Children & Death

It's been a busy week, and I meant to post this much earlier. But too much writing and not enough time.
Once again, in deep thought provoked by my studies in my death and dying class. The most recent chapter I studied involved children and death, as in death that children have to deal with and children that are terminally ill themselves. Earlier in the semester we had an assignment to write about our earliest memory of death. I wrote about my first dog that had been around since my birth and died when I was about 7 years old. However, just recently as required I had to read some of the other entries which made me realize a very interesting piece of information about myself. Reading the others a common theme erupts, "I didn't understand," "didn't really know what was going on," "I was searching for him/her [the deceased]," "didn't realize that I was never going to see them again," and so on. Thinking back on my experiences including the earliest ones I was always very aware of what death meant. I knew that was the end, that there was no coming back."This is the really real world, and there ain't no comin' back." That was my random quote from The Crow. Anyways, the key is that I was never confused like most children are. I wonder if it's all those animals and pets I had brought home that taught me about death...they nonetheless did, but what really caused me to have that thought process. I decided to ask my dad if he remembered anything more about the death of my first dog. My father was actually the one who took him to get euthanized. All that I remembered was that one of those few days my dad was going to put him to sleep. I came home from school, I remember the day so vividly, called out my dog's name and ran through the house. He never came, so I knew it had already happened. I was sad, regardless, but I knew what it all meant. But when I asked my dad about it, trying to dig into what he and my mom may have told me about the whole thing. I found out that he still feels horrible about doing that to our dog to this day...he felt that the dog deserved better than that. Apparently he could only afford to take him to the pound to do it and they wouldn't let my dad stay with him. It makes me feel sad just thinking about how my dad felt...that dog meant a lot to him. He was an amazing dog but age was getting to him. But my dad, all this time, thought he told us something other than what I remember. I remember being told, as I stated above, that one day of that week he was going to be put down. So my reaction and understanding of death wasn't necessarily from anything extra I thought my parents may have told me but I have forgotten. Yet, possibly that openness is responsible as well. One thing I didn't understand though, I was told that he was buried possibly in a dog cemetery. I'm not sure if the dog cemetery was part of it, but the burial was something I always believed until I was old enough to know that it wasn't true. I just found it so interesting that it dawned on me that I pretty much had a pretty clear cut view on death as a child, at least more so than other children.