Why little girls must ride in carts...even if they are "big now"

Ellie, Abbie and I went for a quick trip to Walmart this afternoon to get some bananas. After steering Ellie past the pears and grapes we starting bagging some bananas up. Simple trip, right? Wrong. As I am bagging, I hear an all too familiar little voice heading away from me. I look up from my search for the perfect, not-too-green-not-too-yellow bananas, to see Ellie with running with arms flailing after a white haired woman, yelling, "great grammaaaaaaaa! stop! I'm Ellie!". In shear horror I bolted with the cart, greatful that I had Abbie buckled in. I snatched Ellie up a few steps before she dove into this woman who was most assuredly, not great gramma. Great, do we really need to go into this in the middle of the produce department? "Ellie, honey, sweety, that's not great gramma. Do you remember great gramma died, and went back to live with Heavenly Father?" "She came back to see me. She was sleeping in that bed." "No sweety, that wasn't a bed, and she wasnt sleeping. That was a special box that they burry you under the ground in after you die." "oh, is gramma dead?" "no, gramma is at work." "is mom-mom dead?" "no honey, mom-mom is at work too" "Oh, great gramma is at work mom, she just sleepin in that bed." "let's go find some pears, huh?" There was another couple checking out the fried chicken and listening in to this convo with my soon to be 3 year old, and giggling.

I know it takes a looooooooooong loooooooooong time for little ones to understand the concept of death, but I honestly didn't think Ellie would even remember the funeral, or even great gramma for that matter. We were only able to see her a handful of times in the past year. I know better than to underestimate children...I just assumed that because she never said anything about great gramma ever, funeral included, that she would never bring it up. Oy.