I am beyond busy these days (buh-bye, maternity leave) but wanted to thank the blog world for so much compassion over one crappy cat. If you had ever met Desdemona, you’d be taking it all back, so I’m kind of glad you never met her. Not just for the kind words, but because the ensuing advice about death and spirituality was extremely helpful yesterday.

Sort of.

Well, you be the judge.

“Going home,” Thalia said. “See Emily. And Desi!”

“No sweetie, no Desi.”

“Desi’s at the doctor.”

“So okay Thalia, Desi died. She was too sick to get better. She was really old and really sick and her body just couldn’t work any more sort of like water in a cup and wait, that’s not right but um…but she can still live in our hearts so anyway it’s not just that she was old because old is relative. I mean, tortoises can live 100 years and a tortoise – do you know what a tortoise is? Like a turtle.”

“Turtle!”

“And a flower can live one day, like that flower you picked at Aunt Maggie’s house and it died and then then Desi, she lived to almost 17. Remember how you can count to 16 now? Well 17 is one higher than that so it’s really high! But not as high as Momsie who’s now almost 90! That’s really really high. But now anyway, Desi is peaceful which is good because she was so sick and hurting and even though we won’t see her again she let us pet her for so many years and we loved her and you can still talk to her if you want.”

“Talk to Desi.”

“Yes, well, at least in your head…do you know how to do that? And all right, so anyway…she’s not sick anymore, she’s dead. And that’s what dead means.”

[pause]

“More crackers Mommy?”

Okay, so if any of you need advice on talking to your kids about vaginas, feel free to ask. At least I’ve got that one down.