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With a sense of deep urgency in his little voice, he called me loudly from the back yard. “Mama! Mama! You have to come see this!” he kept hollering, as I made my way out to him. When I reached him, near his mud pit (where all of their little dump trucks are parked), he was clearly concerned as he pointed one precious, tan finger toward the water hole. Through all the floating pieces of leaves and barkdust, I could see his source of discomfort – a dead slug.
“Is he dead?” he asked me, eyes sparkling with the hope that I would say no. “Yes, Baby. He is.” I answered, “Let’s bury him, ok?”
He agreed and we began to dig a little hole in the dirt near the jungle (the bamboo side of our yard, where they go on adventures of strong imagination). I gently laid the slug into the slug grave, wrapped in a leaf. I covered him with dirt. As I began to get up off the ground, I was stopped by that same insistent little voice.
“Wait, Mama. We need a death sign” he said. I realized what he wanted and instructed him to look for one. He quickly returned with one of his beloved legos. I kissed his soft cheek as I took the piece of red plastic from his little hand – and then I set in on top of the slug grave. As I began to get up off of the ground again, I was stopped (again) by that same insistent voice.
“No, Mama, we need to write words on it” he said. I again realized what he wanted and told him to go find a marker. He ran into and then back out of the house, carrying a marker in the side pocket of his cargo shorts. I smiled at him softly, took the marker from his pocket and the bright red lego from the top of the slug grave and began to write what was being dictated to me by my very concerned four-year-old.
After he was done instructing me, and three of the lego’s four sides were written on, he took the marker and lego from my hands and wrote his own epitaph on the last empty side. We returned the plastic headstone to the slug grave and observed a moment of silence for our dear, dear slug. May he rest in peace.
I love you, precious boy-boy <3
