Understanding Death

One day, my mom and dad were having a conversation about Aunt Gloria’s passing away, and funeral arrangements.

I was there too, playing with my parakeet. I absolutely loved that bird. I named him Punkin, P-U-N-K-I-N, because I didn’t know how to spell pumpkin. He was the most beautiful bird I had ever seen, with bright yellow feathers on the top of his head and little aqua blue feathers mixed with sea green covering his body.

I would run home as soon as school ended and take him out of his cage. He would perch himself on my shoulder, and we would share a cherry red popsicle as an afternoon snack. Sometimes I’d turn on the radio and he would start bopping his head up and down to the beat.

At some point in their conversation, my mom turned to me and told me that my Aunt Gloria had died. I had already figured this out from listening to their conversation.
“Oh,” was my only response.

My father looked over at my mom with a surprised expression.

“She’s too young, Gene. She doesn’t understand what death is,” my mother said.

I did understand what was going on. I knew what death was, at least I thought I did. Someone is no longer on the earth, taken away sometimes in painful ways. A lot of people are sad. Was I supposed to be sad? I felt guilty for not being sad. I wasn’t very close to my Aunt Gloria. The most I can remember her ever saying to me was “Take your feet off of my coffee table.” I didn’t want to be around my mom and dad anymore. I went to play with Punkin in the living room.


* * *
Several months later, I came home from a dentist appointment and ran into my room to play with Punkin. I then made the loudest scream I had ever made in my whole eight years of life, a shrill sound that penetrated through the walls of our home until it reached the ears of my horrified mother. She dropped everything and ran into my room.

Punkin was face down in the fish bowl. It was a fish I won at the carnival. The fish was fine, swimming at the bottom of the bowl. I thought it looked annoyed by the intrusion. My bird’s feet were wrapped around the rim of the bowl, it’s head inside, and eyes closed.

I sat on the ground, tears streaming from my eyes. “THIS CAN’T BE HAPPENING! THIS CAN’T BE HAPPENING!” I kept repeating.

I pleaded with my mom to do CPR on him. Afterall, she was a nurse. She looked at me helplessly, but refused to give him mouth-to-mouth. She said it was too late. He was dead.

I wouldn’t let my dad take Punkin’s body out for a garden burial. We stuck it in a shoe box, placed on top of my desk, just in case we were wrong. Maybe he was just taking a nap. Maybe I’d wake up the next morning and take a look inside the shoebox. He’d wake up from his sleep and perch himself on my shoulder as he usually did. This never happened.

By the second day, the smell of bird carcass started to stink up my room. So my father took him outside. I followed behind. And we buried him in the backyard. My father said that his body would fertilize the plants. I was glad that his remains would benefit the plants just as his life had benefited my own. Now no one could say I didn’t understand death.