Baby Marion

"Can I see your hair?" someone asked my preschooler yesterday.
"I don't have any!" he said, whizzing by on his bike.

He shaved it off three weeks ago as an act of solidarity with his baby cousin, Marion, who was undergoing chemo.

Last Friday, I walked into his room to tell him that Marion had died. As I pulled him onto my lap, I started crying, and he said, "Did Baby Marion die?"

I'd gotten a lot of good advice on handling this topic, so I answered his questions honestly and briefly, and then we finished getting dressed.

Throughout the weekend, we discussed memorial services, cremation (he's decided that, like me, he wants his ashes scattered over the lake), and how most people die after they've lived many, many years.

Thinking about and seeing death through a child's eyes has helped me cope with the reality of my niece's death -- that, and some hard training runs (I'm doubly glad I have the half-Ironman to train for and distract me).

The one question that keeps coming up, though, is the one I don't have any answer for: "But why did Baby Marion die?"