"My mommy just died."

"My mommy just died.'

Man you don't feel good when a kid tells you that. It really hits you in the gut. I was at the school tonight and we were supposed to have a movie tonight hosted by the Student Council. I wasn't looking forward to it. It was a kid's movie, a cartoon called Monsters v. Aliens. I haven't seen the film, but I wasn't looking forward to playing it because kid movies attract lots of little kids and little kids make a big mess, and I have to help clean that mess up. Well the movie didn't happen. We got there and could not get the sound and audio equipment out of storage. The coach had the key and the coach is with the Volleyball team down in Anchorage.

I was glad at first that the movie didn't happen. I did not want to clean all the mess up and I had not been looking forward to babysitting a hundred kids tonight. Well on my way out the door, two cute little girls came riding up on a Honda 4 wheeler. Little kids aren't, of course, supposed to ride around on 4 wheelers, but they do it all the time. These two little girls were bundled up with their coats on, coats with fur trim ruffs. They stopped right in front of me and the one on the back leaned forward and asked me about the movie.

I told her that we had to cancel because we could not get the keys. She told me that we should call the coach and find out where he left the keys. That was a reasonable idea for sure, but none of us really felt like hunting around town to find the keys. So I told her that we couldn't get it together in time and apologized for the inconvenience. It had been a long day for all of us and most of us were ready to go home.

That's when it hit me. She looked at me and said that it was too bad the movie was cancelled. Then she said "My mommy just died."

I had no idea what to say. I knew that a woman in town had passed away the night before and I had been told that she had a number of children who were kids in the school. In fact, I have two of her older kids in my classes, but I was not sure who the younger kids were. This little girl apparently was one of them. And here she was asking about the movie. I felt terrible. I had no idea what to say. I said something useless about how terrible that was and told her to hang together. What else could I say? ? ?

She put her head down and nodded in the affirmative. Then without a word being exchanged between the two girls, the one in front leaned forward and gassed up the four wheeler and they rode off. That hit me pretty hard.