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Small deaths kill me

By Megan Hanna Becwar

May 7, 2009 | 12:00 a.m. CST

Two weeks into my first semester at college, I received a phone call from my sister. Her voice was tentative and sympathetic as she uttered words she knew would ruin my day.

“Megan,” she said. “G.P. died today.”

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“Oh, that is so sad,” I replied, calmly mimicking her consolatory tone. I grabbed a hand towel from my closet, wadded it up and jammed it over my face to stifle my sobs and catch the mess streaming from my tear ducts and nostrils.

My sister went on to explain that G.P. had died just hours earlier. She asked if I was okay. I peeled the bright orange terry cloth from my face and replied that I was fine, just a little sad. I tried to clear my voice of any indication of the sorrow and snot that clogged my airways.

Apparently relieved, she began chatting about other things as I cried into my towel. I faked my way through this brief conversation by periodically stilling my grief-induced convulsions, turning my face to the phone and saying “uh-huh.”

My roommate had been looking on in confusion. What sort of tragedy could break a person’s heart then force her to hide that grief?

She got the answer from a sheepishly smiling, red-eyed me: The termination of a four-year relationship with a South American rodent. My guinea pig was dead.

I have always sought the companionship of animals and have been excessively affected by their deaths. Before I was 14, I was the sole caretaker of three cockatiels, a calf, a potbellied pig, a dozen or so rabbits and innumerable hamsters.

Just as I was the one to feed them, bathe them and love them, I was the one to most ardently suffer through their deaths.

And oh, how they died!

The cockatiels were nearly twice my age when I acquired them at 13, and they died and fell off their roosts within a few weeks of each other.

The calf was being raised for veal when he became ill, blind and inedible. A friend of my mother’s purchased him for one dollar. My bovine friend lived well for months while I bottle-fed him. He would frequently escape from his pen and race the dogs around our non-functional farm, but he eventually succumbed to disease instilled during his weeks as veal-to-be.

My pig drowned in a bucket I foolishly used to water him. The water level became low and he fell in headfirst while trying to drink. I was 12, and the irony and horror of this fate made me lightheaded and nauseated.

I lost a half-dozen rabbits to natural causes and another half-dozen to a crazed chow. Funny, I can’t seem to remember what happened to the chow. I did not mourn her. After all, she was kind of a jerk.

The hamsters died, often mysteriously, and sometimes with the help of a clever cat.

After each of these pre-adolescent losses I was inconsolable. I cried in my room and refused company. This annoyed my mother, who could not understand such deep sorrow over such small creatures.

I thought that maybe I would grow out of my reactions to these little losses. I calculated morbidly that our dog Crystal would die while I was in high school; I would be able to handle it then. She died when I was sixteen and, yep, it was still devastating. I despaired that I would never be as rational and stoic as my mother.

I blame my father for my weakness. He would often say, without any prompting, that if I ever had to choose, I should feed my children first, then my animals and take any leftovers for myself. He never had to make that choice, but it was important to him that I knew taking care of those that depend on us is humankind’s starkest priority.

My father was raised in Alaska but never hunted after he left. He loved bloody, violent Westerns and action films but turned his head in disgust if a child or animal were endangered as part of the storyline. Both he and my mother would yell at my three siblings and me if we laughed when a pet accidentally hurt itself. “Animals have feelings, and they know when you’re laughing at them,” they would scold.

So we all developed a strong sense of duty to protect innocent creatures from unnecessary harm. But neither my brothers nor my sister ever took animal deaths as hard as I did.

But then G.P. died. He had, according to my sister, run around the room in merry circles before climbing into his cage as though he had an appointment, laying down and dying.

I did not throw a fit over him, or at least I tried to stifle it, to spare my sister worry. Only my innocent bystander of a roommate saw how upset I really was. And the physical expression of grief, though intense, was briefer than I had previously experienced. It subsided with my embarrassment for seeing the end of the world in such a small death as I assured my roommate I was fine and not crazy.

G.P.’s death culminated in a grieving breakthrough for me. These little demises wounded me and always would. It was part of my nature. But I no longer needed to make everyone else feel the loss just as sharply. My mother knew this. It took me dozens of deaths to learn this.

I know now that when my beloved pug Walnut dies in approximately 12 1/2 years, barring any accidents, that it will hurt. I know that when my human companions shuffle that old mortal coil that it will hurt even more. Now I also know that I can handle it. And I have one little cloud-cushioned guinea pig with a harp and wings to thank.

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