The uncomfortable truth: a pet's death, revisited.

It's been over a week since our guinea pig, Tina's death and my husband, Pretty Pants still hasn't taken her cage down. Maybe he's still mourning? I'm not really sure. We finally sat down, our eldest daughter and Tina's proud owner, the Meatball, and told her the sad news over the weekend. I've been the bearer of bad news by myself as a single parent for some time before my husband came along so I decided it was his turn at bat. After a few rounds of laughing, giggling and tickling playing dogpile, toddler sister, Spaghetti included, Pretty Pants told the girls to settle down because he had an announcement.

As the girls came to attention, Pretty Pants reminded Meatball of how Tina was in the hospital. The Meatball nodded as my husband paused then stated, "Well, Tina's in heaven now." I shot a confused glance at my husband thinking why did he have to use that phrase!?! Tina's in heaven now!?! Couldn't he just have announced with more direction, "Tina's passed away?!?" The moment my glance caught my husband's eye, the Meatballs' eyes started to swell with tears as she wailed briefly. Like 45 seconds briefly. Like her expression took a 180 degree turn from an I-just-lost-everything wail to a glimmer of hope and excitement like one would see from a child passing a candy store as she squealed, "Can we get a new one?" Can we get a new what? Cue another confused glance except this time by both parents.

A few days have passed and as Pretty Pants still hasn't taken down Tina's cage, greeting Tina is still a part of our coming home routine. The Meatball will run to greet Tina only to stop herself remembering she isn't and will never be in her cage anymore. Yet, children are funny beings as displayed in the Meatball's unexpected preliminary reaction to her pet's death. We'll never know why she didn't mourn any longer or if she needed to. Or perhaps my daughter already knew of Tina's passing. Who knows? All we, as parents, can do is to prepare and of course, expect the unexpected.