Lemondrop

After a mere few months as an obituary writer, I got disturbingly accustomed to saying things like, "Unfortunately, we wouldn't be able to say that your grandmother was beloved, since that would be editorializing." It was very easy to forget the implications of a day's work. It was more than easy. It was necessity.

As that part of my job became more automated, I started seeking out, well, extracurricular assignments: theater reviews, artist profiles, travel pieces. As long as it was something that got me out of the newsroom ... and didn't have to do with death.

So I have no idea why I agreed to an assignment to spend a day at a summer camp for children with life-threatening illnesses.

Click here to read how the heartbreaking visit went.

Many of my friends joked that the experience should be no problem for me, as the obituary gig made me insensitive to the concept of mortality, and I had a pre-existing dislike of kids -- or speed bumps, as I like to call them.

I saw the visit as a good journalistic opportunity -- a day beyond cubicle walls and a good story. I wouldn't even have to write it well. Who isn't moved by sick children? I mean, aside from an obituary writer with no maternal instincts.

I spent the day watching tag games and arts and crafts in the sunshine, happily removed from my daily routine, and mentally editing out the odd bald head or portable IV.

At one point, as I stood observing a particularly heated round of Red Rover with a gaggle of cancer patients, a little girl came prancing up to me.

"Who are you?" she asked.

"I'm Elizabeth," I said hesitantly.

"I'm a princess," she said, adjusting a birch-bark tiara situated atop her tangle of ginger hair. "I rule the left half of the paddle boat pond. What do you do?"

It seemed ill-advised to state to a cute, red-headed little girl attending a camp for children with life-threatening illnesses that I write about dead people.

"I write about ... people," said to her, suddenly debating the merits of eye contact. "I write -- their stories."

"Hmmm," she said, and adjusted her crown again.

Please kid, don't ask what I think you're going to ask, I thought. Please don't.

"Do you think you'll ever write a story about me?" she asked.

I bit the side of my lip.

"I might," I said.

I believe the obituaries that ran in the paper the following day were highly editorialized.