Yesterday, after being out of town for a week, I took Juliet out for a special mother-daughter lunch so that we could reconnect. We went to Potbelly, where she ordered chili and then chose a table right in front of a young man who was playing guitar. Juliet has always been drawn to music, so periodically our conversation would come to a lull and she was content to just sit and watch the musician. At one point she turned her gaze from the guitarist to me and asked “Is that my Uncle Paulie?”

“Uncle Paulie” was my brother, Paul, who died just four days before Juliet was born. Even though Paul isn’t with us physically, we’ve tried hard to keep his memory alive in our family by talking about him often and showing the kids pictures of their uncle. Juliet will sometimes brings up Uncle Paul out of the blue, so the question in and of itself didn’t surprise me. The interesting thing, which Juliet has never been told, is that Paul was very drawn to music himself. In fact, Mike and I inherited his record player and record collection when he died. He had eclectic taste, but particularly enjoyed the work of Bob Dylan.

I told Juliet that no, this wasn’t Uncle Paulie, to which she asked “Who is my Uncle Paulie?”. How do I answer that? How do I tell her who this person is – this person who is so fully formed in my memory, and yet she has never met. She’ll never have the opportunity to establish her own relationship with him. We’ll never know what kind of an uncle he would have made. Juliet will never know her Uncle Paulie outside of what I choose to tell her about him. As I’m thinking the guitarist starts playing the first few chords to a song that sounds vaguely familiar. He begins to sing…

Mama, take this badge off of me…
I can’t use it anymore.

I fight back the tears and try to figure out how to tell Juliet just who her Uncle Paul was – who he still is to me. I struggle to fit an entire life into the space of a single sentence that will be digestible to a three year old.

It’s gettin dark, too dark to see.
I feel I’m knockin’ on Heaven’s door.

But before I can find the words, the question is gone as soon as it has come.  Juliet is saying “This was a really good lunch. What was your favorite part?”

Knock, knock, knockin’ on heaven’s door.
Knock, knock, knockin’ on heaven’s door.
Knock, knock, knockin’ on heaven’s door.
Knock, knock, knockin’ on heaven’s door.