Guess I could ask my mother if she’d take Ira for another night this week.
“Thursday okay?” I asked, and he shrugged.
“Sure,” he said, getting up from the couch and walking over to me. “As long as you promise to loosen up a bit and take that fucking stick out of your ass.”
*
They left after an hour or so, and I finally got to put Ira to bed and read him one of the new books we got.
He cuddled up to me on my bed, because even if I wanted him to sleep in his own, I knew tonight wouldn’t be easy for either of us.
He had chosen the family tree book, and once we were both comfortable, I opened the book and started reading it to him.
He listened carefully and looked at the pictures while I waited for the moment where he’d ask about mothers again.
I was reading the part about grandparents, and how they were related to the little boy pictures on every page, and shortly after reading that one paragraph, Ira pointed at the grandmother and said, “Grandma is your mommy.”
I nodded, kissing the top of his head. “That’s right. Grandma is my mom.”
“And this is Freddie’s mommy?” he asked, pointing at the woman holding Freddie’s hand on the picture.
“Exactly.” And instead of making him ask about his mother again, I decided to just go for it.
Better now than when it’s too late.
He’s four, and talking to him about this was inevitable.
“Remember how Freddie here explained how babies are born?”
Ira nodded, turning his head to look up at me with wide eyes.
He was a little confused as to why kids needed a mother to be born, as he never saw his mom.
“Well, you were born the exact same way.”
Shit, this is difficult.
Maybe pictures would help.
I reached over to the nightstand and opened the drawer to get out a stack of photographs I kept from Leah.
I looked at them for a second before holding one of them closer to Ira so he could look at it.
“Is this my mommy?” he asked, keeping his eyes fixed on Leah sitting on a couch with me next to her.
“Yes, that’s her. And you know who this one is next to her?” I asked, smiling.
“No.”
“That’s me. I look a little strange with almost no hair, hm?”
He scrunched up his nose and giggled. “You look funny on the picture. Your hair got longer,” he pointed out.
“Yeah, much longer. This was six years ago. Your mom and I were really close, you know?”
And now comes the hard part.
Shit, I couldn’t cry.
I told him this wasn’t going to be a sad story.
“Where is she now? Can I see her and play with her?”
I wish you could, buddy.
Luckily, it wasn’t the first time we had the conversation about angels in heaven.
“Remember when you couldn’t go to Grandma’s because she was saying goodbye to a friend of hers?”
“Yes, Grandma said she said goodbye to her angel friend who is now in heaven.”
Thank God he remembered.
I wasn’t ready to explain it all to him again.
“Well, when you were born four years ago, your mommy became an angel too.”
His lips were parted and his eyes a little unsure at first, then he said, “So mommy’s in heaven too?”
Incredible how smart and understanding this little boy was. He listened and let everything sink in that I told him, which made it all so much easier.
For both of us.
“That’s right. Mommy’s in heaven. See how beautiful she is?” I asked, pointing at Leah in the picture, then showing him another one where she sat on an elephant on her trip to India.
“I was on an elephant too just like mommy!” he said happily.
“That’s cool, huh? You know, your mom loved animals just as much as you do, and she wanted to protect and save them so no one could harm them. She was something like a superhero, saving animals,” I said, thinking pulling superheroes into this conversation would be a good thing to keep this story a happy one.
“Wow! I wanna be a superhero too when I grow up!”
I smiled and pulled him closer, kissing his temple and closing my eyes.
The urge to cry was near, but I couldn’t cry in front of him. I wanted him to know that it wasn’t a negative thing that Leah was gone.
I wanted him to know how great she was, and that no matter what, she’d always be his mother.