Doffa lives in our hearts now

Its been a summer of wind and sadness. Although it was expected after a long illness, we lost our Doffa - our grandmother, mother and mother-in-law. She’s left a hole in our lives the size of Lake Taupo. How much do you tell a 6,4 and 2 year old of the ‘death-nitty-gritty’? Quite a lot, it turns out. We’ve talked about hearts stopping and souls leaving a body and cremation (which is being all burned up into ashes), and what means to be alive or dead. We talked about heaven but overdid it perhaps a touch, I realized, when they started talking about how cool it is and how much they want to go there. Dad had the most comforting description of the state of our loss - ‘Doffa lives in our hearts now.’ Out of the blue Little Brother summed up the heaviness in all our hearts -‘I just wish I could see Doffa again.’ Ever logistically minded he continued, ‘But, we can’t. She lives in our hearts now. Its like, we ate her.’ At four and a half he is the bearer of harsh truths for his grandfather - ‘You have to live by yourself now Granddad.’ he told him one day shortly after the event. Another day he informed him ‘You’re fat, Granddad.’ We made a book about Doffa’s life and the kids drew appropriate pictures - like one about the way she liked to line up her shoes beside her bed when she was little, a picture of her dancing (which she loved) and skiing (which she loved). There are pictures of the handsome kind friend who wrote to her and asked her to marry him, a picture of her 3 sons wrestling, and of course lots of battle scenes between dragons and droid armies. I’m sure she would have loved it. They dictated a page of what they remember about her : She likes to give us hugs - She likes to give us presents sometimes. - Doffa uses her manners. She likes it when we write her letters. She reads us stories. Granddad reads us stories too. Actually Granddad reads us more stories than Doffa. She gives us strawberries. It seems the past tense is hard to grasp at that age. Its been a summer of expected and unexpected death. What a shock to learn we are all closer to heaven than we think. Our cousin Rachael at 41 years old was diagnosed with, battled and lost her life to cancer in just three weeks. She lives in our hearts now, too. Its been a summer of gratitude. We were lucky to know and share the lives of two amazing women. ‘I’m going to live until I’m one hundred’ Little Brother says. ‘Sadly, we don’t get to choose how long we live’ I tell him, going for full disclosure now, the gloves are off - ‘when our time is up, it’s up. We have to make the most of everyday we do have, with the people we love.’ Its a lesson that we are never too young or too old to learn.