How? Why?

How do I tell my 8 year old daughter that her hamster died?

Yes, I know, this sounds like something relatively simple. Thousands of kids have to get this news all the time.

But I got it harder than most.

My great aunt died back in October. My daughter was just starting to spend a lot of time with her. She was in her 80's, so the death wasn't unexpected (not really), but this was the first human death my daughter experienced. We were starting to spend a lot of time at her house visiting and what not. They got close (like only the really young and the really old can do) in a very short amount of time.

In the past two weeks, there have been 3 other deaths that are connected to my daughter in some way.

Wait, that sounded bad.

Let me explain.

About two weeks or so ago, a little boy in her school drowned. He was a grade behind my daughter. She didn't know him personally, but they brought in school counselors to help the kids cope. They had a balloon ceremony to honor him where they released hundreds of balloons in the air. To an 8 year old, this is a big deal considering there was a photographer from the local paper there, the mother of the kid was there and they got out of class to do it. At the tender age of 8, this makes a HUGE impact on your life.

The next day, a close personal friend of ours passed away. We called her Aunt, that's how close we were.

The next week, her teacher's mother died. Now, light of my life had never met her, but my daughter adores her teacher and to have the knowledge that her teacher's MOTHER died, that's hard for a little person to handle.

I did a boo-boo when I told her about our friend that passed away. I went on my trip last weekend and I had made the decision not to tell her about S passing away before I went on my trip. It was already bad enough that I was leaving for 4 days but to throw that at her on top of that was too much.

The Monday after I got back, I sat her down to tell her about S passing away. When I told her, she said "Oh, crap, why does everyone keep dying?" and then she proceeded to tell me that that day, they found out about her teacher's mother dying. So she got a double whammy in one day.

Now I have to tell her that her hamster died.

How much can an 8 year old handle?

Powers That Be.......please stop this. I can't handle telling her about another death. It's breaking my heart that she is hurting this much and is having to deal with all of this all at once. Please, please, please make her strong enough to handle this.

Later,

Mama Dawg