The family hamster died last week. We knew it was coming, a long-expected transition. He'd had a full, long life, as hamsters go. A day or so before, he was acting sick, with wet fur. Some internet research, and hushed parental conferences, and we decided that no, we wouldn't take him to the vet, but we would try to clean him up and make him comfortable. He looked perkier the next day, but the morning after that, he was stiff and motionless.
Our cat died some months ago. He'd gotten sick, went to the vet, and never came back. The daughter was heartbroken, because she'd never gotten the chance to see the body, say goodbye. So my wife made sure that I knew how important the hamster was, and how important it was that it be handled well. And then she left, with me alone in the house, with a sleeping five-year-old and a dead hamster. And a funeral to arrange.
I put on a solemn face, and went to wake her up. The hamster died last night, I told her, first thing. She woke up smoothly and calmly. She was unfazed. I think we went to the kitchen to talk about it. I don't think we ate. She wanted to know where his body was. Right there in the cage, we hadn't moved him. She wanted to see him early, I think. I remember mentioning that we had to figure out what to do with him. I suggested that she pick flowers from the garden. Flower petals, she decided. Good idea. I went to look for a box, and found one. It was nice, a gold colored box that had a bit of a pedestal inside to house a piece of consumer electronics. She wanted to carry him downstairs to put him in the box. She arranged the flower petals around him. He looked sweet and sad, and very very dead.
We said words. She a simple goodbye, for me, a sentence or so about a good life, and how he was much loved. We closed the box.
And then there was the question of what to do with the box. In our culture, it's traditional to bury the dead. But not only did I not particularly want to reserve some part of the garden for a hamster corpse, we have dogs, and the dogs love to dig. Very little would disturb the sanctity of a burial more than being dug up and carried around the yard.
So I talked about how we are made of the molecules of the earth, and how we go back to the earth. Our city has, in addition to a competent recycling program, a lovely composting program, where the entire municipal household waste stream ends up in a large composter and ends up as fertilizer. So I suggested that we return the hamster to the earth through the city's composter and the fields, recycling the molecules and returning them to the earth to become new life.
She thought about this. I admit was a bit nervous, I didn't want her to think I was disrespecting the hamster or the occasion, didn't want her to think that I was suggesting that we just
throw away a beloved family pet. She made a decision, I breathed a mental sigh of relief, as she picked up the box holding Puzzle Panda, and solemnly but firmly placed him in the recycling bin.
Now I'd really screwed up, and could see only disaster ahead. She may be only five, but she's not fond of being wrong. I contemplated doing nothing, and letting the minimum wage workers at the recycling sorting center deal with the corpse of a dead hamster rolling across their sorting belts. Or trying to secretly move the box later. But I chose to interrupt fast, and said hesitantly that the recycle was for cans and glass and plastic, not composting, so...
She picked it up and placed it in the kitchen garbage. Sigh of relief. So long, Puzzle Panda. It'll be all of us, one way or another, someday.
Labels: transitions
