Catherine Sevenau

Opener of doors, teller of tales, family scribe.

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Heaven at Four

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my son Matt, age 4

My son ~ When I picked him up from Moon Valley School, I could see he was upset.
“Mom, do you know what happens to us when we die?”
“Do tell.”
“Charlie sang a song about John Henry, and when he died, they buried him in the ground!”
“Well, what did you think happens to people after they die? You don’t see any dead people lying around on street corners.”
After a solemn pause, he said, ”Well, I guess I thought we ate them.”
“No. Not in this country anyway.”
I saw the despair in Matt’s crestfallen face, and realized I could have come up with more thoughtful response.
“If we die, then what’s the point of living?” he demanded.

Matthew was knocked sideways and down an existential path that was immense for a four-year-old. It took a month to comfort him out of it. It took a month for him to think life would be worth living, even if he were going to die at some point. And it took a month for him to bounce back and be four and joyful and himself again.
1974

Postscript: Years later when he was home on college break, I had on a Harry Belafonte CD and that song was playing as he passed by my bedroom door… he laid down his hammer and he died, Lord, Lord, laid down his hammer and he died. 
Oh they took John Henry to the White House, and they buried him in the sand…

He backed up, stuck his head in, and flatly stated, “I never did like that song.”

It took me by surprise how the intensity of that moment at Moon Valley followed him around in the backseat of his mind, simply from a song I grew up listening to, and a song that rocked his world.
1991

my grandson, age 4

My grandson ~ As I was driving down East Napa Street with my four year old grandson, Satchel pipes up from his car seat, “There’s dead people under those rocks you know.” I look over my left shoulder and see he’s talking about at the cemetery.
“I know. That’s where they put our bodies when we die.”
“What do they do with the heads?” he queries.
I explain we no longer need our bodies when our spirit leaves.
“Yeah,” he asks again, “but what do they do with the heads?”

I made a further explanation about death and spirit and burial practices, and it wasn’t until a few days later when I’m telling Elaina the story that she had to explain to me his head question. I never did get back to him on that one. By then we’d moved on to Sparkle Fairies and the Apple Fairy and Hitler and bad men, and it all seemed too much to have to reopen the death conversation.

Matt, age 30, with Sam

Death did not slam my grandson the way it sucker-punched my son. Satch is quite matter-of-fact about death, and is under the assumption that his Great-Grandpa Cal and Matt’s beloved dog Sam are on the roof together because my son looks up from the sofa and points to heaven when his son asks what happened to them.
2007

My grandson’s younger cousin ~ written by Busha, Satchel’s maternal grandmother: My four-year-old granddaughter, who has been experiencing a fear of death the past couple of months, came out with this yesterday, on the 96th birthday of my mother, now six years in heaven:

Mare, age 4

“I’m happy that all my family that is dead is in heaven. And that we all go to heaven and we will all be together again. And I’m happy that their blood is in my body. Because when they are in heaven their sparkles are in my blood and they love me. And then we’re all together and then we will be new babies again. I’m glad I get to be a new baby again because I don’t want to be dead for a whole weekend.”
April 2019

© 2019. Catherine Sevenau.
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Comments

  1. When my son was four my husband and I were very much into Zen. We lived in a very small home on the Russian River. Though tiny it was perfect. We slept in the living room and my two darlings, 2 and 4, shared the bedroom. One night, toddling past the glowing river rock rock hearth, dragging his blanket, my son approached our bed saying, “Mommy, Mommy, I know what Zen is”.
    I cleared my head and asked, “and how is that”?
    He simply grinned that marvelous grin and simply answered “Zen…is…Zen”.
    What an epiphany! So sweet and uncomplicated in the middle of the nite.

  3. Wonderful preserved memories… the wisdom of children. At 5, I remember not understanding why people were upset that Grandma Price (a force of nature) had suddenly had a stroke and died. “But she is in heaven now. Why are you crying?”

  4. I, too, am mad at John Henry for dying… and angry with myself for mentioning it. Matt is right. Long live our heroes and headless death to tyrants.

    • Don’t blame yourself, it was a defining moment in his life that you got to be a part of. Nice goin’. I often worried that I would be the instigator of my grandchildren’s incidents. My mother was the one that dented me. Oh how we come into this life to serve one another.