Did my parents cheat (regarding) death?

OK so here's something that popped into my mind whilst I was putting Eleanor to bed last night...Jews don't believe in heaven, let's start there...Since we/they are still waiting for the messiah, everything after death is still just unknown. Generally speaking, the common thread is that people live on in your memories of them.  But no resurrection, no heaven, no nothin...

So why do I have memories of telling my little cousin that Nana Sally was looking down on us from Heaven???

Once again, I'm getting ahead of myself. The first time I had to deal with death, I was 10 years old.  Our family dog, Missy, had hit the ripe age of 14, and it was time to let her go.  My parents (not their best judgment, if you ask me) allowed her to survive through my 10th birthday and then my dad took her the following morning (without telling me, without letting me say goodbye, etc). I think they just didn't want to ruin my birthday, but come on!

Anyway, I vaguely recall my father trying to calm my inevitable hysteria by telling me that Missy was in a better place, that she was running in a field, not feeling any pain,...you know the drill.

I guess, in spite of the years of Hebrew school, this somehow became part of what made sense to me...so much so that I found myself explaining it to my little cousin when I was somewhere around 14 and she was around 4 when our great-grandmother, Sally, passed away. I remember people gathering to sit shiva (7 days of mourning, traditional Jewish practice), and I remember Jo asking me where Nana was...I can only assume that no one else overheard my explanation, since she had gotten a little freaked out by all the people and was crouched in a corner of the walk-in closet when my explanation happened, so no one corrected me in my overgeneralization...but still, is it OK that my parents applied a totally Christian belief to the dog, thus completely avoiding having to answer more questions? It's a little weird, and I never really put it together until recently.

Death is probably the biggest hurdle we have to cross with our little ones, eh? Trying not to scare them, but allowing them to feel pain and sadness at loss and making sure they know that that is OK...

Posting this now, though it's from 3 days ago. I really have to get over thinking that I'll get back to my same frame of mind after a couple of days dealing with nap-less-ness...ah well...