You Say Goodbye and I Say Hello

This post has been a while in the making.

I was afraid to write it....

My last rattie, Max, passed away from old age the summer of 2017. I held him gently under my hoodie, next to my heart, as he took his last breath. The hurt never scabbed over....

I'd planned to wait a bit before adopting another, and that wasn't hard to do since none of the area pet 'warehouses' seemed to carry them any longer.

But then I ran across a single 'blue' rat pup in a mall store crowded with kittens and puppies for the holidays and my heart stopped. James tried to talk me into him but I was just too afraid to give my heart away again. And by the time I thought I was ready, he was already gone....

I was crushed! And I've regretted not adopting him ever since....

So imagine my delight when I visited that same store this past winter just days before Christmas (and exactly one year later!) and discovered this sweet little one. Just 8 weeks old, silvery blue!, a carbon copy of the one I let get away. The salesgirl there opened the cage and put him on my palm and my heart broke wide open.

And thanks to my James, he went home with me for Christmas....

I'm not a noob. I've had ratties almost all my adult life. I made sure to continue with the food he'd started at the pet store. I made sure to use aspen bedding. I let the new baby settle in.

I wanted to give him an 'M' name, like all my other ratties. And I thought it should be Christmas-related. I began making a list:

• Marley
• Myrrh
• Menorah
• Merry
• Mistletoe....

But that night I dreamed that I walked up to his cage, expecting to find him but finding my old Max instead -- alive and well again! -- and I said, "Max, what are YOU doing here??" And Max said to me, "I'm not Max. I am so much more." So when I woke, I named this little one 'Much.'

The next day was Christmas proper. My local grandbugs visited and longed to hold the new baby, but I kept them apart just to give Much more time to acclimate.

By that weekend -- just a couple days later -- he began showing vague symptoms: repeatedly digging in his ear, tilting his head....

I've fostered a rat that had gone untreated for an inner ear infection and it wasn't pretty. I like to think that I made the remainder of his life a happy one. Seeing signs that Much could be in the early stages of something similar made me panic. He'd have to see someone immediately.

It was the holidays. What vet could possibly see him?? James phoned the pet store; it was no help. The person there had no suggestions nor any recommendations of a vet in the area that could see such a small animal. I called the Animal ER and was told we could bring him in, but when we got there I was turned away at the desk. Only cats and dogs, said the person there, and I assured her that whomever I spoke to on the phone said they'd see him. After some behind-the-scenes questioning of the staff, Much was taken backstage and given a once-over....

The doctor who examined him said she could find nothing wrong, but that didn't mean there wasn't an infection in the inner ear. So she started him on antibiotics and we brought him home again.

And he was fine.

He was fine.

Until he wasn't.

We watched television together, curled up warm on the couch, and Much was on my shoulder, tucked under my neck, cuddled in my hoodie. I loved on him a bit, then returned him to his terrarium. And when I checked on him that night before bed, he was gone.

It was the last straw for me.

The whole day had already been sad and tearful and full of big disappointments, and this just put me into a tailspin.... just as I was preparing to say goodbye to the old year and welcome the new.

I believed then that Much was already ill when I adopted him, and I still believe it. But that does nothing to assuage my grief and disappointment. The only thing that even makes me feel marginally better is knowing that for the short time that he was with me he was loved COMPLETELY and will be incredibly missed....

Not long after his death Much appeared to me in a dream. He looked just like his little self, only 'different,' and I used his appearance as the basis for a story. And here it is:

A STORY

As usual, the old key budged stubbornly in the lock, and it was all she could do to get it to turn. Forcing it gave her some quick and heated attitude.

“No, no no…. Don’t let my New Year start on a crabby note,” she grumbled to herself just as the mechanism succumbed and clunked, and the heavy glass door opened with a gentle swoosh. She swiped the light switch with a mittened hand, illuminating the darkened North Studio with its long empty tables and upturned chairs. Immediately a wave of comfort washed over her and she silently thanked the Universe that – at least for the moment – she had the place all to herself.

Her moist boots squeaked across the cement floor. One more key, one more turn, one more light switch and her own little studio brightened to life. She inhaled deeply the smell of dry paper and dried leaves, her eyes taking in the chaos of creativity, recalling happily the recent time she proudly shared the little studio with her dad. After what seemed like a stunned pause he’d said, “Well…. You sure have a lot of stuff,” and her heart swelled pleasantly now just thinking about it. She did have a lot of stuff! And reacquainting herself with it all again after the bustle of the Holidays made her socks go up and down.

Immediately: backpack on the chair, jacket on the display rack. A quick glance then into each of the empty cups on her drawing table told her which was for beverages and which was for ink water, and she dropped a tea bag into the proper one before walking back out into the North room, filling the cup at the water cooler, loading it into the old microwave, and then setting the carousel atwirl with the press of a button. As the timer counted down, she leisurely absorbed her surroundings: the color and chaos of the big room’s furnishings, the smell of paints and brush cleaner, the echoes of laughter and creativity. What a pleasure to be there again after all the stress of the Holidays!

The microwave pinged. She carefully removed the steaming cup and gave it a sip before returning to the little room again and closing the door. Instead of clearing off the drawing table she simply pushed everything forward to make space before adding a sheet of cardstock and grabbing a pencil. It was a pencil she’d found on her walk there that morning, stabbed point first in the snow on the ground near the School of the Arts. A yellow #2 Ticonderoga that had been nibbled to death in the middle. It made her smile to see this and recall her own elementary school days a million years ago spent nibbling her own yellow pencils….

“Alexa, play some ambient music.”

A pause. A little pirouette of light from a device on her windowsill.

“Playing ‘ambient music’ on Pandora,” came a disembodied female voice behind her, and a selection from a fantasy movie soundtrack began. She picked up the pencil and drew.

The music made her think of mountains. And snow…. Friends on a quest, meeting adventure head on….

By the end of the lengthy selection she was surprised to discover that her hand had drawn a tiny creature with perky ears, a long tail and long whiskers, black button eyes goggling with curiosity… and little feathered wings.

And over the figure was a word balloon.

And the word balloon said,

“I am so much more.”

The End

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