Death and Pets

"Mommy, that's the kind of puppy I want, when daddy dies."

"Ms. Elaina got trapped in the slime and no one can rescue her so she died"

"Mommy, when you're dead, you don't eat ice cream anymore"

"I'm sending the bubbles up to V. like the balloons."

These kinds of comments are pretty much a daily occurrence.  My 3 year old has learned about death.  This is entirely my fault and for tragic reasons.  I've been wanting to write about this for a while, but haven't been able to.

Back in December a former student of mine, a wonderful, bright, funny, talented, 10th grader and her amazing sister were in a car accident and for V (the 10th grader) it was a fatal one.  I was the first of her teachers to find out and it happened during Winter Break.  So the responsibility of telling everyone, making contact with the family and such fell to me for the first while.

It was heartbreaking and terrifying and I'm still not able to verbalize what it means to me to lose a student in such a way.  But the event also had an effect on E.

I had to go to the funeral.  I wanted to go to support her family, since I was one of the first school people to respond to the accident and show up at the hospital.  Plus I really love both girls, like I love all my students and I wanted to be there for the surviving sister.  But, the funeral was the same day as a Texans playoff game that Ken had tickets to.  Maybe I should have gotten a baby sitter.  Maybe I should have just stayed home, but in the end I took both kids with me to the funeral.  Thinking I would be able to distract E with the tablet.  I told her the very basics.  V had died.  We were going to a church to remember her and be there to support her family.  E didn't ask many questions.

But E is incredibly empathetic and aware.  Once emotions started, the tablet lost all interest.  She wanted to know what was going on, why people were crying, how V died.  She was very very very well behaved and whispered all her questions and accepted simple answers and several "I'll explain later"s.  She was even very well behaved when we went to the burial site.  She participated in the balloon release (because 3 year olds can't be around balloons without getting one) and was fascinated by the heavy machinery that was there.

And once we left, the questions started to flow.  Now I'm agnostic and Ken is Christian so I tried to answer her questions with information from both sides.  Though most of her questions were not so much about what happens after you die.  (Mommy's answer: some people believe that the energy that makes you up goes to Heaven and lives there.  Other people believe that your energy is sent back out all around the world and becomes part of the world again.  But your body doesn't work anymore.  You don't move or talk.  And you never come back)

Now, death is just a part of her play.  I don't know how firm her grasp is on it, but she brings it up in play, which tells me she is processing it.  It seems like such a heavy subject for such a little girl.  Sometimes I feel like a bad mom for having exposed her to it so early.

But really most of the time she links death and pets.  I think she's processing both things which leads to darkly comical statements like those above.  But she really wants a pet and know's it most likely won't happen while Daddy is around.  So she's experimenting with ways to get pets

So far she's come up with Daddy dying and her going off to college.

"mommy, when I'm bigger and go to college, I want to get a real pet.  a kitty and a puppy. and I will live in my own house"

"daddy, when I'm 28 I will go to college and have my own house with a kitty and a puppy, and I will be able to drive"

Really though, my 3 year old is planning out her college life for when she's 28.  How did she get so old thinking so quickly?