When she wakes up, she says, "Good morning" to her son, Eric.

And, every evening: "Good night, Eric."

Every day.

"Every day, I wonder how I've survived," says Joan Stavros Adler.

She turns to look through oversized windows to the lawn surrounding her home. To no one, to an unfeeling universe, she cries in small, useless, strangled words:

"What a waste."

What a waste her little boy is dead.

Only 4 years old.

Choked to death.

On a hot dog.

"A hot dog. A hot dog?"

All deaths are cruel. The deaths of children, especially so. But the cruelty is unspeakably magnified by the stabbing, unwitting, innocent intrusiveness of the commonplace - and what is more commonplace than a hot dog?

"Kids and hot dogs, right? Baseball. Picnics. Everywhere. Especially now." Adler talks about how she will, must, do something to - what?

Not to make sense of his death. No. Not to honor him. No. Not even to make sure, in some way, Eric's death was not a waste. It was a waste. No. None of them fits.

"But if I could even prevent just one woman from going through this..."

Her words dissolve.

But she finds them again, and speaks of her determination to ensure any food that's a choking hazard to children be labeled. To ensure parents know about them.

Including hot dogs.

"How many people know this?" she asks about a study in the Journal of the American Medical Association, listing foods causing choking deaths in young kids.

Hot dogs. Candy. Peanuts. Grapes. Hot dogs caused nearly one in five choking deaths among children 3 or younger - and 71 percent of deaths from meat products.

"Hot dogs seem to pose a special asphyxiation hazard to young children," the study said. "Hot dog-like products have smooth, slick surfaces, are cylindrical, upper airway-sized, compressible, and not friable."

Joan Stavros Adler has resources. She is a successful attorney. She is active in "Compassionate Friends," an organization that supports grieving parents.

Her interest coincides with the decision of consumer and children's advocacy groups to seek labeling of potentially dangerous foods.

In July, she'll appear at a Washington, D.C., press conference called by the Center for Science and the Public Interest to announce a campaign for a bill requiring that food packagers - as toy manufacturers already do - place warnings on certain foods.

"There is no such requirement," explains Aliza Sperling of the center.

A bill already has been introduced by U.S. Rep. Mike Honda, a California Democrat - co-sponsored by Donald Payne and Frank Pallone, New Jersey Democrats.

The proposed legislation came in response to recent choking deaths among children caused by imported jelly candies. The U.S. Food and Drug Administration asked importers to pull the candies from shelves. Most complied.

"The FDA," says Sperling, "does not have the power to take food off shelves."

Janet Riley, senior vice president for the American Meat Institute's National Hot Dog and Sausage Council, said it was too soon to take a position.

But Riley dismissed the importance of the AMA study because it was old - 1984. She cited another study, published last year, by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention that, she said, blamed candy for most choking deaths.

The CDC doesn't contradict the earlier study. While noting that, in 2001, 66 children under 14 died from choking on food, it doesn't detail the food substances.

That same year, 10,438 children were treated for food choking in emergency rooms - 3,325 had ingested candy or gum, while 5,192 choked on other foods, including meat. Hot dogs were not listed separately. The CDC study notes almost twice as many children were treated for food choking than for swallowing non-food objects - 5,513.

"Parents should pay attention to what pediatricians tell them," says Riley, who adds she has small children. "I'm not sure labeling is the best way to go about this."

Adler says she does not remember her pediatrician singling out hot dogs as especially dangerous, the way the AMA study did.

"I don't believe most parents understand hot dogs should be treated differently. If they saw 'choking hazard' on a package of hot dogs, they would stop and think."

To the extent anything can ever be good for Joan Adler again, this is good for her. This talk, this determination, this wanting to save others from what she must endure.

It is not so easy for her to speak of other things. The evening of Feb. 27, 2001. When she left her home with Eric's sister, Stacy, then 16, on a brief errand.

She returned in 45 minutes, she says. Only to see the flashing lights of emergency vehicles that crowded ominously in front of the house in Warren Township.

"I thought it was my mother," she recalls. She thought how horrible it was for Eric to have witnessed the illness, maybe even death, of his 92-year-old grandmother.

"I thought of the things I would say to him," she says. But Adler's mother was not ill, although, in months, she, too, would be dead.

Eric's grandmother - at Joan's suggestion - heated up a hot dog. He swallowed a big piece. Grandmother couldn't dislodge it. Called 911.

"It took 20 minutes for doctors to dislodge it," says Adier. "It was like a plug." Eric died in the hospital.

His photos appear throughout a house that has become so much bigger, so much emptier, now. His stickers and magnets cling to the fridge door. She has a scrap book and a Web site, www.ericadler.net. Outside, she has begun a garden for him.

She remembers their last conversation.

"I love you, Mom," Eric said, running to her to say goodbye.

Goodbye.

"I love you, too, Eric."

Bob Braun's column runs on Mondays and Wednesdays. He can be reached at rjbraun@webspan.net or (973) 392-4281.