“Appah?” my boy stalled as I turned off his bedroom light.
“What, Sun Su?”
“Um… where do shooting stars go?”
“Hmm,” I sat next to him on the bed thinking about it, ”I’m not sure. I think they burn up before they hit the earth and become dust or something. Or maybe some just keep flying through space,” I bullshitted. Not my field. Why doesn’t he ask about things I know like “how do people die from a massive lung clot” or “what does a pseudomonas-infected wound smell like?”
“Where do they go in space?”
“I’m not sure.”
“Where did Liger go?”
My little girl once answered that with, “He’s in the backyard in the ground! His head too!” But Sun Su knows that and I know that’s not what he’s asking.
“Well… some people think he went to heaven. Or maybe he became part of the universe. Like when a shooting star burns up. I don’t really know but if we keep good memories –”
“Maybe he went where shooting stars go.”
“Yeah. I like that, Sun Su,” I smiled, kissed him on the head, smelling his hair for an instant, thinking that these are the best days of my life. “See you in the morning.”
I’m going to use that one. One day. If I’m in a bed dying of something too far gone, with my grown children at my bedside, like so many scenes I’ve witnessed before in the hospital.
I’ve struggled with what I would tell them. Something true to myself and honest to them, while not challenging their own beliefs. Now I know I’ll tell them,
“It’s okay. I’m going where shooting stars go.”
Then someone will turn off the light.
My little girl says someone is “petting Liger” after they die.
I like that line too.
