Fun concepts to explain.

[rivka]

Alex: peeling a stamp off my stamp book, which I carelessly left on my desk. I need an envelope.

Me: Hey! Stamps cost money, so you can't use them without permission. takes it back.

Alex: But I need a stamp. I need an envelope that we're not using, and some stamps.

Me: Why do you need them?

Alex: Because I need to send a letter to my great-grandmother.

Me: Who is your great-grandmother?

Alex: She died.

Me: Honey, you can't send a letter to someone who died.

Alex: Why not?

Me: Because when someone dies, we don't know where they are and no one can see them or be with them anymore. That's why it's so sad when someone dies.

Alex: Oh.

I feel like I bungled that one, inadvertently giving the impression that death is like being swept away to one of the CIA's secret prisons. It would help if she gave me advance warning that I was going to need to come up with a sensitive explanation of life's great mysteries.

Comments

[kip-w.livejournal.com]

Even after Mom's memory was more or less useless, it was still possible to find out things if they were approached in an oblique fashion. Asking her an outright question was right out -- the one thing she knew was that she couldn't remember anything. A quick aside, as if confirming a detail, could sometime elicit forgotten memories.

She seemed happiest near the end -- well, not right at the end, when she was just asleep all the time, but some months before she died, she seemed good-natured and content, finally free of the resentful feelings that were about the last thing to leave her.