We never had pets growing up because my parents thought I was incapable of handling the inevitable reality of pet loss--talk about a self-fulfilling prophecy! (To be fair, this was probably well grounded, because I would do stuff like cry for hours about hurt butterflies and birds and whatnot. I wasn't an easy child.)
This means that when I met Scout, I just fell so hard for him. He was my dream puppy baby and when Huckie came along the next year, they became the perpetual toddlers in the large family I yearned for. Big A and I have always been "Dada" and "Mama" to them.
So these ten years with Scout coincide with some of the most golden years of my parenting life--the mischief and unpredictability and joy and surprise and beauty and busyness--and saying goodbye to Scout feels like saying goodbye to a stage of life I loved so much. It's one of the few periods I'd be happy to live through all over again. Wish you could stay, Scoutie. You're always so wonderful at helping me figure things out.
Pic: A light saber fight (dance?) from 2013. Scout has the green light saber, he played with it all that summer and chewed off the tip and yes--I still have it.
Title: Today marks seven years since Prince left us--also too soon.
4 comments:
I wasn't an easy child either; I was very emotional for sure.
A lot of crying.
The argument about children not learning about death from pets always seems so silly to me. You'd rather they learn about death from a human, usually an older friend or relative? I mean, yes, maybe you were an emotional child, but you had to learn to deal with those emotions somehow, right? Weird. Your parents knew you best, of course, but it seems like maybe they just didn't want pets!
Twinning, Nicole!
NGS--Ha, I think you're right about them not wanting pets! OTOH, Losing Scout seems much harder than losing a grandparent or a spouse (both of which I weathered). It seems more like losing a sibling or a child; it hits harder somehow.
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