Anyone else have those days when you have nothing to write in your blog? I haven't done a thing in the last few days. Well that is not entirely true. One of the pet frogs died while the kids were at their Dad's and now I have to tell them when they get home. I wonder what would happen if I did not say anything? How long would it take them to notice? Several years back I was a caregiver for a boy with CP. His cat got hit by a car and instead of telling him the parents decided not to say anything and told me not to either. The dad buried the cat in the backyard. End of story? No. About a week later he comes up to me and asks where the cat was. I had no idea what to say and I didn't want to lie so I said "I think she is in the backyard". Good answer huh?
I won't not tell my kids. I figure the reason so many of us are scared shitless of death is it has always been so taboo. I remember when my Grandpa died. I was about 10. Everybody talked in hushed tones and cried. It scared me and made me very sad. Back then parents thought that children couldn't handle funerals. At 10 I didn't quite understand the concept of death but if I had been allowed to talk about him dying and allowed to go to the funeral I believe it wouldn't have been so awful.
I understand that a frog is nothing close to a grandparent dying but I think kids deserve the truth. I am not saying that children should be allowed to go to funerals either. I think it is a case by case decision. I just think death should be openly talked about because it scares kids when it is not.
That leads me to my next bit of my boring life. When I first got married I lived in a funeral home. I shit you not! My (now ex) husband was working there and the director wanted someone to live there to do the "pick-ups". It was a very nice place to be honest. It had a view of the harbour and the rent was free. (A note of interest- I am looking at these pictures trying to decide which ones to post because they are all so beautiful. I love the ocean and the mountains. I live in paradise.) It was not a bad experience at all but having to go downstairs to do laundry was freaking terrifying. The building was very old and was heated by those old radiators where you could turn a knob to release the steam. Nobody ever did this so at any given time you would hear a low muffled grrooooooan. Holy shit! I knew what it was but I just could not stay down there with dead bodies 20 feet away in the next room. I would dump the soap in, stuff the laundry in, turn the machine on and RUN! I really did. I would run up the stairs convinced something was going to get me! Eventually it got to be too much for me and I started going to the laundromat.