Heaven Is . . .

My little man, age 5, fresh out of the bath last night, wrapped in his fluffy baby blue towel and smelling of bubbles asked me how old I would be when he was 38 (my age now), so I told him I’ll be 71, then he said “well when I’m 71 how old will you be?”

‘104’,

then he came out with, “Oh so you’ll be dead!”

I looked at him and said, “maybe.” I didn’t really want him laying awake at night worrying his mother’s going to die any time soon. A five year old there has no concept of years and time, they want everything now, they think five minutes is ages away when the are waiting for something good, and they think two hours goes way too quick when they don’t want to leave a party! So I informed him that if I was dead I would still be with him because I would be in Heaven watching over him.

“Where is Heaven?” He asked,

“well no one really knows that, we don’t find out until we go,” then I added, “which is a long, long, long time away . . .” (hopefully!)

Still curious (after all he is 5), he asks, “so what’s it like?” Thinking I’d be clever here, I answered with a question of my own,

“what do you think it would be like?”

His response was lengthier than anticipated, “there would be no houses, no TV’s, we wouldn’t need beds,” well by this time I was quite surprised by his answers, I had expected him to say, rainbows, clouds and wings, but no he had his own ideas, he continued, “no decks, no birthdays” (I thought that was interesting), “no tables and chairs, no cars, and no DVD’s.” So then I asked him what would there be, and I was now anticipating something quite inspirational, he started with “you’ll be there mummy, and daddy, and Aspen, and April,” how sweet! But then he surprised me by adding “houses, TV’s, beds-”,

“what?” I interrupted, “but you just said there wouldn’t be those things,” he started giggling then, he thought he was hilarious, I’d been played by this adorable, sweet smelling boy wrapped in his fluffy towel!

I asked my cheeky son if he could imagine the best place he had ever been on holiday telling him Heaven would be like that, we recently came back from an amazing tropical vacation, and I thought that he would obviously say there, we swam with tropical fish, we went on boat trips, water-slides, the sun was shining, plus it would be fresh in his memory,  but again he surprised me by picking a little tree top cabin only a couple of hours away. We had stayed there earlier in the year in the middle of Winter, the weather had been freezing and we spent 3 days rugged up, we ate picnics on our bed, read loads of books, fed cockatoos that visited us each day, and drank hot chocolates with marshmallows. I was truly touched that this simple little family vacation is one of his best memories, and you know what? I hope Heaven is like that too!

Thanks for joining me, love Mackenzie xx