I Made Her Cry...Again

“Mom, I’m hot,” Olivia called from the backseat of the car.

“Go ahead and take off your jacket if you can,” I replied as I merged onto the highway. We were on our way to a dentist appointment. It was just a consultation for some work O needs done.

About ten minutes later, I glanced in the rearview mirror and saw Olivia leaning way over in her car seat. She was reaching for something. She shouldn’t have been able to lean that far over. She rides in a five point harness car seat that prevents her from leaning too far.

I realized she’d taken her arms out of her straps to take of her jacket and hadn’t bothered to put the straps back on.

I told her, “Put your arms in your straps.”

She asked, “Why?”

“Because if you don’t and we’re in a wreck, you’d probably die.”

Dramatic? Maybe. But also true. We were flying down the highway at 70 miles per hour. If we crashed at that point, the straps between her legs would do nothing to stop her from hurtling into my seat and perhaps killing us both. A tragic though, yet but still true.

But perhaps I should have been a little gentler with my seven year old.

She asked, “What would happen if I died?”

“You’d go to heaven and I’d be here without you and I’d cry and cry and cry.”

She settled back with the straps of her car seat safely over her shoulders and I went back to concentrating on the road because, hey, let’s not test the strength of those straps even if they were probably placed.

About ten minutes later, with about ten minutes left to travel, I glanced back and saw what looked like Olivia trying to hold back tears.

“Baby, are you sad?” I asked.

Her lips turned down and she glanced away from me.

“Oh Sweetie,” I said, “I didn’t mean to make you sad. I just want you to be safe.”

A tear fell and she whispered, “I don’t want to be in heaven without you.”

I couldn’t stop the car and get out and console her. I had to keep going. So I talked to her. I explained that in heaven, she wouldn’t be sad because heaven is a beautiful place full of love and light and while I’d miss her down here, she’d be too busy playing and loving and being loved by Jesus that she’d be just fine.

It didn’t help. She picked up her jacket, put it to her face and sobbed.

I fought back my own tears. “Oh baby, I’m sorry,” I called out to her. “I don’t want you to be sad. I’m so sorry.”

She cried harder.

I assured her, “We’ll be there soon and I’ll hold you. It’s okay.”

She took in a deep, hiccupping breath. She put her jacket down and wiped her eyes. She asked me if I had a tissue. I didn’t but I did have a napkin I offered. She took it and wiped her nose.

We finally arrived at the dentist’s office and I parked. I pulled her out of her car seat and hugged her tight.

As we walked into the office, she declared, “I probably will be a hundred when I die, right?”

I just nodded at her.

“And by then, you’ll already be in heaven waiting for me, right?”

I nodded again. Then I told her, “And then we’ll all be together forever, always happy, always loving each other.”

She went directly to the play area at the dentist office and settled in with the magnetic board, no longer worrying about death and heaven and missing her mom.

But gosh did I feel like a jerk. Poor kid.

When she got home from school that afternoon, she demanded that I tell her dad and Lyssie how I’d made her cry on our way to the dentist.