Goodbye to my Dear Cow

Good Evening my dears,

I don't quite know where to start today. I want to start by telling you the only thing I can think about right now, the thing that has consumed my thoughts all day... and yet a part of me wants to talk about everything, anything else. It is always this way, and I'm sure it will be again in the future. I don't want to say what is on my mind, I don't want to make it real, really and truly real in the light of day, but I know that I need to.

Last night our youngest rat, our beloved Cow, passed away. He had been very ill for about 3 days, it came on so suddenly, and for 3 days Steven and I nursed him night and day and did everything we could. I wish I could have done more, I wish I could have saved him, but I couldn't. His body couldn't take the strain of the illness. I feel in some ways as though I am coming to terms with it today, and in other ways I feel as though I'm dreaming and at any moment I'll wake up and see him in the cage and breath a huge sigh of relief because it was just an awful nightmare all along. I feel somehow lucid and hazy all at once and I just keep thinking how I can't believe it, I can't believe how quickly it took him. If somebody had told me at the beginning of this week that I'd be losing him by the end of it I would have thought it was nonsense... he was so absolutely fine on Monday and now... now he is gone. 

We cuddled and snuggled and kissed and held and comforted for three days. For three nights we got up in the early hours and sat in the steamy bathroom by candlelight and held him. I sang to him and he listened, he slept in my arms and I slept too. I loved him with everything in my heart, I poured light into him and surrounded him and yesterday I knew, suddenly and completely, that I would lose him.

So today I have talked about it, and I have talked about anything but. I have cried twice, once at school when I swore to myself I wouldn't. I have laughed and not meant it, and laughed and meant it and forgot for just a little while that it hurts. 

Once, when I called my best friend crying and worried about one of my boys, she said something to me I will never forget. She told me "he has his own path in this world, he agreed to come onto his path and everything, whatever happens, is part of that path. You have to let him walk his path.". 

It can be so hard to give up that need to control, that desperation to make everything run 'right', because it hurts so much when that path runs to painful places. If I could walk into the bedroom and open the door and see my little Cow peeking out right now... I would cry with joy. Yet I know that he had to walk his own path, and he has walked it and now he has gone back, he has gone home. I was blessed to have him as part of my family and I am grateful for every day I spent with him, no matter how short his time.

I am eternally thankful for him, for his sweetness and his cheekiness, his strangeness, even his stinkiness. I never did meet such a stinky rat as him! I am so grateful to the universe for creating him, for letting me be with him, for the lessons he taught me and the lessons I taught him. 

Rest in peace my beloved Cow, we will love you forever.