I found him in the backyard with a plastic spoon and muddy hands.
At first I thought he was digging just to dig—like most six-year-olds do when they’re bored.
But then I saw the little yellow dog, the one he used to sleep with every night,
tucked gently in the dirt like a real goodbye.
He didn’t look up when I walked over.
“I’m having a funeral,” he said.
I knelt beside him and asked if he wanted help.
He shook his head.
“She’s gone, and he doesn’t make it better anymore,” he mumbled, brushing soil over the plush paws.
“He was from before.”
It took me a second to realize what he meant.
Before the hospital.
Before the hospice bed in our living room.
Before her chair sat empty at breakfast.
I wanted to scoop him up and tell him it was okay to still need comfort.
That nobody ever really outgrows it.
That I still slept with the light on sometimes.
But he was standing straighter than I’d ever seen him.
Fists clenched.
Holding something inside he didn’t know how to say.
Then he pulled a folded paper from his pocket and placed it on the tiny grave.
I asked what it was.
He said,
“A note. In case she sees him first.”
I didn’t cry right away. I waited until he was inside. Until he washed the mud off his hands and went to draw like nothing had happened.
Then I came back out, sat beside the little patch of turned earth, and stared at that paper. I didn’t open it. That was his. His goodbye. His message between a boy and the one he still looked for in every quiet corner of the house.
But I whispered something out loud anyway. Just in case she could hear me too.
“He’s braver than both of us ever were.”
Later that night, I caught him staring out the window.
He didn’t say anything.
Just reached for my hand and held it the way she used to.
And we sat like that, in the soft quiet, not needing words.
Not pretending anymore.
Here’s what I’ve learned:
Grief doesn’t follow a script.
Sometimes it looks like tears.
Sometimes it looks like silence.
And sometimes it looks like a plastic spoon and a muddy patch in the backyard.
Kids don’t always say what they feel, but they show it—
in the way they let go,
in the way they hold on,
in the way they fold a note and bury it with a stuffed animal,
just in case she sees him first.
If this story moved something in you, share it. Like it if you believe letting go doesn’t mean forgetting. And hug your people tight—especially the little ones. They carry more than we think.
