As parents, we all want to get the hard conversations right. Sometimes, we’re a little too eager to get them right, and things run quickly off the rails. Well, one of the big moments that Sarah Ezrin wanted to handle perfectly was the death of a pet. Her mom always replaced any pet they lost immediately, but Sarah wanted to be more transparent with her kids and leave space for all the stages of grief. Today she’s writing about how that went: “I swore to myself that I would do things differently when I had children of my own, but I didn’t expect having to have that talk when my son was two and a half. Nor did I expect to have to do it before our dog was even sick. And, as it turns out, I was so eager to get this talk right that I completely botched it.” The punchline on this one is just too funny and so very real; I laugh out loud every time I think about it. Enjoy! Kelly Faircloth, Executive Editor | 
