One day when we were buying the townhome Jim was inside the office signing documents and Dylan and I were sitting in the car waiting for him. We were being silly and laughing and talking about random things. He was around 5 years old. Somehow we got on the subject of how old Jim and I would be when Dylan was…….(insert age). Dylan went through each year, or so it seemed, and I had to respond with how old Jim and I would be when he got to said age.
When we started to get up to when Dylan would be 70 or 80….. I responded with something along the lines of, well mommy and daddy may not be here when you are that old, and had to explain why. I told him that Mommy and Daddy would be very old and may not be alive when he gets to be that old. I never expected what would come next. Dylan began to cry with the thought that we would die one day. I tried to calm him down and explained that he will have a family of his own but he wasn’t letting up. He seemed to cry for what seemed like forever. He swore on that day, that he would buy a beach house that was big enough for all of us to live in, him with his wife and children and Jim and I. Marisa wasn’t born yet. I tried to tell Dylan that he would change his mind and not want to live with his old parents when he got old enough to be married and have kids of his own but he swore that we would always live together. Who was I to argue; after all he was buying us a beach house!!
By the time Jim got back in the car, everything was back to normal and I told him the wonderful news that Dylan would be buying us a big beach house someday. He was somewhat confused as to what went on while he was gone for us to come in to such a windfall. I waited until later to tell him because I didn’t want Dylan to get upset all over again.
The beach house was always something that we talked about through the years. We always reminded Dylan that he promised to buy us our beach house one day.
I guess all of those tears were for naught; as he no longer has to fret about when Jim and I die……
Hopefully one day Jim and I can buy that beach house in memory of Dylan….