[Trigger warnings: death, loss, grief, corpse]
One of my earliest clear memories is from when I was six years old and our dog, a rescued mutt, was put down because he was old and, especially, suffering from his illness.
I wasn’t actually present, at the vet’s, when they put him down, but I remember knowing exactly what was going on that afternoon and why I was going to spend it at my buddy’s house. My mother didn’t want me to be there, to actually see Rocky be put down, to see Rocky go. But first he was there: an active, affectionate, rowdy, playful presence in my life; and then, a couple hours later, he wasn’t there anymore. Not ever again.
My maternal grandfather died when I had just started college. He was a distracted, distant or aloof scientist but he was also the only person in my family of origin who really saw me for who I was — he saw the athlete, the scientist, and the boy in me. There was an ocean dividing us. As a college student it was too expensive for me to get a flight to go see him before he passed and logistics also made in hard with me in college and him in a retirement home. I’d call him & my grandmother every weekend. Until it was only her I could call.
She died thirteen years later. In that time, I had grown into an adult, become financially independent, and started visiting her once a year overseas. When she got the stroke, I believed the doctor, trusted the number of days he assured me she would live, and bought my flight accordingly. But she didn’t make it and I got there too late to say Goodbye.
When my father got sick and eventually died overseas, it was my decision, as a fully grown adult, to not fly over. I needed that distance. I don’t regret that decision. I lost my father a long time before July 2023, I lost him three decades ago, although he was still alive and well then. I never really got to say Goodbye. Maybe I never really had the choice.
My pet snake died yesterday. At the vet’s. While I was grocery shopping on my way to pick her up after climbing at the gym with a buddy. Her heart failed.
The first thought that came to my mind when the vet told me what had happened was, “I wasn’t there for her. I didn’t see her go”.
Yet another missed Goodbye.
This time I got to see the corpse, though. This time, the decision of what to do with the remains is on me. At least, I have that choice.
“It’s just a snake”, you’ll say. But she was my snake, she was my pretty girl. Her tank sat (still sits) in one of my bedrooms. Every morning, the first thing I’d do right out of bed was go to her tank and turn on her lamp; and every night, the last thing before bedtime, was turning off her lamp — wishing her “Good morning” & “Good night” every day. I know she didn’t understand but that doesn’t matter: it meant a lot to me; and I know for a fact that she recognized me, even if just by my smell and the sound of my voice.
I remember bringing her home from the vivarium in California: seven years ago, almost to the day, on a bleak rainy night in January 2018. I didn’t have a cat back then, so a friend drove me. My snake chose me, not the other way around. And now she’s gone. Her little heart gave in. And maybe that’s my fault because she was a Rosy Boa, a Southern California / Northern Mexico desert species whose genes might not have been prepared to put up with living at altitude here in Colorado…
“It’s just a snake”, and yet it isn’t. One of my therapists used to say that all types and/or causes of anger go, emotionally, into one bucket that eventually will overflow and/or explode. I feel the same about loss and grief. This loss, the death of my beloved pet snake, while devastating and definitely heart-breaking per se, is also bringing up all of the old grief for me, especially from the other recent losses. In this case, though, differently from the other losses, I cannot help blaming myself: did I not catch her illness in time? Did I bring her to a climate that was too hard on her body? Did I not care for her adequately? What did I do wrong?
The Little Prince and the Fox 