Archive for January, 2009
What They Said…
Not that I am delusional enough to think that I have a readership anywhere near dooce or girls gone child, but it’s an interesting discussion.
I’ll be back soon with pictures and stories….I promise.
Explaining Death to a Toddler
A week before Tillman died, I noticed him limping a bit. I looked at his toes (he’d had an infected toe before) and didn’t see anything, so we kept watching him. Then the night before he died, I noticed that his back leg was twice the size of the other leg. He used to sit on my lap every night, so I wasn’t quite sure how I didn’t notice the growth before it got to the size it did. When I took him to the vet the next day, she confirmed our suspicions that the problem was a tumor.
The most difficult part of our decision to euthanize him was wondering how Natalie would take it. When I left for the vet’s office, I wasn’t thinking we would be at that point yet, so I told Natalie that Tillman was sick and I was taking him to the doctor. So when I came home without Tillman, we felt completely unprepared to talk to her about it yet. She didn’t seem to notice that he wasn’t with me until I slipped and mentioned his name. When she asked “where’s Tillman?” I distracted her easily by pointing out some Christmas lights we were driving by. The next day, Meema and Pop Pop were watching Natalie when she said “I miss Tillman” when a cat appeared on her Barney video.
A few days went by before we figured out what we wanted to say (after getting lots of great advice from friends). The plan was to sit down with Natalie together, look at pictures of Tillman and talk honestly about what happened. But before we got a chance, I was home with Natalie because she was sick. All she wanted to do was watch videos of herself and I unknowingly played one that had Tillman in it. So I took the opportunity to have a talk with her about death. Since she was sick at the time, I didn’t tell her that Tillman died because he was sick. I told her that he was very old, his body stopped working and he died. Then I explained that dying meant that he wouldn’t be living with us anymore, and we wouldn’t see him again. And I told her that it was okay to be sad, and if she missed Tillman or felt sad, that we could look at his picture and remember him.
I waited for questions, confused looks, or some reaction, but she didn’t really have any. Today we were looking at the pictures of Tillman on the blog, and she recognized him, but didn’t ask where he was or anything. As much as we miss Tillman, we are sort of glad for the timing. If he had died a year or two from now, I think it would have been a lot tougher on Natalie.
Tribute to Tillman
Before Natalie was born, Tillman was our baby. He was born on July 16, 2001—one week after we got engaged—so we named him after Tillman’s Ravine, where Chris proposed. “Our boy” was such a baby to us that we included pictures of him on our Christmas cards. Tillman always slept in our bed, mostly curled up next to my stomach, even when I was pregnant and there wasn’t much room. His favorite things were coins, peppermint candies, and paper clips, all of which he would fetch.
Tillman died on December 19, 2008. Here is a chronicle of his too-short life. Notice that after Natalie was born, there aren’t too many pictures of our boy. I had heard about people who felt less attached to their animals after having a child, but I never thought that would happen to us. Even though he was demoted from baby to pet status, he was part of our family and we will miss him.
Born to Jodi’s cat Rocky:
As a young boy when we lived in New Brunswick:
Getting older as we moved a couple more times:
Finding a hiding place after Natalie became mobile:
Tolerating Natalie learning to be gentle:
We’ll miss you, Tillman-boy.