evening meal she’d fed the kids. “I had just turned the water off in the sink
when I heard Colton crying.”
Ali told Sonja that she went to check on Colton and found him sitting up
in his bed, tears streaming down his face. “What’s wrong, Colton?” she
asked him.
Colton sniffled and wiped his eyes. “I miss my sister,” he said.
Ali said she smiled, relieved that the problem seemed to have a simple
solution. “Okay, sweetie, you want me to go downstairs and get her for
you?”
Colton shook his head. “No, I miss my other sister.”
Now Ali was confused. “Your other sister? You only have one sister and
one brother, Colton. Cassie and Colby, right?”
“No, I have another sister,” Colton said. “I saw her. In heaven.” Then he
started to cry again. “I miss her so much.”
As Ali told Sonja this part of the story, her eyes welled with fresh tears. “I
didn’t know what to say, Mrs. Burpo. He was so upset. So I asked him
when he saw this other sister.”
Colton told Ali, “When I was little, I had surgery and I went up to heaven
and saw my sister.”
Then, Ali told Sonja, Colton began crying again, only harder. “I don’t
understand why my sister is dead,” he said. “I don’t know why she’s in
heaven and not here.”
Ali sat on the bed beside Colton, as she put it, “in shock.” This situation
definitely wasn’t on the normal “in case of emergency” babysitting list, as
in: (1) who to call in case of fire; (2) who to call in case of illness; (3) who to
call in case child reports supernatural experience.
Ali knew Colton had been extremely ill a couple of years before and that
he’d spent time in the hospital. But she hadn’t known about what had
happened in the operating room. Now she had no idea what to say, even
as Colton shrugged off his covers and crawled up in her lap. So as he
cried, she cried with him.
“I miss my sister,” he said again, snuffling and laying his head on Ali’s
shoulder.
“Shh... it’s okay, Colton,” Ali said. “There’s a reason for everything.”