The lessons we learn and experiences we have as parents come fast and furious. And as much as I think I might be ready for some of those “bigger moments,” having given careful consideration to how best tackle topics like the birds and the bees, drugs, and broken hearts, I can’t say I was particularly ready for death and grieving.
I may have thought I was; we’ve been through it before, when the children were young and we lost both of our cats within a year, similarly when two great-grandmothers passed away. But the girls were young, and as much as I tried to explain (and not over-explain), I’ve come to learn that children need a certain level of maturity before they really feel the impact from the death of a loved one or pet.
I remember fretting about trying to explain to my then four-year-old that Dave, my silver tabby and faithful furry companion for almost two decades, had finally passed away on her own accord. (Yes, Dave was a girl.) Despite all my concerns, Catie was nonplussed; it didn’t really faze her.
But last week was an especially tough one for our family, most of all for my eldest, who is now nine. Mere hours after completing one of the biggest school projects she’s had to date – researching and reporting on the animal of her choice, a gerbil, replete with a reasonable facsimile of the animal displayed in its natural habitat – her own pet gerbil died.
It didn’t help that I was out for the evening, having dinner with an old friend in Whistler, when I got a panicked call saying that something was wrong and they were worried. The poor thing was twitching and not taking water or food.
Forty-five minutes later, the phone rang again. Instantly, my heart sank. It was one of the most difficult calls I’ve had to take.
To be perfectly honest, after having two cats from the time I was 19 – both of which lived close to 20 years – I thought gerbils were the way to go. Safe. If I recall correctly the three we had in my Grade 6 classroom – Jack, Janet and Chrissy, if you must know – didn’t make it more than a year. And they ate their babies.
“How can you get emotionally attached to a rodent that eats its young?” I asked myself at the time. I could do this. We got one for each girl; they named them Petal and Skinny Face.
But there’s something that happens around the age of nine that I’ve intuitively felt with my own child. Interestingly enough, it is a marked developmental milestone explained by Waldorf education as a time that the world opens up for the child in a way they haven’t experienced yet in life. From within themselves, children now feel a separation from others. They are no longer simply part of an assumed unit (mom and child, nuclear family, extended family or community). They are individuals. They realize on a profound level that their connection to the outside world is tenuous and that life is, indeed, impermanent.
So while there were a lot of tears, I was able to sit with her through her despair and sense of loss and just be there. I didn’t try to cheer her up. I didn’t try to paint a prettier picture.
In all of that, she felt understood and heard. She experienced the pain of losing something she loved forever and with full consciousness. And she moved through the feelings to a place where she is now able to see what could help.
And in this case, it seems to be another gerbil.
