Zoey Grasps for Butterflies

It’s difficult for me to wrap my heart and mind around the forever of death, so I can’t imagine how a young mind like Zoey’s might struggle with it.  When her last living great grandparent died recently, it was her second real life experience with a death of someone she had known since birth.  When her Great Grandma Larson died six months ago, I used an experience with a dying butterfly to explain the process of dying, the subsequent memorial and burial.  She seemed to understand as much as an almost four year old mind could at the time.  It was a closed casket and we opted to have her and Hunter, who was of course clueless, attend the memorial.  I had used the butterfly to prepare her for what the memorial would be like.  She squirreled around with her brother and cousins during the service.  She watched as her great grandma’s casket was carried from the mortuary to the hearse that would drive her to the cemetery.  I had explained what she would see and she didn’t ask a great deal of questions at the time.  When it came time to say goodbye, she put a rose on the casket along with the rest of us and we blew a kiss up to the sky.

Grandma Lovatt with her grandkids and great grandkids

Zoey is now four years old and her mind is a little more able to contemplate dying.  Her Great Grandma Lovatt passed away this month in January.  Her death didn’t come suddenly as the first had, but still hadn’t been expected.  Zoey had heard me talking about my grandma being in the hospital and understood I was coming home late as I was often visiting her.  As the weeks wore on, it appear that my grandma would die during her stay in the hospital, but she did.  The day she died, I helped my mom and Uncle plan the memorial.  When I came home that night, I told Zoey her great grandma had died.  She didn’t have an emotional response, just sort of looked off and said, “Oh.”

She didn’t ask questions or seem bothered by the news until the night before the memorial.  I had been preparing her for what to expect as I often do with new experiences.  I told her that there would be a casket in the room and people would stand next to it and talk about her great grandma.  Hunter was asleep for the night and Zoey and I were watching Curious George.  I wasn’t prepared for the questions or the feelings that were to come and tried to choose my words carefully in response, as I didn’t want to give her too much detail or make death scary for her.

She asked what happened to your body when it was in the ground. I told her it stayed in the casket and was buried in a place where people could visit.  I told her the things that made her, “her,” like her mind, heart and soul would go to another place called Heaven.  She asked if your eyes are open or closed when you die.  I told her normally they were closed.  She said she wanted hers open.  I told her that would be okay.  After her TV show was over we headed to the bathroom to brush her teeth.  Before we walked into the bathroom she stopped me.  She whimpered a bit and said she didn’t want to die.  I dropped to her level and put my arms around her.  I told her she would be old and gray when she died (of course, I wish with all my heart that this will be true) and she didn’t need to worry about it now.  She said she didn’t want to get gray.  I laughed and told her I really wanted her to get gray and old someday, then added that she had a long, long, long, long, long, long time before she needed to think about either of those things.  She told me she wanted to die with me, that she wanted to sit on my lap when we died and then wanted to be buried with me.  I didn’t say that hopefully I would die long before her, but instead told her that would be okay too.  She said she wanted to be buried with her favorite pink blanket, then acknowledged she would have to keep it a very long time.  I told her we would have to take good care of it. 

At Zoey’s second funeral, I watched her look closely at the casket as she walked into the room.  She didn’t ask any questions, but I could tell she remembered and knew that her great grandma was in there.  During the service she moved back and forth between her Aunts and her cousins.  To help keep the kids quiet during the ceremony we gave them crackers and candy, crayons and coloring books.  Zoey didn’t pay attention to the people that spoke, even though one of those people was me.  At the end of the service she put a rose on the casket along with the rest of us.  She didn’t get to see the process through to completion though, as she had last time, as my grandma was going to be buried in Oklahoma.  I had told her this, so she wouldn’t expect it to be the same as last time.  She had said she wanted to be there when the casket went into the ground.  She had asked several times if she could go on the airplane with my mom so she could see her buried.  She became upset each time when we told her she wouldn’t be able to go.

On the way home from the memorial she asked for a butterfly.  I told her you couldn’t find a butterfly just anywhere, but we could look for one.  She continued to ask for and eventually cry over her desire for a butterfly for what felt like hours that day.  I’m sure it was her way of connecting her great grandmother’s deaths with our beloved Princess Butterfly, as this seemed to have been a more tangible death.  While I was aware the reason for her temper tantrums likely related to this, Joe and I were going to go out of our minds if she didn’t stop asking for a damn butterfly.  The odd of us being able to find another butterfly that we could catch for her were a million to one.  Joe turned to his iPad and Amazon in an attempt to find us all some solace and found a butterfly kit.  As we are trying not to simply give this girl everything she wants all the time, right when she wants it (which is a whole other topic), we ordered it and we told her we would give it to her after she helped clean up around the house and set the table for a week.  This appeased her.  We’re waiting for the caterpillar to arrive in the mail.  Soon, Zoey will be able to watch a caterpillar wrap itself into a cocoon and turn into a butterfly.  We told her once this happened, we would let the butterfly go.  She told us firmly that she wanted to keep the butterfly until it died.  I guess we’ll have to work on that when the time comes.