Peter's Obituary

Murphy--a rescue who delights in bumping his toys about his space.

Oops! was added to our family to keep Peter company . . . which Peter hated because he saw Oops! as competition.   He shows his displeasure at late dinners by filling his empty food bowl with toys.

Peter, this blog's namesake, has been dead for a few years.  I think about his earnest demands for attention--and how irritated he would become when I would try to get him to do a trick over and over again.  I have a few pictures of him.  My favorite photograph is a bit out of focus:  it shows Peter, burrowed between my knees, as I sit on the kitchen floor rubbing his head and body.  The photo doesn't show it, but Peter is completely still.  He is adsorbed in the joy of that moment--I am paying attention only to him.  I am focused on only him.

I don't think that I have ever been so loved by an animal.  I have had uncountable numbers of pets over the years--but have never felt so completely necessary for a small, fuzzy being's contentment.

I would write at this moment about how much Peter meant to me; how he came into our home; how he enlarged the scope of my life.  

The term for this is an "obituary."  But I could never begin to express my feelings about Peter in one of those: a dozen lines to pay final homage to the small being that inspired this blog's series of essays.  

Obituaries seem so cold and formal to me.  It is as if the deceased's spirit has gone, leaving only the husk of a body behind--and so all that was lively and real about him/her is also sucked out of anything written about them.  That is one of the reason I love the book Tuesdays With Morrie, written by Mitch Albom.  

Morrie Schwartz, a university professor who loves to eat and to dance, is slowly being debilitated by ALS (Lou Gehrig's disease). Mitch, one of Morrie's students, is reunited with this teacher twenty years after graduation.  Morrie wasn't just an instructor--Mitch details how he learned to write from Morrie . . . giving Mitch the tools he needed to become what he is: a sports writer.

During the last years of Morrie's life, the two of them meet once a week--as they did when Mitch was a student--and Mitch chronicles their conversations:  bit by bit, "line upon line" (Moses 1:35, Book of Mormon) the wisdom that Mitch had ignored in his struggle to become a commercially successful writer.  Through his words, we also are able to observe the painfully unrelenting process as Morrie's mind becomes incarcerated by his body.  

Though entirely different beings, Peter was also betrayed by his body.  His teeth grew to the right side of his mouth--by the time I understood the symptoms, major surgery was necessary.  (I know.  I know.  I go on and on about how people spend thousands of dollars keeping old pets with cancer alive--making them suffer needlessly.  But Peter was mine.)  He survived the surgery--but I could not get him to drink water--even from a dropper.  Baby food did not tempt him to eat.  

Three days later, I took him back into the vet and had them put Peter to sleep.

Originally there was just Peter--then Oops! to keep him company when I had to be gone.  Then I adopted two rescues.  For a few years there were 4 rabbits at our house.  

After 11 years at this house only Oops! and one of the rescues (Murphy) are still here.  Oops! enjoys being cuddled, but not very much.  Murphy endures being picked up, but prefers to huddle in the back of the enclosure and to have me reach in and rub his face and ears.  They both love treats--but don't like to interact with me as Peter did.  

I suppose that these lines about Peter--who was actually named after Beatrix Potter's character because he looked so much like her illustration of him--are more about me than him.  

But that is right.  Grieving over any thing or any one is mostly a matter of some one missing them--and the story of what will happen without them in our lives.  I am sad for myself--that Peter is gone.  I am also feeling guilty about all that I could have done; the time I could have spent; the places I could have taken him--while he was alive.

And now I begin to think about the death of my mother--19 years ago this August.  Thoughts too private to share right now.

Whatever you are doing Peter, please know that I am thinking about you.  I am grateful that I got to have you in my life--and for the bits of wisdom about love, impatience, and endurance that I learned by having you here with me.

Oops! understands that you are gone.  Murphy sheds much more than you did.  And every afternoon, as I clean their cages, I remember you and am glad you were "mine" for a few years.