Over the weekend I rented the movie “Marley and Me.” It was pretty cute, well done, not particularly original, and definitely not a “kids’ movie.”
But it touched upon an issue that pushes a button for me. Now, I don’t want to give anything away in case you haven’t seen it, but since the story covers a number of years, it goes without saying that Marley grows older. Near the end of the movie, the family is concerned about the dog’s health. One of the kids says that his friend says that dogs sometimes just go away to die alone when the time comes. That’s what the friend’s beagle did, the kid says.
No, says the mom, maybe beagles do that, but “not labs like Marley.”
Hello? Why do parents insist upon lying to their kids about something as important as death? Parents offer all kinds of stories to explain the loss of a pet: It ran away. We left him at the vet. With little pets, they can sometimes pull off putting a new one in the cage or bowl while the kids aren’t looking.
Death offers one thing that none of these fabrications do, however: closure.
Everybody dies! Not just dogs and cats and hamsters and goldfish, but people too! And if kids are lucky, they will experience the death of at least one pet before that of a person—grandparent, parent, or—God forbid—a sibling or classmate. Going through the grieving process over a pet is like “practice” for when it happens with a person. Take away the little lesson, and the big lesson is harder.
Letting the kids be “in on it” as much as possible is the best strategy. Okay, if your pet was hit by a car and mangled, that might be too disturbing for younger kids to see. But if you’re having him put to sleep, if the pet dies at home, or even if the pet is hit and killed but not mutilated, let the kids see what death looks like.
Lying to them to “protect” them is an oxymoron. The truth, please.