Big Mouth Babies

Kevin's Mammaw passed away this past weekend and we spent part of the weekend down in Claxton for her funeral. Of course this was a sad time to say goodbye to seriously one of the sweetest ladies I've ever met- however with kids there is always a funny twist to everything in life. This was really Mason's first experience of going to a funeral of someone he knew so I was a little anxious about he would handle it and didnt know the protocol on when its ok for a child to see the body, etc. Like every other aspect of parenting, I kind of just winged it and wondered if I would find myself on Dr Phil one day trying to defend my reasoning for letting him see a dead body at 4. We had a long conversation on the way down about how Mammaw was with Jesus now and we were going to all get together to talk about how much we loved her and to give Grammie lots of hugs so she isn't sad. There are a lot of things in life that seem like common sense until you try explaining them to a child. Not easy to explain to a 4 year old that even though shes with Jesus we are going to see her asleep in "the big box" as Mason later referred to it. So I gave Mason the option that if he wanted to see her body he could and if he didnt want to see it that was completely fine too. Without any thought, he let me know that he wanted to see her and Kendall chimed in that she wanted to see her as well. As any of you know, when you walk into a viewing room- its pretty quiet and somber. Let 2 children under 5 in the room and it becomes a circus. As we walked into the room, Kendall was announcing in a loud voice "I want to see Mammaw's body." We let them see her and they didnt seem phased at all by it. In fact, I'm not sure that I have ever threatened more spankings in my life than I did for the couple of hours we were there. The whole "inside voice" thing didnt seem to sink in. At one point Mason was (with the help of his cousin Austin) jumping on the couch with pillow in hand ready to chunk it across the room. After me threatening to tear up his behind.. he became content with playing with the action figures/snacks I had brought for back-up. Just when I thought things had calmed down...I hear his outside voice again from across the room "Hey Mommy look at me-- Hey Mommy, look over here" I look across the room and see him laying flat on his back on the couch. Then he announces to the whole room.. "Hey look at me..I'm Mammaw."

When telling this story to my mom, she reminded me that when we were little we were heading to the funeral for my great uncle and with family in the car, Heather (3 or 4 yrs old) was in the back of the car singing (in the same tune as nanny nanny boo boo) "Uncle Charles is dead, Uncle Charles is dead."