"Mommy, when I was a bird I died too...."

We found a dead bird yesterday down the street from us, just off the sidewalk in some bushes. Skyler saw the bird sitting on the ground under the bush as we walked by and it didn't quite look like it was sleeping, it looked different. He asked what was wrong with the birdie. I quickly thought through all of the implications of telling the truth (how worried, scared and concerned he'd be, having to explain death to a small child) verses the importance of starting to talk about real life, and that death is a part of it.

I told him that the birdie was dead, that he got very, very, very old and died. Skyler got really upset and said "No! Make him real! Make him real!!” I told him that I couldn't make him "real", he was dead and I couldn't make him alive again. He was standing on the street screaming and crying to make the birdie alive again. How do you explain that you can't do that? He didn't get it. I realized that kids think mommies can do anything to make it better and now he was finding out that I couldn't change this one, I couldn't make the bird move and be alive again. We went round and round... he was so upset and crying and he just didn't understand (but I think he kind of did a little, and it scared him).

I had to pick him up and carry him upstairs with him mad at me, crying as if I wasn't doing something that I should be doing. I told him again that when things got very, very, very old they stopped living and they died. "Like Grandma Sadie, you remember Grandma Sadie? We went to visit her and you climbed onto her bed and gave her hugs and kisses?" And he said "And I had Daddy's Juice" (that's orange juice). He was right; he did have OJ with Sadie. I pulled up some pictures from his website of Sadie and he was there with her, with a glass of OJ on the table between them. I showed him pictures of the funeral and explained that she was very, very old and died.