Poof, They Died
There must be some kind o’ way out of here,
Said the joker to the thief
Jimi Hendrix, from Bob Dylan’s “All Along the Watchtower”
Our only son, J.B., was an interesting character from a very early age. He was always somewhat self-sufficient, and could spend many hours alone, entertaining himself. You might say, he had a very active imagination.
I sometimes worried about him being an only child. I was one of seven, myself, but I remembered how lonely it felt when most of the older ones went off to college, or away to Atlantic City to work for the summer. I hoped he didn’t feel the way I felt then, not having any siblings to begin with.
He was around four years-old when he adopted a family of siblings — an imaginary family, but for a time, they seemed very real to him. There were two sisters and a brother, and it was never clear who was older and who was younger, he just talked about them, a lot.
They were from New York. This made me think that the models for the imaginary family were a family from New York that we had met in the pool of a hotel in Tysons Corner, Virginia (we lived in New Jersey at the time), where I had gone for a training and Kathy and J.B. tagged along for a week in the DC area. (Within two years, we would actually be living about three miles from this same hotel).
A lady who worked with Kathy would occasionally baby sit J.B. for us. One day, she asked Kathy if I had a family from a previous marriage, in New York? “Not that I’m aware of”, came Kathy’s startled reply. When Linda relayed J.B.’s description of the family, she laughed and said, “Oh, yeah — that’s his imaginary siblings.”
“But he was so convincing about what they did together.” He really was. It always seemed that they were very real to him.
One Saturday, J.B. and I were riding in my pickup truck, up to Builder’s Square, about a 20 minute ride, to pick up some building supplies.
I had the radio on, and they were playing Jimi Hendrix’ version of “All Along the Watchtower.” J.B. was bouncing to the sounds, and inquired, “Dad, who IS that?”
“That’s Jimi Hendrix. He was the world’s greatest guitarist.”
“Is he dead?”
“Yeah, he died.” I really didn’t want to go into the details of how he died, so I just left it at that. He seemed to be deep in thought for a few minutes, then he started jabbering again.
He started telling me about the latest exploits of his imaginary siblings. It was their birthday — apparently, they all shared the same birthday. They had an amazing party, with lots of friends, a clown, balloons, cake, cool games, everyone had the best of times at their birthday party.
“That sounds like a pretty great party, J.B. What happened next?”
He just said, “Poof! They died.” He left it at that. He didn’t talk about them anymore then, nor ever. They were dead.
As we drove along, I was not sure what to do with this latest revelation. Did I need to process this with him? Did he have to grieve their death, his loss? I wasn’t sure, so I just left it alone.
They’d been great siblings, then they had the best of deaths. They just “poofed”, and were dead. Just like Jimi Hendrix.
