...and Sofia said: "Don't die."

My granddaughter Sofia was with us during the Christmas week. On the last night before she left, she sat on my lap and snuggled in my arms, telling her Mommy and Daddy that she didn't want to return to their home in Washington, DC. She wanted to stay in California for "a hundred more days; maybe forever." Mommy and Daddy just looked at her, and went upstairs to pack. They were all leaving early the next day.

Once alone together, Sofia asked me to tell her the story of "Up," the animation film we had seen sitting up in bed together the day before. Sofia wants stories to be told to her (and seen by her) over and over again. So I started to retell the story, about Ellie and Karl and their love story that surmounted Ellie's death. (As usual, she knew the story better than I did. When I left out a part, or misspoke in any other manner, she corrected me.) When I got to the part about Ellie's death, she asked me, for the umpteenth time in the proceeding twenty-four hours, why Ellie died. I started to tell her about old age, and illness, and pneumonia and the limitations of medicine, when she looked deeply in my eyes and said: "Don't die, Grandpa. Ever." I said, "Everyone dies eventually." To which she reiterated more firmly: "Don''t die." I said, "I will try not to die." She said strongly and with conversation finality, "Don't die." And she snuggled deeply into my arms.

Of such moments eternity, happiness and human immortality is created. To be loved is never to die.