The Puppet

A Brief History of The Puppet -In March of 2007, my father-in-law, Arthur “Pap” Phillips, died after a battle with cancer. My husband, Chris, had left to be with his family and I was faced with explaining what would be going on over the next few days to our three small children (Emily age 11, Sara age 7 and Andrew age 4).They had known that he had been sick for a while and that he would be in heaven with God. The problem I did have while falling asleep the night before going to the funeral home was how to explain to my children what they would see in the open casket. I knew I did not want to use an old explanation that Pap was “sleeping”. He wasn‛t. He wasn‛t going to wake up and they needed to be prepared for that fact. I wanted them to know that the part of Pap that we knew and loved was in heaven. What they would see was an empty covering. It was in that instance that the image of the puppet came to mind. It was something they could understand. What they would see at the funeral home, would be Pap‛s “puppet”. I wrote the text shortly after the funeral and did not take any further steps toward publishing for a long time. In 2013, I asked a co-worker if he would consider illustrating the poem into a book for me. Daniel Vasi agreed. “The Puppet” is for every child that is feeling scared or confused about visiting a funeral home. I pray many find comfort in these pages.