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Dead Goldfish and a Holy Summons

I am in love with Benjamin Franklin. I can’t help it. His laundry list of accomplishments is mesmerizing. Writing and printing Poor Richard’s Almanack. Inventing the modern-day furnace. His idea for public libraries? Public heaven if you ask me. He founded the Philosophical Society in Philadelphia, formed the public fire department, and established the United States postal system. He was our country’s most influential diplomat of all time. And electricity! I mean, he really connected the dots on that one, y’all. Oh yeah, and he helped draft a little ol’ document known as the Declaration of Independence! The man single-handedly shaped, created, or invented entire aspects of the world we live in today. Don’t get me started. My love for Benjamin Franklin runs deep.

I have decided that one of Franklin’s most important works is an epitaph he wrote for the Shipley family’s pet squirrel. Walter Isaacson tells about it in the recounting of Ben’s life. (Yeah, we’re on a first-name basis.) At the time Ben wrote the first draft of his autobiography, he lived in England with Anglican bishop Jonathan Shipley, his wife, Georgiana, and their five daughters. Ben found the girls to be absolutely delightful (he found most women to be absolutely delightful), and he had his wife send over a pet squirrel from America to become the newest Shipley family pet. Less than a year after the squirrel’s arrival, the family’s pet met an unfortunate ending in the jaws of a dog. In Franklin-esque fashion, Ben penned a proper farewell epitaph for the beloved squirrel.

In a letter to Georgiana he says,

I lament with you most sincerely the unfortunate end of poor Mungo: few squirrels were better accomplished; for he had had a good education, had traveled far, and seen much of the world. . . . He should not go like common Skuggs without an elegy or epitaph. Let us give him one in the monumental stile and measure, which being neither prose nor verse, is perhaps the properest for grief; since to use common language would look as if we were not affected, and to make rhymes would seem trifling in sorrow.

Mungo deserves something a little more eloquent than such a simple epitaph with such little heart as: Here Skugg Lies, Snug as a Bug in a Rug.1

One of the most beloved adages spoken over children around the world at night is Franklin’s example of a heartless epitaph for a rodent, an epitaph that would simply not do for the family’s beloved pet squirrel. And while this letter is one of many nonsensical examples of Benjamin Franklin’s famous use of grandiose words written to enshrine him upon hearts and history, what he has done in this letter is really very important for the griever. He has given a squirrel a proper farewell. A SQUIRREL.

It seems silly, really. Unimportant. Dastardly unequivocal to the eulogies spoken at funerals mourning the loss of people we love the most. But Franklin understood that a death is a death, no matter how small. And I am of the opinion that all deaths should be grieved as such. Perhaps Dr. Suess’s compassionate elephant, Horton, would say the same? If a person is a person, no matter how small, then a death is a death, no matter how small.

No one can place a value on that which has died unless they have loved it intimately first. No one can grieve what they have not dreamed of and cared for in quite the same way as the dreamer and the caregiver. It doesn’t matter what the size of the loss is. Things of all shapes and sizes die. Dreams. Dads. Dogs. If you are burying, then you are burying. And burying hurts. No matter what is being buried.

I met an Army wife once who understood this. She was telling me about her husband’s third deployment to Afghanistan and said she could do a lot of hard things with him away. Like handling the burial of her grandpa, the kids being sent home from school for bad behavior, the broken refrigerator, and the stretching thin of money that never seemed to cover the bills. But she said, “When I came home and the neighbor’s evil cat was eating the tomatoes off my tomato plants, I lost it. I just absolutely lost it. And I screamed at that cat like he was eating my child.”

I met another Army mom who was grieving and burying something much more difficult. She came to me after a show and told me her son was a runner. She had only ever dreamed of him running and had cheered him on his whole life. But he had just returned from Afghanistan with no legs. Tears ran down her face as she said, “I realized tonight as you were talking that there are some dreams I’ve had for him that I guess I need to let go of and bury now. I just don’t know how to, though.”

I immediately felt ridiculous for talking about my own grief as it paled in comparison.

But we cannot underestimate or undervalue any grief, no matter the shape or size. Grief cannot be compared. It must be embraced before it can be laid to rest. So whether it is the eating of the tomato plant, or the loss of your son’s legs, or a road that has suddenly run out, or my daughter grieving the death of an imaginary friend, the loss is worthy of an epitaph.

