In an old notebook, a child wrote: Mom, I so like you.

And I miss you. I seem to see myself, little, rehearsing the steps. One foot here, another there. I swung and fell.

It was enough to pout to cry and I felt your arms lift me up, hugging me and saying: “It was nothing. Keep walking.”

I remember the many games we played together. Me running and you pretending to run to reach me. Suddenly, you grabbed me and suspended me into your arms.

I felt like someone who was on top of the world, taller than the others. Looking at all from above.

But, the game I liked best was the hide-and-seek. I hid behind the curtain and you were slow to find me, walking from one side to the other, wondering: “Where will that boy be?!”

And I stayed there, finding it very funny. I did not even realize that my feet denounced me from far where I was hiding.

When you were hiding, I searched those same hiding places that I knew.

Sometimes, it took me a while to find you. I was sad. I thought: “Mom is gone.”

At that time, you would show up, coming out of the half-open door or from the sofa in the living room, smiling. And everything was fine.

I was a happy child. Very happy.

Until the day you made up a different game. You were quiet, silent, you did not speak.

A lot of people came home. They touched you, they spoke. But you remained still. You did not move, did not speak.

I thought: “I think mom is playing like a statue. And what a true statue she is imitating.”

Then, other people came and put you in an ugly car, black, that they tried to spruce with flowers. It remained ugly.

Someone told me: “Do not be sad. Your mom went hiding.”

So I went to look and look for you. I tried to discover where the car had taken you. I walked a lot and went looking behind every tree, every bush.

Nothing. I let myself be on the road, seated. And I cried. You never showed up again.

I was very angry at that game of statue and the game of hide-and-seek.

I still expect you to come back, my mom, so I can smile again.

Where are you, mommy?

*    *    *

How much pain in the writing of a boy who was not explained the phenomenon of death.

Death, painful indeed, because it constitutes the physical disappearance of the loved person, should be a subject to be taught, from an early age.

That is because there is nothing more certain in life. Whoever is born, dies, sooner or later.

Sometimes, in order not to want to traumatize the little ones, we deceive them, saying that the person has traveled, that went for a walk.

This leaves them in the anxiety of waiting. An endless wait.

How much better it would be for us to teach them about the life that never dies. If we told them that when a dear person dies, he continues with us, in our heart.

That they can speak to him, address him their prayers, tell him what they feel and how they feel.

Of course, everything would be softer and, in the course of the years, death would lose its painful black veils of mystery.

Let us think about it.

Spiritist Moment Team, inspired on the article
Brinquedo de escondê, by Lulu Benencase,
from the Info Boletin FAEP, n.1388.
February 19,2019.