of the last picture in their minds they will have of the person that died. We talked about the high school girl in a nearby town that had been very sick. When she died, she was buried in her dance uniform and it probably helped the people that loved her know that she was buried wearing something that she really loved and was happy when she danced.

 

Why would someone spend thousands of dollars just to bury someone? ‘Cause in “Nanny McPhee” the dad puts dead people in clothes. (in the movie, the dad is a mortician)

 

Well, there are rules about where and how a person can be buried. Kind of like when you build a house, the basement has to be put in the ground in a certain way so that the dirt around it doesn’t have any problems and the basement is protected. Burying people is the same kind of idea. The state requires certain kinds of containers to protect the body and the dirt around it. Remember, that there are different ways to bury people. You can use a casket or you can cremate the body – which, remember is a really hot fire that turns the body (and the clothes) into ashes like a campfire. If you have someone cremated, you can bury the ashes and will have to follow some of the same rules as burying a casket. You can also put the ashes in a pretty box or vase and keep it in your house. Remember, at Rob & Teresa’s house they have a pretty container with the ashes of their dog that died and was cremated. “that’s kind of creepy” “yes, it is”

 

Is Santa real? ‘Cause my friends say that it’s just your parents buying stuff. (after the approximately 15^th time she has asked this question in the last month and we’re waiting in the driveway because we can hear sirens in the distance of the fire truck that takes Santa around our little town – which we must have missed because we could hear but not see the fire truck)

 

Oh, honey. I know this isn’t what you want to hear - no Santa is not real. A very long time ago in Europe there was a man named Nicholas who gave things to people who were not able to buy them. It became a tradition that people surprised others with gifts that could not buy them for themselves. And that became a tradition of showing people how much you care about them by surprising them with a gift. Santa is an idea, it is a happy tradition of love and giving that was started a very long time ago, and when people moved from Europe to our country they brought the tradition along. It is a way for family and friends to give presents to the people they care about. It is a way to give to people charity where the people receiving might be embarrassed that they need help – and the people giving want to be able to show their love and how much they care about people. Remember when we bought the toy for my work? It’s going to a family that cannot afford to buy their children presents so we kind of got to be Santa for that family. It is also important to keep the tradition going and not spoil the surprise for other people. I named off some younger cousins and explained that it’s really nice to be surprised so to make sure and keep the tradition going – that it is a part of being a family.

 

Just when I think, why doesn’t Erik get some of these hard questions? She came up with “Where do babies come from, how do they get made, really?” for him in the car after school and he was trapped.

 

Erik handled this one with a rather scientific description and she seemed okay with the answer – for now. Hopefully that will hold her for awhile - who knows when she’ll want more information on the subject.