I can remember my body shaking the same way when I was a boy. My lungs trying to pull air back in, but the convulsions from my crying making each breath stutter and pushing air back out. I can remember feeling that I shouldn’t be this way, that I should stop as soon as I could.

I saw this happening to my son as we stood in the rain of Hurricane Sandy, digging a final resting place for Zoe, our cat who had passed the night before. I searched for ways he could help, but between the rocks in our New England soil and the roots from the Hemlock tree above, the digging was achingly slow – and too much for seven year old arms. But he had asked to help. And so he stood there, steadfast, arms at his side, dripping, as my crow bar and shovel made slow work.

He doesn’t often stand so still. He’s much more likely than his older sister or his younger brother to be a blur, volume pegged high, childhood silliness taken one-half step too far. The kind of exuberance that some people label as “a boy being a boy” – the kind that looks like he’s moving way too fast to possibly stop and think, or to stop and feel.

But he simply stood there, clearly thinking and feeling. Not completely still, because he shook, just as he’d done the night before after the vet had come to the house and gone, and he had asked me to read a story. Sure, I said. Maybe a Pooh story, he asked, meaning one out of our vintage A.A. Milne hardcover that has long since had its binding completely loosened by overhead reading, and cover marked in crayon. Pooh wasn’t his usual choice, at least not since he willed himself to be enough of a reader to catch up to his older sister in reading Harry Potter. But I read, and he laughed with sincerity, as any child will do if you read them a Pooh story with all of your own sincerity. As he finally got into bed, though, the gaiety of those stories fell to the pain of his first loss. His bravado, which compels him to be faster, stronger, or funnier than all comers, which would have him best his four year-old brother by any means, that bravado fell too. And he didn’t stop shaking for a long time.

I told him in that moment that this is what makes him special. I told him his sadness, the way he lets himself feel it, is what make him a good son, a good brother, and why Zoe loved him so much. It’s more than okay for you to feel this way, I told him. It’s what makes you who you are. It’s your gift.

Back in the rain, after more struggling with the New England soil, we had gone in to get the rest of the family after the hole was finished. He almost didn’t come back outside. But he remained desperate to help, not knowing how much he already had by standing at my side. He ached to feel the connection he needed, as much as it hurt. And so he took the cardboard box containing Zoe’s body from the barn as we walked toward the back of the yard. It hardly weighed anything at all, but looked so heavy in his arms as the rain splattered its top. His effort, I think, was in his heart and in his lungs drawing in air, and perhaps in staring straight ahead.

We reached down and filled the grave with the box. Shortly, his brother and sister walked back toward the house. But he stayed and helped me begin to add back the dirt. Then he simply stood again, still and soaking. Still and soaking and thinking.

Until he spoke. Can we mark it, Dad? What will we use to mark it? I’ll get a flat rock, I replied, I’ve got a few on the stone wall. It has to be at least three feet tall, he said with plain conviction. Three feet, I asked, why three feet? Well, he said, the snow can get up to that deep.