Mom and Dad were trying to console Susie, whose dog, Skipper, had recently died. The little girl sat curled up on the couch, clutching Skipper’s old collar so tightly her knuckles had turned white. The house felt strangely empty without the sound of paws tapping across the floor or the familiar bark at the mailman every afternoon.
“You know,” Mom said softly, brushing Susie’s hair back from her tear-streaked face, “it’s not so bad. Skipper’s probably up in Heaven right now, having a grand old time with God.”
Dad nodded gently. “Running through fields, chasing squirrels, eating all the treats he wants.”
For a moment, Susie stopped crying. She stared at them with those serious little eyes children get when they are thinking far harder than adults expect.
Then she asked quietly, “What would God want with a dead dog?”
The room went silent.
Mom opened her mouth, then closed it again. Dad suddenly became very interested in straightening a magazine on the coffee table. Neither of them had an answer, because sometimes children ask the kind of questions that make grown-ups realize how little they truly understand themselves.
But after a few seconds, Susie hugged the collar tighter and whispered, “I hope He’s being nice to Skipper.”
And somehow, that broke their hearts all over again.
An 8-year-old wrote the following about grandparents:
Grandparents are a lady and a man who have no little children of her own.
They like other people’s. A grandfather is a man and a grandmother is a lady! Grandparents don’t have to do anything except be there when we come to see them… They are so old they shouldn’t play hard or run.
It is good if they drive us to the shops and give us money. When they take us for walks, they slow down past things like pretty leaves and caterpillars. They show us and talk to us about the color of the flowers and also why we shouldn’t step on “cracks.”
They don’t say, “Hurry up.”
Usually grandmothers are fat but not too fat to tie your shoes.
