To respect is to be human

My daughter is 6. She’s not led a sheltered life, but I’ve done my best to make sure she is not exposed to things she’s not ready for. School smarts aside, she is your typical 6-year-old. Happy, imaginative, curious.

My mom’s younger brother was in town for a few days. As part of his visit to California, he and my mother went to visit their grandparents’ burial sites in Los Angeles. Since my mother is my daughter’s caretaker while I am at work, all three of them drove out to the cemetery. My mother explained that a cemetery is a place to go to remember the happy memories you have of people who’ve died and that the headstones showed who was buried under them. Other than being in the Haunted Mansion at Disneyland, my daughter has never been exposed to such a place, either in real life or in media.

My mother and my uncle stood on the grass reminiscing their grandparents and others who have left them. My daughter was respectful and quiet, wandering close by as they talked.

Sometime while my family was talking, my daughter found a dogwood tree that had dropped some blossoms and collected them as she does with any other flower she finds on the ground. She quietly walked to her great-great-grandparents’ plots and silently and gently placed one flower on each grave.

A little girl placed flowers on the graves of people she’d never met, not knowing that the placing of flowers is a common sign of respect.

It seems respect is not necessarily taught; it is proof that we are human and are capable of great emotion, regardless of age and experience.

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