I recently watched an old TV show rerun that reminded me of epitaph writing. In the show, the daughter’s pet goldfish dies and she is heartbroken. Her dad marches the entire family (dressed in their Sunday best) solemnly toward the bathroom. With her pet fish wrapped up in toilet paper, he begins a toilet-side service. The siblings all giggle and the little girl insists she is better and ready to watch TV. To which the father responds, “NOBODY IS GONNA WATCH TV UNTIL THE FUNERAL IS OVER. IS THAT CLEAR?”2

When a child loses something dear to them, whether it is a pet goldfish or a grandma, we grieve with them. Very rarely do we tell a child, “Just get over it.” When the goldfish dies we dress up, march to the bathroom, and insist on closure for the child. We all dressed up and we WILL have a funeral for this goldfish! If compassion, humor, and careful insistence on closure are gifts that we give our children when they are dealing with loss, why should we treat our own grief any differently as adults?

Our daughter, Annie, is a natural-born griever. She has actually asked me to not put chocolate chip smiley faces on her pancakes because she feels sad about eating the person. She grieved the end of preschool for days, eulogizing through tears her love for her teacher, friends, sandbox, and her favorite water fountain. And when a bandmate discovered his French coffee press had broken while on the road, Annie’s eyes welled up with tears and she cried over his loss for nearly ten minutes. Annie keeps teaching me about this universal concept of loss, and daily reminds me that children might be our best hope of recovering the art of grieving and burying well.

When my grandmother, Annie’s great-grandmother, passed away, Ryan and I planned to take her to Mississippi without actually telling her that Mamaw had died. We certainly did not want Annie at the funeral. After all, she was only a few days shy of turning five, and caskets and gravesides seemed a bit much for a child who grieved not-real pancake faces.

We told her we were making a last-minute trip to Mississippi to be with all the family. We told her how fun it would be to see her cousins, grandparents, aunts, and uncles!

“But why are they going to Mississippi?” she asked suspiciously. I evaded her question and talked about other things. “But Mom, why don’t we wait until Mamaw is better and can walk again and then we can all go?” Finally—and I knew she was baiting me: “But is everyone going to be there, Mom, even my Mamaw?”

She is a smart child and perhaps there are much better ways of parenting, but since I’ve already started an “Annie’s Therapy” fund, all I knew to do in that moment was tell her the truth.

“Baby, Mamaw is going to be there, but not in the way we have ever known her. Mamaw died this morning, sweetie, and she went to heaven to be with Jesus and Papaw and her daughter, Debbie. And now she can walk again and see all the people she loves and be with God.”

Annie lost it, sobbing uncontrollably. I told her more about heaven, and that we really don’t know anything for sure. That we just know it’s where God is and all things are made whole; it’s where God’s children go back home and get new bodies and are surrounded by His love and beauty.

“IF GOD GIVES NEW BODIES, WHY CAN’T HE JUST SEND HER BACK HERE WITH HER BETTER BODY?” she yelled in frustration.

And what a brilliant question for a five-year-old who loves her life HERE. If we are made wholly well in God’s presence, why can’t God send us back here? I decided this was not the appropriate time to debunk reincarnation or explain to her that this world isn’t all it’s cracked up to be. Instead, I tried to remember everything Mr. Rogers had ever taught me about helping a child express her emotions. I told her it was okay to be angry and sad. It was okay to ask God questions. I told her that when we are sad and angry there are lots of things we can do to get those feelings out so they don’t stay inside of us and make us sick. I told her some people color and paint until they feel better. Some people scream into pillows and punch a mattress. Some people go for a run. Some people write a song. Some people talk out loud about all of it.

She asked for some privacy.

I was hesitant. But she clearly wanted to process and I wanted to give her the space she needed (though what I really wanted was to sit and hold her while we both cried). I went to the next room, shut my door, and immediately turned on the baby monitor. She eulogized through tears, “Mamaw, I’m so sorry you died. I only ever knew you when your legs didn’t work and your back hurt. I hope you feel better now. I already miss you.” Then she grunted and growled and I heard her repeatedly hitting her pillows. Then it got quiet for a while, and later she would show me a picture that was all yellow (with deep, heavy-handed strokes) with a blue blob in the top right corner. (This was heaven and Mamaw floating into it.) After the quiet time came the singing. Oh, the singing. How Ryan and I gave birth to a tone-deaf child who loves to sing is beyond me. But she wailed out all kinds of made-up songs about how she was sad but Mamaw was glad. And then her door opened.

I turned off the baby monitor and pretended to be packing. She came in my room and said, “So do we get to stay in a hotel room with our cousins?”

And she was well.

We adults might learn a thing or two from children if we watch how they instinctively grieve the painful moments of life. In their worlds, a whole myriad of small deaths and little pains are worthy of lament and burying. Their grief carries no shame; they will wail and eulogize until they are good and finished. And then, when the sting of death is gone, they move forward.

And that’s the whole point of burying: the moving forward. So I am learning to be more like my daughter and giving myself permission to write epitaphs for every kind of loss. Because I am learning that whether I bury a friend or a failure, a squirrel or a fish, the act of properly laying something to rest is the first part of letting go. And letting go is a holy summons—an invitation to move forward.