Ash

"Now I am (one ... two ... three ... four) five years old!"

This is Alex's story I read with Jasmine on Sunday afternoon. My daughter loves reading story books; it's our favorite thing to do together.

"For my birthday I am having a police party. I am really excited - my daddy was a policeman!"

Let me explain: Alex used past tense since his daddy died when he was three. A true story.

If you're looking for a children's book about cremation and burial in age-appropriate language, you should try What Happened to Daddy's Body? That's a book Jasmine just couldn't put down even we were going to pick up her buddy for a play date.

I'd just told Jasmine my attending a thanksgiving ceremony for deceased organ donors in the morning, but this topic is easier to talk than that of a wooden box holding Alex's daddy, being taken down by a special lift into the cellar of the crematorium. How a body doesn't work any more after death. Can't move. Can't breathe. Can't feel anything any more.

When Alex knew that the box called coffin will be put into a very, very hot machine for burning the dead body, he asked her mum, "And it doesn't hurt because the dead body can't feel anything any more?"

By the end of the story, my daughter learned more about ashes, and how Alex took his dad's ashes to spread in a garden, mixed with soil, helping the tree to grow. And that, if you ask me about the most important lesson, it's okay to be sad, but it's okay to be happy, too.