“No, buddy,” I said, watching his bobber closely.
“I feeled it move!” Grant insisted as he pushed the pole toward me.
“Grant, look at your bobber, see it?”
“Wu huh,” he said, watching the red and white plastic bobber as it sat perfectly still, afloat in the motionless pond.
“When that goes underwater, you know a fish has swallowed the worm. Then you jerk really hard, okay?”
“Otaaay,” he said in a singsong voice, excitement clear in his features.
“Grandpa teached you how to fishing?”
“How to fish,” I corrected. “And nope, it was Grandma,” I said, thinking of the time my mother had taken Dallas and I out on the lake at her old house in Colorado. My father had been busy with a project, and my mother had taken it upon herself to make us one with nature, though she refused to bait the hook and laid that burden entirely on me.
“Grandma!” Grant said, seemingly tickled at the idea of my mother fishing. He laughed heartily, and I looked down at him, his little, bare feet swinging off the dock. He was such a beautiful boy. I got just as tickled at his laughter and joined him just as his bobber went under.
“Aunt Wose!” he said with big eyes.
“Okay, buddy, jerk hard,” I said, setting my pole down and wrapping my arms around him to show him how to jerk at an angle. When it seemed we’d hooked the fish, I started reeling it in. Grant let go of the pole and stood in my arms, far too excited to do the rest of the busy work. When we’d pulled the fish in and it began to struggle on the deck for air, Grant began to cry.
“No! No, I don’t wanted it to died!” he insisted as I pulled the hook from the fish’s mouth and held it out to him. “No, Aunt Wose!”
“Okay buddy, okay, look,” I said as I set the fish gently in the water and it began to thrash wildly. “He’s still alive.” I looked at a clearly distraught Grant, who nervously watched the water. Was a two-year-old even capable of grasping the concept? After several moments of studying my nephew as he watched the water, I took him into my lap.
“Grant, what does it mean to die?”
“You go way up high,” he said as he pushed his arms into the air, “to heaben.”
My question seemed to upset him more, and I pulled him closer to me to console him. “Buddy, it’s okay,” I said, noting the time and wondering if he needed a nap.
“I don’t want to kill the fishes,” he started again, and I couldn’t help the small amount of heartbreak I felt for him at the empathy he felt. Grant apparently didn’t like needless suffering. I wondered where he’d gotten it from. His heart, though it had a lifetime of aches and pains to get through, was already so beautiful in that he cared so much.
“Baby, what in the world,” I said as he sobbed into my chest.
“I don’t want them to be died.”
“You saw me put him back, baby blue. He’s okay, I promise.”
“Grant died. I don’t want to be died, too.”
And there it was. A full explanation of why my nephew was suddenly terrified of death.
“Who told you Grant died?”
“I heard Mommy say it to Daddy. Is Annabelle going to be died, too?”
Grant looked up at me with a quivering lip, and though I wanted to erase the worry from him, I felt I owed him the truth, even if in the smallest dose. It was apparent I had to do damage control for my sister who I knew deep down hadn’t meant for little ears to hear her conversation.
“Everyone dies, baby, every single thing dies, but you have a long, long, long, long, lonnnnnnng time before that happens, okay?”
“I don’t want to,” Grant protested. Realization struck me as I looked down at my fearful nephew and decided to break the cycle. I too had been afraid of death for far too long.
“Don’t you want to go to heaven?” I said, kissing his sweet, full cheek and wiping his face.
“No,” he protested.
“Oh, buddy, it’s the best place to go. You know there are angels there that sing to you.” Grant lay in my arms, sucking in shattered breaths as I soothed his back with my hands and explained to him what I thought heaven might be like. He was asleep in minutes as I looked over the pond and stroked his back.