The innocence that comes with unashamedly saying what you think and asking a question about anything you don’t understand without the fear of looking silly.

Last spring, one of my dearest friends passed away.  I met her when I was four years old and over the past 40 years we have drunk enough cups of tea to fill an Olympic swimming pool.

Every couple of months my boys, aged six and seven, go for a trip in the car out to where she is buried.  

I usually take a cup of tea with me and I still sit and chat away about all my problems or the things that make me happy.

For a while the boys run around completely unfazed by the fact they are in a grave yard.

Then they sit, sometimes right on top of my friend’s grave and start chatting away.

Our conversations could quite possibly horrify some; however they speak freely without fear and certainly without any tact.

They ask me what sort of dirt is beneath them? 

How deep the hole in the ground is? 

What is she wearing? What does she look like?

I answer as honestly as I can.  

They know her body is there but her soul is in heaven.  

They know her body is made up of bones and skin and her soul is what made her the person she was.

They once asked how did she get split in half so her soul could go up and her body stay here.

For some of us these types of questions could be confronting but for little people, it’s just what they are thinking and wondering.  

For my boys, death is not scary and their innocence allows them to say and feel whatever they like.

My beautiful friend was an incredible gardener and I often laugh as I watch my kids pick the “flowers” in the grass from around the church where she lays and stick them into the dirt on her grave.  

Bright yellow dandelions are their flower of choice and white pebbles in the shape of love hearts.  (And sometimes cars!)

Her garden was her pride and joy and as I watch them cover her with what is better described as weeds, I think she would have had a good giggle at the irony.  

I hope my boys will never stop asking me questions about life.  

For now nothing is embarrassing or awkward.  

There are no topics that are out of bounds.  

They just want to know how things work and why.

As adults, we perhaps could learn a lot from the openness of the younger generation.