One day, Hunter, our family dog of 9 years, died while he was sleeping. My wife and I, were devastated by the loss, and were worried how it would impact our ten-year-old son, Vincent.

Since Hunter was his first dog, and they were inseparable -- we weren’t sure how we would approach such a delicate topic, with such a young child. Finally, that afternoon we decided to be honest, and just let him know that Hunter had passed, peacefully, in his sleep -- then try to comfort him.

That same night, we told Vincent what had happened to Hunter. We weren’t sure if he understood that he would never be able to see Hunter again, and that there was nothing we could do to change that  -- but to our amazement,  he was surprisingly calm. And as we explained it to him,that Hunter was no longer with us, he seemed to get calmier.

To our surprise, while tucking Vincent into bed, we noticed that he was handling the news better than we were. In fact, as he reached up and gave his mother a huge hug, it seemed like he was comforting us more than we could, him.

As we were dimming his room light, he asked if we could have pancakes, Hunter’s favorite,for breakfast in the morning. We look at each other smiled. then agreed. We blew him a kiss goodnight, and we wandered off to bed.

The next morning, during breakfast, we noticed that Vincent was back to his cheerful self, rushing down the stairs and dashing to the table, to join us for pancakes. As I watched him, wrestling with the cap of the syrup, It seemed like he had come to his own understanding of what had happened to Hunter -- which he eagerly explained it to us, as he drenched his stack of pancakes with maple syrup,

“When Hunter was a little puppy, we took him away from his Mother. It must have been very sad day for her, because she loved him with all of her heart -- just like we do. And just like us, she wasn’t ready for him to leave -- but we still took him away to a beautiful new home, to be with his new family, far away from her. He grew up to be a big strong dog that loved and protected us, the same way his Mother did her family.” he continued explaining,

“And since Hunter is such a special dog, the whole time he was with us, his Mother must have been praying that he would come back to her someday, so she could be happy again.  Nine years ago, God answered our prayers by giving us Hunter. Last night, he finally answered hers, by giving him back.”

He said, “And even though we loved him,  and we weren’t ready for him to leave --  God had to give Hunter back to his Mother, to live in their beautiful new home, Heaven. Where they can grow old together, loving and protecting the way they did us. It okay to be sad, but God had to take him, because we wouldn’t have been able to let him go on our own.”

As I listened, stunned by what he had just heard. I looked over at my wife, struggling to hold back her tears. In that moment, we both realized, that our ten-year-old son had just given us the comfort we wanted to give him.