Learning about death

Our daughter lost her first pet last week -- a catfish that went belly-up, probably from ammonia poisoning after living for a week with three goldfish. Goldfish are notoriously filthy creatures, and other fish apparently have a difficult time surviving in their midst; the trade-off, of course, is that goldfish are sturdy and difficult to kill. None of this would be interesting at all were it not for the fact that A. keeps asking where "New Fishie" -- the somewhat uncreative name she assigned to the doomed creature -- has gotten to.

Not having any great theories about how to address the question in a way that made sense, we took the easy route and lied, telling her that New Fishie has returned to the pet store to live with his old friends. A. is an enormous fan of Finding Nemo, and so she seems to understand the possibility that a fish might suddenly pick up and go elsewhere. So far, she deals quite effectively with loss -- she understands, for example, that her toys sometimes break and have to be thrown away -- so I'm not really sure why we couldn't just come up with something resembling the truth. Obviously, there's a qualitative difference between a toy breaking and a fish croaking, but to her I don't think those differences are meaningful. She tells her boots "goodnight" before going to bed, so the animate/inanimate distinction makes little sense to her. I can't imagine, then, that she'd be too bent out of shape by simple declarative sentences like, "New Fishie is dead. These things happen. It's going to be OK." As far as I can tell, this would be a disappointment to her -- something on the order of "Your balloon popped. We had to get rid of it."

More than anything, perhaps, I think we're squeamish about possibly hearing her talk about death. She repeats everything we say, of course, and I'm not eager to hear her remind me that "New Fishie is dead" about a thousand times a day. And given her interest in experimenting with language and applying new concepts -- appropriately or not -- to everything she sees. And I'm just not so keen on hearing her talk about death.

I'm completely comfortable, in other words, with the aspect of parenthood that involves denying the fact of mortality.

TAGS: Death, Fish, Grief, Toddlers
POST TOOLS: