Goodbye Snow

Last week we lost a family member, Grandma Jackie's cat, Snow. It happened the day before Payton's birthday and we held off telling her until this week, didn't want to taint her birthday with such bad news. This is the first time we've had to address death with her and we had no idea how she would take it, nor did we really know what to say to her. A few months ago we had a preview when it was explained to her that Grandma Joan's husband, her great grandfather, had died years ago. She was upset by the whole concept then and so I feared this would be traumatic for her.

We waited until Parker went to bed and Payton snuggled in with me. We tried to keep it very simple, since she is only days into being 4. We told her we had some bad news, that Snow had died last week. He was sick and he died. I expected tears, but instead her eyes got really big and the first thing she said was "Grandma Jackie's gonna be so SAD!!!" She was so worried about Grandma, we told her that yes, Grandma's sad, but it she be okay. We also tried to tell her that he was really sick, but that just because someone is sick doesn't mean they will die, and reminded her about Oliver being sick recently and that he's okay. I asked her if she had any questions and she really didn't seem to. We talked about Snow being buried in the back yard, and tried to reiterate that he wasn't alive anymore. She was uncomfortable by the whole talk, and snuggled in a little deeper for a few minutes. Then she had a question, I was ready for anything. "Can I have some grapes?" Stunned, we got her grapes and assumed we'd moved on. A few minutes later she had another question, something along the lines of, "Can he walk around?". Apparently she's not really getting it. We gave it one last shot, no honey, he's dead, he doesn't do anything anymore.

It's been a day since we had the talk and I'm surprised, but she hasn't brought it up again. I am sure that someday soon, out of the blue, we'll be having this talk again, but for now the bad news is delivered and we can mark this off of the list of terrible things a parent has to do. We're so sorry for the loss of our girls dear friend Snow.