Cycles

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Our class fish, Sky, died a week ago. The picture shows him on his first day with us, a light purple flash swimming near the green plant.

Even though we’d all experienced the death of pets before, the moment still shook us up. One of our students, age nine, who found our fish floating, said he told himself, “Be calm; it’s a part of life.”

We changed our regular plan for the day to take time to hold an appreciation ceremony for him. To celebrate his life, we offered a feather, a stone and a bloom of pink salvia. We said simple words of thanks. Short, but complete. Not much talking, but just right. We let the day settle in and resisted the temptation to go buy another fish right away to cover up the sadness. After the weekend passed, we reflected on what we might change for next time and bought a new fish who we named “Jazz.”

Funny thing, yesterday, as we brainstormed new writing project ideas, the fish came up for me. (I sometimes write with my students to show them techniques, working through stuck parts, editing and the important work of taking risks.) I still miss that Sky, even though none of us wanted to talk too much about the loss. In the writing process, I worked through some of the ways I missed him:

  • represented a new beginning in our new space
  • my first fish ever
  • stunning colors, a treat for the eyes
  • calming, the way he swam
Want to know a strange coincidence? We picked a book, Love that Dog, to read because of its emphasis on poetry written through a boy’s eyes. Guess what? The book is about a boy whose dog died, and the dog’s name was Sky, just like our fish. Weird and cool. In our unwitting choice, we’d all receive an opportunity to work through the experience more if we chose–writing, drawing, exercising or maybe some talking…and maybe none at all.
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What’s the Deal?: Death can catch us all by surprise. An equal part of the life cycle, we haven’t dealt with the experience well in this culture. As parents, sometimes we want to “protect” children from challenging shocks. If we shield them too much, they miss the opportunities to make sense of their worlds. Anyone who’s ever been with someone passing knows that death brings gifts–unexpected peace, a connection with something larger than us, a new sense of community, among others.
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Resources: Love that Dog by Sharon Creech, for children ages 8 – 12 years, is a short book written journal-style from a boy’s perspective. Something Invisible by Siobhan Parkinson, for children ages 9 – 12, is a short chapter book also written from a boy’s perspective. A colleague, Marie Catrett, also showed me a book called Lifetimes by Bryan Mellonie and Robert Ingpen with poetic words simple enough for preschool age and illustrations elegant enough to reach any age.

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Category: boys, developmental stages, parenting  |  Tags: , , , ,