The saying “Childhood is over when you know you will die” has haunted me since i first watched The Crow.   Its a dark violent goth movie, easy death and cheap life comingled, where the real hero is a young girl trying to find hope.

Ideas like this are surely put forth through the lens of adulthood and the daily doses of mortality it brings.   Friends come and go, and we realize how very easy it is to move on.   People I used to talk to daily now sit 2 rows away in our new building, and have become virtual strangers to me, with little sense of loss.   I realize how many people I know who have died.   Sell your car, sell your stuff, sell your house and all the memories that come with them – its just part of the process of managing your life’s portfolio.   T-shirts that were treasured eventually are used to clean my bike, the events they commemorated covered in grime like the rags they become.   You are supposed to stop being sentimental and melodramatic as you mature – by definition – and what you do not willfully ignore in the name of business and expediency, you wall up and make yourself hard in the name of perseverance under the burden of surviving.

If this all seems hackneyed, its probably because as adults we are accustomed to the insensitivity required for suffering life’s deaths.   Familiarity breeds contempt.   We forget the potent impact of a loss on a little girl, who knows only of happiness and kindness, sweet fuzzy shiny things that make cute noises and tickle, the worst problem being a cuddly fox who isn’t really bad just misunderstood.

I wonder – partly out of fear for her innocence, partly out of morbid curiosity – if one day a dark cloud will pass over G’s visage and she will never be the same?

She has forgotten Slim, though she never really cared for her.   Jo is also a distant memory, but only of a novelty and not held with real affection.   She got very upset when I had Gladiator on the TV during the sword fight between Maximus and the Emperor; crying just as   Joaquin Phoenix was about to be stuck “I don’t like this show! I don’t like this show!”   She understands pain, and violence.   But does she understand death?

Up until recently, G seemed either unaware, unaffected, or immune to bereavement.   She got a balloon at the gym, i tied my keys to it so it would keep her happy in the grocery store, but took them off for the drive home.   As we got in the house, I knew i needed a new weight, but before I got a chance to attach one, G followed Beckie outside to unload the car.   I leapt across the hood of the car and just missed the ribbon as the balloon floated slowly out of reach.

G was about the most upset I’ve seen her, watching in anguish as her blue balloon drifted into the sky.   Serious, significant bawling occurred.   She moped and cried for what seemed a very long time.   I had never seen her so hurt for so long.   Sam came over to babysit and the first thing G did was talk about her balloon.   I really thought she was scarred by the experience, but then it passed.

Several days later, we walked out of the grocery store with another balloon (unbeknown to G, filled with regular old air) and she clutched it tightly, visibly scared of losing it, but otherwise surviving.

I guess the lesson is that there will (we hope) be no come-to-Jesus moment for G on this topic, but a series of painful experiences that each will gnaw away at her innocence until one day she is a jaded adult.   I’m saddened by the fatalism, but relieved that in all likelihood no one incident will ever kill her effervescent spirit.   It takes a lot of pressure off me to protect her from the one needle that could pop the balloon. And if her path towards cynicism takes many steps, then there is hope it can be delayed, tempered, rerouted, and countered by good experiences, if she can always find cause for optimism and reasons for joy.

Many days i think she is my reason, so i try to be hers.   It can’t rain all the time.