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| Yuki and Kumori circa earlier this year Godspeed Yuki. You were a good pig! |
The boys came in to see when my wife arrived home with the kids. I texted her to let her know what to expect after I came in and found what I didn’t want to find, but had a feeling I would. I’d sensed it was coming soon. And so it came.
Yuki had stopped drinking days ago and her happy “guwee guwee guwee” cries for fresh veggies when she heard the refrigerator door had grown fainter and fainter till finally stopping completely. Then today when I brought her in from her outside time in the pen on the lawn she barely moved at all. I held her for a while then locked the cat out of the room so I could let her best friend, Kumori the little yellow bird, come see her one last time.
I somehow knew it was going to be the last time. Kumori flew around the room a few times when I opened his cage then I put him down on the carpet to nibble on Yuki’s hair like he’s done a thousand times before. They loved to eat lettuce together. Yuki eating lettuce and Kumori nibbling both the lettuce and Yuki until Yuki would pop straight up in the air and Kumori would fly off. Soon after first getting a guinea pig I read up on them only to learn they’re herd animals. They need a friend. A fellow guinea pig friend but… “No way! You see how much this thing poops?” I said. No second pig! But as luck would have it the bird and the pig bonded like long lost friends. And so I just had to let them be together one last time. No doubt the little yellow bird is as sad as the rest of us now that Yuki is gone.
So the boys came in to see. I'd already dug the hole outside near the place we’d set up the pen for Yuki to nibble the grass in the yard. I’d already made a few quick changes to her little tunnel-like house; it was now a guinea pig coffin. I gently placed her in there and cut a lily from the plant outside to set on top of her. I’d lit a candle and some incense.
More than a few times I’ve been to homes to view the body of a friend or relative on my wife’s side of the family who’s passed in this land. The body usually stays in the home for a day or two after the spirit has left it. And so I tried to copy the local ritual as much as possible for our little friend Yuki—to let her lie inside at least long enough for the kids to say goodbye to her when they got in from my in-laws.
The boys both stopped and knelt down to stroke her white hair one last time. The little girl peered in then went back to sit on the entryway step and play with the drill. I explained to the oldest boy—now a junior high kid—that he could help me put the top on the little box and bury Yuki out in the yard. He’s the boy who brought home Yuki when he was just a little elementary school kid. Yuki was his pet. I was sure to tell him how proud I was of him for stepping up and taking care of Yuki the past year or so. He’d promised to take care of her “I promise I’ll do everything!” when he first got her, but of course all the pig care responsibilities went to me. But when he became a junior high kid he really did start taking care of her. I still did much of it too, but he started cleaning her cage and giving her water and food and brining her in from her outside playtime more and more as he got older. I pointed this out to him and told how proud I was for him doing it. About the time I was doing that I noticed the little girl still sitting there playing with the cordless drill in the entryway. Then suddenly she burst into tears.
My wife had spoken with the kids about it on the way home to brace them of course. The boys are old enough to understand but it didn’t sink in for the little girl until she saw the lifeless body. Still she held it in for as long as she could, distracting herself with the cordless drill, but finally the dam broke and the tears flowed and flowed. I wasn’t about to try to explain it to her. Heck I couldn’t explain it even if I wanted. I don’t know what happened to Yuki anymore than she does. Where did Yuki go? Her energy went somewhere. Science tells us that much. But that’s nothing to try to explain to a grief stricken little five year old, so I just held her for the longest time and said “Daddy’s sad too”. Her mom took her and said some magic mommy words to slow the tears a bit, then all of us stroked Yuki’s soft white fur one last time before I removed the box from her cage.
The oldest boy came to help without a single word of complaint. I placed the top on the box and put in the first couple of screws then asked him to hold the cordless as I lined up the next. With him leaning over the top of me I felt the splash of a tear hitting the box as he drove in the final two screws. We're all sad.
Snugly resting in her box on a bundle of grass with her last portion of lettuce and the lily from our garden in there with her, I carried the little coffin out to the yard to the hole I’d dug earlier, put her down in it and covered it with dirt. The boys were silent. The little girl started sobbing again so I picked her up and pointed to the sky.
Her mom has shown her Andy’s star (Andy was her mom’s golden retriever) a thousand times so I told her Jake (my ol brown dog best friend) is a star up there too to keep in synch with the pet afterlife family myth, and so tonight we started searching for a new star in the sky since, duh! Yuki is definitely now a star up there somewhere too. As luck would have it there were a lot of stars out tonight so we found a few candidates.
Once inside Shizuka and I did another round of hugs on the kids then hugged each other. Sometimes parenting just ain’t easy. I thanked the oldest boy again for how good he took care of Yuki and for helping me put her in her final resting place. He’s still a boy yet on his way to manhood. For the younger two kids the best next thing to do was breaking out the book I was gifted years ago when I had to say goodbye to Jake the wonder dog.
I got out my copy of Dog Heaven and we read it together on our bed. Ironically enough I’d just recommended it to a friend earlier after she messaged me on Facebook about her dog passing today. The book is about dogs of course, but I explained that it’s true of all pets. Reading it gave me an idea though, so once downstairs I tapped out a quick rough draft of “Where do guinea pigs go?” — I wrote a first draft of my own pet heaven kids book.
Finally, as with so many other life experiences, I decided to tell it all to my journal. And now that I have I think I’ll post it in my blog. It's a long one but who knows, maybe another parent out there can relate? Maybe one will even read it!
Either way, it’s good therapy of sorts for me to type this tale of events as another day of being “dad” draws to a close. It’s not always easy but I wouldn’t change it for the world. It’ll be a sad memory but likely one they’ll all remember to varying degrees. At least I believe as much since some of my earliest memories are sad ones. And what will they remember? They’ll remember that their mom and I were there for them. We don’t have all the answers, but we are there to hug and talk to in tough times. It’s what parents do.
There’s so much I feel like I’ve botched since becoming a dad—so much I thought I’d do better than I have—but I think it's fair to say I’ve tried like hell to do it right, whatever that is. I’ve tried to be there as much as possible. I've loved them and I've tried to show it through action as much as possible. But once more, that's what parents do.
Right?
