It’s always difficult to lose a loved one. Worse yet is having to explain the loss to a young child who has, at best, only a very basic understanding of what death means.
Nevertheless, when faced recently with just such a loss in our household I didn’t shirk from my grim responsibility. I sat down with my 4-year-old daughter and gave her the truth.
“Sweetie,” I said, “I have some sad news to tell you. Maybe you’ve noticed that Daddy’s been pretty upset the past few days, and was even crying a little bit. Well, the reason why Daddy’s been so sad is that, well, Daddy’s computer died.”
Sure, I was tempted to use one of the standard lines we feed to kids about death, like saying that the computer she’d enjoyed playing so many fun games on was getting old, so daddy was sending it back to the “computer farm” it came from where there would be other machines for it to network with.
Or I could have sugar-coated the truth by saying that the computer was happier now that it had gone up to “PC Heaven.”
“You’ll see it again one day, I promise,” I could have lied. “As long as you keep doing good behavior, that is.” Nothing like using a family tragedy to keep kids in line, that’s my parenting motto.
The whole ordeal was tough for me, too, however, as I worked through the standard stages of grief. At first, as the computer began acting funny and crashing more frequently, I was in denial.
I reassured myself, saying, “Oh, I’m sure it just needs a new motherboard.” But in my heart of hearts I think I knew, even if I didn’t want to admit it, that I had no idea what a motherboard is.
Eventually I had to face facts — the end was clearly approaching for the machine that had seemed so vibrant and fresh when I bought it way back in the long-forgotten era known as the spring of 2002. This was tough on me. It may have been hopelessly obsolete, but that computer saw me through a lot of good and bad times.
(If this column is ever made into a movie, here’s where the slow motion soft-focus montage of the two of us will go: scenes of me laughing over yet another hilarious forwarded e-mail from my Aunt Libby, my tears pouring out onto the keyboard as I watch my entire investment in www.TubeSocksDirect.com go down the toilet, the computer and me frolicking hand-in-mouse as we run through a field of daisies etc.)
But as with any great loss, eventually comes acceptance. And while I’m no grief counselor, I’d pinpoint the moment I achieved that critical stage at about the same time my new computer, with its powerful Pentium D microprocessor, 500-gigabyte hard drive and rewriteable DVD drive, arrived.
My daughter, unfortunately, is still wallowing in denial, and gazes sadly at the old machine, perhaps lamenting all the games she used to play on it. Today she even came up to me with excitement in her eyes and said, “Daddy, Daddy, the old computer didn’t really die!”
“Of course it didn’t, honey,” I reassured her, not looking up from my new 17-inch flat screen monitor with its razor-crisp graphics. “And it never will, as long as we keep its memory alive.”
“No, Daddy,” she said. “I pushed the button and it came on just like it’s supposed to!”
“There there,” I replied, standing up. “Honey,” I added, as I walked over to unplug the old machine from the wall, “I think it’s time Daddy told you about a wonderful place called PC Heaven.”
Examiner columnist Malcolm Fleschner will entertain any movie studio’s reasonable seven-figure offer for the rights to all of his columns.
