What Doesn’t Decompose

Yesterday, my daughter and I went for an actual walk.

I know that doesn’t sound like much, but if you have a preschooler, you know what I mean. For the past couple of years, “going for a walk” has meant stopping every three feet to examine a stick, having a meltdown about the wind blowing, or carrying her for an eternity.

But yesterday we miraculously kept up an actual pace.

She’s almost four now, and I’m starting to see glimpses of the conversations I’ve been looking forward to. The kind where I can share something I love and watch her actually grasp it.

We talked about seeds and flowers and pollination. I painted this picture of how plants and animals help each other, how everything in nature is connected.

And then, naturally, we got to the part about decomposition: death and decay and how everything gets recycled back into soil so new things can grow.

“So even when something dies,” I explained, “it always turns into something new.”

She thought about this for a moment, then looked up at me and said, “Yeah, just like Grandpa Dean.“

I wasn’t ready for that.

My dad died almost two years ago, and she was barely two then. I didn’t think she really understood or remembered much about him.

But there she was, connecting this big concept about life and death and renewal to her own experience with such simple clarity.

I got pretty choked up. When I could talk again, I said, “Yes, that’s exactly right.”

She stopped walking, looked at me with her ridiculously blue eyes, and said:

“I think Grandpa Dean turned into you.”

That absolutely crushed me.

Trying not to start ugly crying in front of a preschooler, with a boulder lodged firmly in my throat, I told her, “Well, I think Grandpa Dean turned into you a little bit too.”

“Yeah,” she said, matter-of-factly, and we kept walking.

Here’s what gets me: adults spend so much time trying to make sense of grief, loss, legacy. What we keep, what we pass down, how love persists after someone is gone. We complicate it with theology and philosophy and all these heavy concepts.

But somehow, this little person who barely reaches my waist just… got it. In the most beautiful, simple way.

There’s something about kids this age—they’re still close enough to wherever we come from to see things clearly, but old enough now to put it into words. They haven’t learned yet to overcomplicate the big truths or talk themselves out of what they instinctively know.

So when she says Grandpa Dean turned into me, and into her too, maybe that’s exactly how it works. Not in some mystical way, but in the very real ways we carry forward the people we love.

Maybe love really is the thing that doesn’t decompose. It just keeps growing, taking new forms, showing up in new people.

Once in a while, you glimpse something true about how the world actually works. Not the way we talk about it or analyze it, but the way it is. This was one of those glimpses. And I got to see it through the eyes of someone who still needs help putting on her shoes. She never got enough time with her Grampa Dean, but she carries him with her nonetheless.

This letter continues here: Two Artists