My Real Life

Yesterday, we had to say goodbye to Gramps, our hermit crab.

Gramps’ buddy, Shelly, lost his (or her…we were never really sure) battle with life in the crabitat a few months after we purchased them in August 2017, and Gramps has been going it solo since then.

We don’t have pets.

Instead, we have four kids.

So we’ve never had to flush a goldfish or put a dog to sleep, etc.

Our children have never had a close relative die or even a close family friend, and so they haven’t really ever had to deal with death beyond when their character in a video game dies.

Which, of course, then respawns, so even that isn’t real experience with death and totally messes with a child’s expectations of what happens when a person dies.

So, yesterday, Real Man catches my eye in the kitchen and gestures toward the crabitat where I see Gramps’ shell turned upside down, his dry little legs extended over the edge, unmoving and completely dead.

My first thought was “Oh crap…I forgot to spray down the crabitat with moisture last weekend. I killed him,” because, (and this will come as no surprise to the moms in the group) despite the fact that he’s the kid’s pet, the responsibility for keeping him alive falls on MY shoulders.

But then I remembered that I certainly had taken care of Gramps last weekend, and that a year and a half is a pretty good life for a hermit crab living in a plastic cage in northern New Jersey.

Real Man and I took the shell out of the crabitat and put it on the counter. We touched the legs to make sure they were really not moving, and they weren’t. We talked about what to do and we decided we would flush the body and clean out the shell to either add to the shell collection in the bathroom or in case we ever got more hermit crabs.

Real Man had a paper towel and pulled on the legs and they separated from the shell and from the remainder of the body. The big claw and legs were now in the paper towel and the other big claw and legs were still in the shell. We’d have to dig it out.

But, right then is when Tiny came into the kitchen and asked what we were doing.

So, we told him Gramps had died and he cried and cried.

I took him to the living room where we sat on the couch and reminisced about the good times we had with Gramps.

“Remember when we made Gramps and obstacle course out of blocks?”

“Remember when Shelly used to try to climb out of the crabitat by standing on Gramps’ shell?”

“Remember when we used to make funny voices for Gramps and Shelly and make up fake conversations for them?”

(All of which happened about a year ago, because it’s a hermit crab, which is not a fun pet, and which the kids really never paid attention to after a few months)

I told Tiny that Gramps was probably happy to be reunited with Shelly in hermit crab heaven which he quickly refuted with “Shelly isn’t in heaven…she’s in the sewer…you flushed her!” which was a point I found myself unable to argue.

As I comforted Tiny, Real Man poked his head around the corner and gestured for me to come back in the kitchen with big eyes.

I left Tiny in the capable hands of his brother who was reminding him of other fun times with Gramps (“Remember when Mom was cleaning Gramps crabitat and put him on the counter and forgot about him and we found him in the laundry room the next day?”) and went to the kitchen.

“So,” Real Man began, “I don’t think he’s dead.”

“Excuse me?” I answered. “You just pulled half of his body out of the shell!”

“Yeah…but…” and he held up his phone and showed me an article he had Googled about how sometimes hermit crabs molt their old legs off and grow new legs underneath.

And he picked up the shell and showed me what we had thought were other legs but weren’t, in fact, fresh, new, pink legs.

Which were moving.

Are. You. Kidding. Me?

I immediately cleaned out the crabitat and refilled the water and the food and we set Gramps right in the water dish and he started to rock and roll.

And I was so excited, there were tears of joy in my eyes.

They definitely were not tears of I had already imagined the counter where the crabitat sat being clear, for once, and the freedom of not having to remember to feed and water that thing every weekend.

Definitely not those kind of tears.

And we went in the living room and said “So, guess what, Tiny? Gramps isn’t dead after all!” and we explained the whole thing and so now Tiny thinks life is like a video game where, if your legs get cut off, they’ll grow back and if you die, you might not really be dead…the doctor might have just made a mistake and so death isn’t really a permanent thing, despite our very thorough explanations that we just got it wrong the first time.

So, yeah.

Thanks, Gramps.