Out of the Mouths of Babes

I love it when I have my six-year-old grandson over for a sleepover. I never plan ahead as to what we are going to do or create, because my grandson has it all figured out by the time we pull into the garage.

Yesterday, I met my son, daughter-in-law, and grandkids for breakfast at a local omelet restaurant. After breakfast, Killian and I followed behind my son’s truck to numerous stores to complete errands, then onto their house to pick up Killian’s clothes and other items needed for the sleepover. Deciding to fix tacos for dinner, we needed to stop at Safeway for a few items: ground turkey meat, bleu cheese dressing, fruit medley, milk, mini cookie dough, and one donut for him. He was the perfect child as we maneuvered the aisles while he held onto the shopping cart, although he did ask for toys a lot. With one week to Christmas, I will not buy him any toys, so saying ‘no’ was happening a lot.

When we arrived home, I grabbed the groceries and he grabbed his overnight bag putting it in the guest bedroom. His dad had bought him a Taco Bell chihuahua dog at an antique store, so the first thing we did was look up all of the old commercials with Gidget, nicknamed the Taco Bell chihuahua (commercials aired from 2/7/1994 to 7/21/2009). We laughed our hearts out as we watched these silly yet entertaining ads. While watching a video of the man who was the voice for Gidget on the commercials, Killian wanted to know how they were able to put the man’s voice into the video for Gidget. That’s when I decided to show him the PowerPoint that I created for my husband Scott’s Celebration of Life a few years ago. Before we played the video, I attempted to explain how the music was input into the video by showing where a song was inserted. As we watched the photos from baby to an aging grandpa and listened to the music, Killian made comments and asked questions like, “Why does my daddy look so different now?”, and “How did they put a new heart into Grandpa?” (If you haven’t read The Phoenix Man yet, Scott had a heart transplant in 2007.)

Then we left to visit my friend, Gloria, whose husband Geoff passed away from Parkinson’s and Alzheimer’s last year. Killian wanted to meet her two female dogs, Zaza and Abbie. Although the temperature was just under 50 degrees, we went out in the back yard for Killian to throw a ball for Zaza. Both loved it! And apparently Zaza crashed after we left. But the interesting thing is Killian remembered seeing photos of both Gloria and Geoff in Scott’s video after he was diagnosed with Alzheimer’s. (Scott and I had met Gloria and Geoff through an Alzheimer’s Support Group becoming a foursome.) So after we baked the mini chocolate chip cookie dough and ate tacos, Killian wanted to play UNO (which surprisingly he picked up rather quickly) and then watch Grandpa Scott’s video once more. At the end of the photos is a video taken by Gloria that shows Scott sitting next to Geoff in the nursing home when I was unable to visit for five days with a cold. I was very surprised that he wanted to watch it again, but he was enthralled this time as he noticed all of us aging and our outrageous haircuts.

Later that night while watching the movie Aladdin with Will Smith, a musical fantasy comedy film that I highly recommend for anyone, Killian asked, “When Grandpa went to heaven, who helped him get better?” Luckily, I had the perfect answer that would ease his mind. “Years ago I read a book that described how when people pass away from a very long illness, they go to a hospital, like a hospital here on earth, where there are many special spirits to help them heal from their disease,” I surmised. I’m not sure if he grasped what I said, but I do believe that he felt comforted knowing that his Grandpa Scott was being well taken care of in the afterlife.