This sounds an odd one I know. Please bear with me as I’m gonna ramble a bit.
My DS1 is 10yo and 3 years ago we rescued a bearded dragon, who has lived under his mid sleeper for around 2y. We’ve kept reptiles for years so every day he would know to do lizard’s lights and heat, and feed him, it’s been his routine morning and night. Lizard has been getting old. We think he was around 8-9yo but no way of knowing. He stopped eating. I told DS1 to prepare for the eventuality that prehaps “M” (lizard) was ill. He cried, I felt awful. I’ve been caring for this lizard day and night for weeks and the last few days have just been waiting. No specialist vets available. DS1 is with his dad (separated) this weekend and tonight M has sadly passed.
Thing is, this time to the day last year my beloved beautiful great Aunt passed away. Then a few days later my dad’s dog passed too. Both with cancer. I suspect, because of experience, that M had it too but no way of knowing. When my aunt was ill we would go to her to look after her from school and bring her meals etc, DS1 knew she was poorly but nobody knew how much so until the last week.
It’s DS1 first Christmas with a sibling too (DS2 8mo) and although he adores him I know it’s been difficult after a decade as an only child, 6 years of which it was just me and him.
He’ll be back after school on Monday and I can’t bear to break his heart again. It took him 3 years to stop randomly crying when my man died.
I want to get the vivarium gone before he’s back but I don’t know if a dark and empty viv is worse than an empty space under his bed? How can I tell him that his pet has died? Our cat loves him to bits and sleeps on his bed so he has a bit of comfort in that.
Please tell me there’s some magical way of doing this that doesn’t devastate my poor baby?