Processing...Differently

Here's the update on my oldest and her reaction to the loss of our family dog. In short, I'm just chalking it up to her being her own person. We all react differently to things, so I'm going to put this in that bucket and not worry about it anymore.

She has since discussed it more, and a few days after my last post about her, I sparked a bit of conversation with her about Enzo. I had acknowledged that I missed him, and she started asking a series of questions about him, like how old he was when my husband and I got him, and what he was like as a puppy. Of course this may come from her desire for a new puppy, but I'm going to give her the benefit of the doubt on this one.

Then she did mention the topic of death quite a bit over the next few days. Never in reference to anyone in particular and never in the context of any anxiety, but it was running through her thoughts and imagination nonetheless. Yet she still never expressed her feelings of loss, or to this day has ever said that she misses him.

A few days after that, we were driving by a graveyard and she pointed to it and said "A graveyard!" with what I thought would be a similar reaction to seeing something sort of exciting, like say, an add for High School Musical 3 on the side of a bus. I guess I should tone that down a bit. She wasn't thrilled, just sort of in awe. She then said she wanted to go in a graveyard sometime.

I told her that maybe the next time we were able to visit my husband's (sort of distant) family in Philadelphia we could go visit Poppy's grave at the graveyard there. My father-in-law passed away three years ago, and we have not yet been back.

Then my younger daughter joined in the conversation at this point and said she didn't want to talk about that, because Poppy is no longer here, and that made her sad.

Now mind you that this is my child who was 9 months old when he passed away, so she has memories of him mostly built on our stories and photographs over the years. And yet she expresses sorrow at this point.

She amazes me.

So I say to her that even though Poppy is not here, he will always live in our hearts because we will always love and miss him. And then I say the same thing about Enzo. At which point my younger daughter says she wants to make a card for Enzo.

My oldest then tells her little sister that she can't give it to him since he's not here, so she asks why she wants to bother making a card for him.

Now here's another kicker. My younger daughter then tells her big sister that she will make it in her heart.

I mean does that tug on your heartstrings or what? I'm assuming she figures if she makes it in her heart, he'll get the card since he's in there too.

{sigh}

Seriously. I just can't get over how in touch she is with her feelings, and how well she expresses it.

Note to self: See the difference...feel the difference...acknowledge the difference.

Today was my final overt attempt to open the topic for conversation. We were at the library and I saw a book about a boy that loses his dog. Albeit not very well written I read it to the girls anyway [it opens with the line "Jim's dog got run over by a garbage truck! And he's smashed all over!" Danny said when he got to school."] I'm not kidding. But it did talk about Jim having a hard time with the loss and not wanting to talk about it with his friends. So I read it.

And I got nothin'. From either one of them.

We return home and the girl that lives across the street was outside, and it occurred to me that we had never told her that Enzo had died. She was one of his biggest fans and I feel horrible about this oversight.

She and another boy from the next street over were in front of our house, and the first question out of their mouths when they saw us walk over was "Where's Enzo?".

We delivered the sad news. Then they both said they found out from another friend of ours in the neighborhood who is in their class at school (and a close friend of my older daughter's). But they said they had a hard time believing it.

The little girl even said that she found out right before her science test and she was so sad during the test she thinks she might have flunked it because she couldn't pay attention.

Note re-written to self: We are all different.

As for me, I moved from the periodically hysterical phase, into the persistent heavy heart stage, which was then followed up with the sporadic heavy sighs phase.

I know in my heart that we will always miss him, even when he's not in our immediate thoughts.

And even if we don't say it out loud.