The Secret Book of the Dead by Terry Pratchett

They don’t teach you the facts of death,

Your Mum and Dad.

They give you pets.

We had a dog which went astray.

Got laminated to the motorway.

I cried. We had to post him to the vet’s.

You have to work it all out by yourself,

This dying thing.

Death’s always due.

A goldfish swimming on a stall,

Two weeks later: cotton wool,

And sent to meet its Maker down the loo.

The bottom of our garden’s like a morg-you

My Dad said. I don’t know why

Our tortoise, being in the know

Buried himself three years ago.

This is where the puppies come to die.

Puss has gone to be a better cat

My Dad said.

It wasn’t fair.

I think my father’s going bats

Jesus didn’t come for cats

I went and looked.

Most of it’s still there.

They don’t teach you the facts of death,

Your Mum and Dad.

It’s really sad.

Pets, I’ve found, aren’t built to last;

One Christmas present, next

Christmas past.

We go on buying them.

We must be mad.

They die of flu and die of bus,

Die of hardpad, die of scabies,

Foreign ones can die of rabies,

But usually they die of us.