Our dog died yesterday.
Family is still recovering, and it's going to hurt for a while, but I just wanted to take a moment to say, how incredibly grateful I am, that it is possible to raise a smart, creative, and loving child, without resorting to made up doggy-angel bullshit or anything like that. My 5 year old was sad, cried a lot, like any empathetic, normally functioning human is wont to do, but otherwise took it better than I did. He wanted to be in the room, at the end. He asked great questions about what was going to happen, and whether he would feel the euthanasia, and why it was important to help him go...
I know, deep down, having grown up always having been an atheist, that it is not surprising to be a moral, caring, loving individual, without the trappings and accoutrements of religion, but man, it wears on you. Decades of explaining myself to religious people who cannot conceive of morality without an objective, supreme law-giver... it sows doubts. Plants worries. Always looking over my shoulder, wondering, am I doing it right as a parent... even when we show studies that secular kids distinguish better between real, and fantasy, I get shit thrown in my face how 'that's not necessarily better, because imagination and creativity', and more doubts.. am I stifling my kids creativity now, or ruining fantasy and his childhood...?
No more. Fuck them.
My kid is fine. He is loving, warm, shows empathy for other kids, doesn't distinguish between 'us' and 'them', for any of the race, gender, ability, political or any other of the stupid boxes we assign ourselves to identify as belonging to. He's confident in himself, sees the good in himself, asks the most amazing, insightful questions...
I'll never doubt again. I will go on telling my son the truth, about anything he asks. I could not be more proud, as a parent, of the person he is growing into. Someday he will surpass me in *everything*, and I'm totally cool with that. He doesn't need lies and bullshit to cope with life. He needs the truth. He thrives on the truth.
I feel sorry for all the kids out there, whose parents don't value the truth, over made up manufactured lies of comfort. The parents that tell their kids, or allow some lying self-righteous charlatan in a stupid white sheet or black suit and a stupid white collar to lie to them, that they are sinners from birth, incomplete, unworthy without the mercy of some illusory externality that was allegedly tortured to death before they were born for the crime of an alleged sin committed by others before they were born...
so sad. Too many kids, too many lies sown.
The truth is so much easier, and it works. I know it works, and I will not doubt it again.
-Voltairine de Cleyre (1880)
= new reply since forum marked as read
of your family member. . I'm positive your child is better for you explaining without sugar coating with fantasy.
[font style="font-family:papyrus,'Brush Script MT','Infindel B',fantasy;" size=4 color=teal]And I want to say that I think you are doing right by your family and son. Keep telling your son the truth, keep proving the charlatans wrong.
In a way, I feel that the lies of an afterlife do far more harm, than whatever measure of "comfort" they provide. I think they sell false hope at the cost of closure.
When someone[/font]* [font style="font-family:papyrus,'Brush Script MT','Infindel B',fantasy;" size=4 color=teal]we love dies, I feel pretty certain we will never see them again. If that is the case, we have not only a right, but almost a duty to grieve their loss in full, to release our sorrow, and come to terms with their passing in our own way.
They meant so much to us, who are they to take our grief away?
It should be raw. It should be real. That is what it means to have loved someone.
I think the lies of comfort rob us of those emotions. Not only that, those lies are not even really for our sake. They are more to make everyone around us feel better because they don't have to see us hurting. We earned that right to hurt, to mourn, and maybe even shed tears. Just because it is depressing to them does not give anyone a right to take that away.
And just because we are hurting, that does not mean we are broken. We don't need redeeming, we don't need saving, we have no sins to be forgiven. We are all human. We laugh, we cry, and we hurt. There is nothing wrong with that. Being human, or simply being born is not something anyone needs to be forgiven for.
All that we really need is the truth so that we can truly live the lives we have:
Unbroken and real.
May you and your family find your own peace [/font]
*Not just humans
Pets mean so much to us, and bring so much into our lives, that it is hard to say goodbye.
It sounds like you are doing a fantastic job raising your son, and it is great to see them grow into caring, thoughtful human beings. Don't second guess yourself. Take it from one who was raised with fairy tales of heaven, it only gets in the way.
I don't suppose that I should include Rainbow Bridge here, huh? 
