Tuesday, September 13, 2011

Heaven

Davis has gotten to a point where he seems to understand the magnitude of losing Cooper. I don’t know if it’s because he is older now and sees others with their little brothers so he understands that he will never have that with Cooper or if it is because we are to the point in our current pregnancy where we are as sure you can be that Blaine will be coming home with us and he is really excited about actually getting the opportunity to be a big brother. Or who knows maybe it is combination. A week or so ago, Davis started randomly crying one night and said that he wants Cooper back so he & Blaine can play with him. You could tell that he was really sad and not just repeating what we have told him about Cooper. While all I wanted to do was break down and sob with him, I knew that I had to stay strong and just reinforce the idea of heaven and that he will see Cooper again one day. I cannot count how many times Matt and I have had to explain that once you get to heaven you are not coming back.
The topic of heaven brings up some interesting questions/comments from a three (almost four) year old. It actually gets cute to hear some of ways Davis has proposed to go get Cooper and bring him back-Buzz Lightyear wings, a super fast airplane (super fast not just fast), jumping real, real high. If we lose a balloon and it floats up in sky, it is floating to heaven so Cooper can play with it. Davis has informed us that Cooper’s favorite balloon is a Carolina Blue one that we let float to heaven. I have also been asked if Cooper gets to eat hotdogs in heaven. Does Santa take presents to Cooper in heaven? And one that would make any father smile and a mother blush, “Cooper did it, not me or Daddy…you can just smell it from heaven”. Yes, my child has blamed a fart on his dead brother…. but only after he tried blaming it on his unborn brother J Matt and I have also learned that we can no longer use “heaven” to describe something on earth that we really enjoy. Davis will correct you really quickly if you try to say someone is “in heaven” because they are doing something they enjoy- “No. you are not in heaven-Cooper is”. Matt started to slip up one time when we were at a BBQ place when he saw red hotdogs on the buffet. He corrected himself mid-sentence and it came out “Davis, you are going to be in California once you see what they have”. Davis came running back to me yelling “Mommy I am in California now because they have red hotdogs here”. So now when our family enjoys something now we are in California not heaven. It makes us smile .