Death - a five year old's perspective

About a year ago, before Cooper's 4th birthday, he started to ask us about death.  First is started with our dog Winnie - "will Winnie die some day?" Although there were many parts of me that wanted to shield Cooper from the harsh reality (not to mention myself  - I dread the day we lose our friend Winnie!) I knew we needed to handle this head-on with honesty and sensitivity.  So we told him "yes - someday Winnie would die" and went on to encourage him to always try to build good memories with Winnie so that they would be with us after she was gone.  After careful consideration of this Cooper's next questions was "can we get a cat when Winnie dies?" Hmmmmm!

Even though Cooper's perspective about losing Winnie didn't have a lot of depth I knew that it was only a matter of time before our sensitive little guy could understand the full picture.  I also knew that Winnie was getting older and our need to deal with this situation was imminent. After discussing with a close girlfriend who also happens to teach Kindergarten we decided to get Cooper a fish for his 4th birthday.  Afterall - how long would a fish live?  This would be a great opportunity for us to teach Cooper about death and dying without his first experience being too devastating.  And so on March 8th 2011 we welcomed home our newest pet - "Little Red Iron Man"

I have to say that after months and months of cleaning his tank, forgetting to feed him for days and sometimes more than a week, and then our big move in November - I was surprised when Cooper's 5th birthday was approaching and "Little Red" was still hanging on. How long could this fish live? Then in early June I started to notice that Little Red was looking different.  His tummy was swelling and he just sort of hung out by his fake fishy plant.  Some crazy "Beta Fish Enthusiast" website told me that either he was suffering from depression (weird), tuberculosis (not likely), or kidney failure.  Whatever the case - things weren't looking good and one night I came home to find him dead.

I decided that I would wait a full day until Cooper came home from school to tell him.  I didn't want to rush things in the morning and have him get upset during the school-day.  When we got home from school I gave it to him straight - "Honey, Little Red has died."  Immediately Cooper started going through the stages of grief - first he denied it - "no he's not" and at one point he even blamed me for not feeding him enough (anger).  There were a lot of tears and through it all I assured him that what he was feeling was normal.  Together we put him in the toilet (his final resting place) so that his body could go to Heaven.  Cooper couldn't say anything because he was crying so hard so I did the Eulogy.  I talked about how Little Red was the best fish and that we would miss him a lot.  Cooper took care of the final flush.

That night Cooper said his prayers as usual and then he added "God - please help Little Red find his way to Heaven so that he won't be sick anymore" - sigh!

Little Red's first night with us - Coop's 4th birthday

Cooper still has moments where he gets upset and says he misses Little Red.  There's talk now of wanting a new fish as well.  Overall the experience went well.  I'm grateful for Little Red and the lessons he taught us - he really was a great little fish!