I Am Fantastic

Brennan's PreK class creates a book on a common topic once a week. The book is a compilation of the entire class's drawing and completion of a particular sentence. This week the theme was "I am fantastic because..."

I leafed through the book when I picked Brennan up today. He was gathering papers and his things as I chuckled over the answers at each child's page.

Brennan was fantastic because today he "screwed in every screw in our classroom bird feeder."

Then I got to Kathryn's page.

Kathryn was fantastic because she "visits her daddy at the cemetery."

It was like a punch to the gut reading those innocent words and viewing its accompanying illustration of a cemetery. I remembered vaguely hearing of Kathryn and her family a few months ago. I remembered she has three brothers and sisters - all young, and her father passed away unexpectedly after developing a severe staph infection. I remembered seeing her mother over the summer at the pool with her children and feeling an ache as I watched her, wondering how she was coping, but doing so from the comfortable distance offered a stranger.

You never expect your child to feel fantastic for visiting a cemetery. You pray and hope and wish for them to feel fantastic over normal, every day, child-like things. But sometimes, life, unexpectedly, happens. It was a much needed reminder to me to be grateful for the life I have with my children. We all could be a little more grateful.