The sound of the wind outside seemed to have weakened, and the rain was easing. Since there was no electricity, they couldn't watch the news on TV. No one knew if the typhoon had passed, or if it was just a temporary change.
After listening to Cai Meiwen's story, everyone finally knew that she had experienced an unusual event and understood her difficulties. It could only be said that she thought further and more carefully than ordinary parents. Not only did she consider the situation when the pet was alive, but she also considered her daughter's feelings when the pet died.
If it were a lot of parents with a big heart, they would be very open-minded and say that if the pet died, it was just a child. She would be sad for a few days and forget about it.
But in fact, every child who had a pet when they were young, even if it was only for a short period of time, would not forget the sadness and pain when their pet died. The closer a child was to their pet, the sadder they would be when they lost their pet. No one could say for sure whether this would have a long-term impact on the child's psychology and personality. After all, the human brain and spiritual world were very complex, full of mysteries like the universe.
Cai Meiwen's experience reminded Zhang Zian of Stephen King's horror novel, Pet Cemetery, which had been adapted twice on the silver screen. There were some subtle similarities between the two.
In Pet Cemetery, the mother experienced a terrible death when she was eight years old. The deceased was her sister. Before she died, she was tortured by a disease, which left a deep psychological shadow on her. Therefore, when the father tried to talk about life and death to the young daughter, she became furious.
The young daughter had a cat, and the kitten was like a treasure to her. One day, when the kitten went out to play, it was hit by a passing car and died. Because he couldn't bear to let the daughter be too sad because of the loss of her beloved cat, the father made an extremely wrong decision … The rest of the story was irrelevant.
Because of the shadow of death when she was young, Cai Meiwen didn't let her daughter raise pets that were too short-lived. She didn't want to see her daughter grieve when her pet died too early. She had the shadow of the hero and heroine in Stephen King's book.
If it was just horror, starting from horror and ending with horror, it would be no different from fast-food online novels. But as the king of horror novels, Stephen King's books were actually about human nature. Take the book Pet Cemetery as an example. Under the appearance of a horror novel, it actually talked about the importance of life and death.
For example, after the mother's elder sister contracted an incurable disease, the elders explained the correct view of life and death to the mother in advance, knowing that the elder sister would die. Then, the mother would not be traumatized by the death of the elder sister. Later, when the father tried to explain the view of life and death to the daughter, she would not rudely interrupt the father.
If his young daughter had a correct outlook on life and death, she would have faced the death of her beloved cat bravely, and the series of tragedies that followed would not have happened.
Similarly, Cai Meiwen's first encounter with death was a brush with a cruel murderer, and then she experienced the death of her beloved dog. Before that, her parents had never talked to her about death.
It had to be said that many parents in China were like this. They were extremely taboo to talk about two things with their children — sex and death. They felt that these two things were extremely dirty and unbearable. Parents believed that as long as they did not talk about it, their children would not come into contact with these two things.
As for when to say it, it was probably never. They felt that the child would naturally understand when he grew up. There was no need to say it at all.
But could they really do as they wished? As long as they kept their mouths shut, would the child always maintain an innocent child's heart?
News of junior high school girls giving birth in the toilet, or junior high school boys slashing their classmates dozens of times, and so on were actually common.
Because of the early maturity of children nowadays, the parents' taboo caused the children to be in a state of ignorance and defenseless when faced with sex and death for the first time. It was inevitable that they would make a big mistake. The root cause was the parents.
Nowadays, many schools had popularized sex education courses, but it seemed that the schools and parents did not care about the view of life and death.
Another reason why parents and schools did not talk about death was probably that they felt that death was difficult to explain. The educational level of the parents was uneven. Even they did not really understand death. How could they explain it to their children? How could they let their children understand?
Atheism occupied a dominant position in China's society, but this also made parents even more at a loss when talking about the view of life and death.
Parents in Western countries were a little less troublesome. If it was convenient, they could tell their children that the dead pets and family members had gone to heaven to accompany God. This way, the children would be easier to accept and understand. When the children grew up, they could talk about a deeper level of the view of life and death.
What would the parents in China say? Could it be that they would tell their children that their puppy had gone to heaven to accompany the Jade Emperor? Or that it had gone to the Western Paradise to accompany Buddha? This did not seem to be a good match.
Perhaps the child would cry and ask, "Will I be able to see it in the next episode of Journey to the West?"
After all, the heaven in the West only existed in people's imagination, and the heaven in the East had been deeply rooted in people's hearts decades ago …
For difficult problems, the usual approach of parents was to put it on hold indefinitely.
Because of Cai Meiwen's own psychological shadow of death, the way she prevented her daughter from repeating the same mistakes was to not let her daughter raise pets with short lifespans, instead of telling her the correct view of life and death at the appropriate time. This was tantamount to burying one's head in the sand. As she said, people could not control death, whether it was the death of others, pets, or oneself.
Whether the fate of human beings was dominated by free will or fate, it was all a delusion to want to dominate death. If you don't want to die, others may want you to die. If others can't kill you, natural disasters such as earthquakes, volcanoes, typhoons, and asteroids hitting the earth can kill you.
Zhang Zian couldn't imagine how much psychological impact he would have if the death of his parents had not occurred when he was an adult, but when he was a child. This was because his parents had not told him about the view of life and death. In this respect, they were no different from most other parents.
Even after he was an adult, if it were not for the dream world created by Zhuang Xiaodie, his heart would not be able to truly feel relieved about the sudden death of his parents. If it were a child … whether it was the trajectory of fate or his character, there would definitely be great changes.
However, living in the pet shop and witnessing the life and death of pets on a daily basis, he had subtly cultivated his own simple view of life and death. So if his parents had died when he was a child … his ability to bear it might have been better than other children. Who could say for sure?
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