Just before I was due to do the school run, I let Jumeirahs beloved pet cockatiel, Thomas, out for a ride on my shoulder. Hes just a gorgeous bird and loves to be close to you. Just before I went to put him back, he suddenly took flight ( even though I clipped his wings last week) and flew straight over the front fence. I raced through the gate... to find silence. Not a sign of the bird anywhere.
We have searched all afternoon, spoken to neighbours, and asked God to bring him home.
There is still no sign of him.
Its the first time as a mum I have really hurt her, not intentionally, but nevertheless, I caused it and I ache for her. She loved that bird, wrote poems, stories, sang to him, and trained him.
" Mum, I know its not your fault, but he was the best thing Id ever had." Ouch.
And so we talked about whether he'd survive, she taught him to eat grass seed so he should be ok, and shes gone to bed with the knowledge that hes probably happy.
My neighbour thought maybe I should pretend he came home and go get a new one tomorrow, but I believe that this child would know straight away. Shes not one Ive ever shied away from telling the truth ( and yup, she knows how babies are made the "real" way already cos she asked!)
If you have kids,how do you cope with things like this? What do you tell them? Do you tell them the truth? What do remember of things like this happening to you as a kid?
Well as the cat of our neighbour died in a car accident - we told Annika (4 years) the truth. I cried with her, since I loved Lissy a lot and knew that we would miss her daily visits. It was the coolest cat ever. Now she is still be missed and Annika still talks about her (it happened 3 month ago). Our daily bed-routine is now: Good night, I love you to the cloud, where Lissy sits and looks down at us.
ReplyDeleteWhen she cried for two days in the beginning I thought it was the wrong decision and felt bad about it, but well, death is a part of our live and can not be blanked out.
Since I love your posts and know what a caring person you are, I think you are going to do the right thing.
Another story, which was a reason we decided to go for the hard truth: Kristian - my husband - had a turtle he loved very much. But the turtle got very sick and died. Instead of telling him the truth, they told him, that they brought the turtle to the zoological garden, because there it was going to become healthy again. So in the following years the always visited Emma in the zoo - and he always wondered, which one was Emma... When he was almost grown up they told him "oh, you don't know by now? We never brought Emma to the zoo, she died"... Looking back at this he feels back, on the one side he knows they wanted to protect him, but on the other side they lied to him the whole time...
Greetings, Kirsten
Okay, I am so glad I read this AFTER I found out that he has been found and is safe. I would have totally cried reading this.
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