Page 106 of When to Call a Blitz
Heidi and I wake from a dead sleep, and only take a second to look at each other before we’re flying out of our bed and running down the hall toward the kitchen.
Juniper sits on the floor by the door, a towel in her hand as a small bird lays on top of it. She wrapped it up in an attempt to warm it.
“What’s wrong?” Heidi asks, kneeling down in front of her.
“She died,” Juniper screams, tears flowing down her face hard.
Heidi folds back the fabric, taking a closer look, and when I hear her sigh, I know that Juniper is right. My heart sinks.
It’s hard to see anything this way.
Heidi looks up at me, her eyes sad, before she looks back at the bird. She puts her hands out for permission, and Juniper places the towel in her hands.
She gets up, tears in her eyes as she grabs a small box from the closet.
I sit on the floor with my daughter as we watch Heidi bundle the bird up carefully, placing it in the box. Juniper curls into me, her cries shaking her small body.
I rock her back and forth, kissing the top of her head.
When Heidi comes back, she places the box in front of us. “This afternoon we’re going to give her a proper burial, okay, Juniper?”
She nods through her tears.
We spend the rest of the day with her on the couch, watching movies to take her mind off what happened this morning. We don’t ask how she found it, and we don’t need to.
But by noon she stretches, her eyes puffy as she looks around. “Why do things have to die?” she asks quietly, and both Heidi and I sit up, unprepared for the question.
Heidi is the first one to talk. “Sometimes their bodies stop working,” she says, sadness dripping off ever word. Her eyes brim with tears as she looks up at me. “And there’s nothing we can do to stop it.”
Our therapist said that for her age, the best thing we can do whenever this topic comes up is to be honest with her. Especially if she’s trying desperately to save everything she can, she needs to understand why something may happen. Using euphemisms or lying to her is only going to make her more curious and confused.
“But why do their bodies stop working?” Juniper asks, her head on my chest.
Heidi bites her lip. “There are a lot of reasons. And none of them arefair.”
Juni looks up at me, her head bent back in a way that’s frankly a little terrifying, her blue eyes glassy. “Why did mom have to go?”
The question is one I knew was coming eventually, but I was wholly unprepared to hear it today.
I look at Heidi as she starts crying, her shoulders shaking, and I’m trying my hardest to hold it together. “Mom’s body got sick, and we didn’t catch it on time,” I tell her honestly. The onething I won’t tell her about is how it got sick. She can go her whole life without knowing that it was after she was born.
I’ve neveronceblamed Juniper for her leaving this earth and I vowed to never let Juniper ever think she was to blame.
“Why did it get sick?” she presses, and I look to Heidi for assistance.
She sighs, wiping away her tears.
“You know, I lost my dad when I was little,” she tells her, taking my daughter’s hands in hers.
Juniper gasps. “You did?”
She nods. “I was older than you are, but his body got very sick. I didn’t know about it for a long time.”
“Why?”
She shrugs. “He didn’t want to tell me. He wanted every second he had with me to be a good one.”
“Were you sad?” Juniper asks suddenly, gripping Heidi’s hands.
