The Funeral

This is the program Emily typed up for the funeral of her beloved gerbils. She planned the whole thing. It was beautiful. At the end we all went outside and burned this drawing Emily made of them so the smoke could assend to heaven and Sugar and Cinnimin could be at rest.

A couple of explanations--these gerbils started out as Miles' pets. He named them and Emily who is a fantastic speller still chose to respect Miles' choice in the spelling of Cinnimin's name. As you may notice in the drawing above Cinnimin's tail is a bit shorter than Sugar's. This is because well-meaning Lucy pulled it off (and very diligently tried to reattach it) one day so the picture is to scale.

Now I must take a moment to share how very impressed I have been with the way Emily has dealt with this tragedy. How would your average kid feel about a stray cat that devoured his or her gerbils? Well, Emily is not your average kid. As soon as we figured out what had happened and we explained it to Emily, her response through her tears was, "It's not Boo's fault. She didn't know they were important to me." That's Emily in a nutshell. I've never met anyone who is so completely without guile.

Her reaction has not surprised me. It's just been a reminder of how blessed I am to have a daughter like her. It's a humbling expericence to see the incredible qualities of your children--qualities so much better than your own--and know that you are responsible for teaching them. Well, guess who's doing the teaching.

I love you Emily.