Have you ever been walking somewhere and seen something very strange, and realised that if you hadn’t been there at that exact time, you never would have seen it?

Yesterday I was walking back to my car in the parking structure downtown, and I look up to see some guy, who had been parked in front of one of the ramps to the roof, back out of his parking space and up the ramp really fast. It was quite wierd. There is no exit from the roof. And he never came back down in the time it took me to get my stuff settled and leave. Who knows.

Why do we bury dead things. I’m sure at some point in time there was a logical necessary reason for it… If someone died chances are there was something wrong with them, and leaving the body laying around would probably spread infection. Plus, that’s just nasty. Now, funerals and such give us a chance to say goodbye, to have a more solid sense of closure. But we have many different solutions now; burial, cremation, etc… and that’s even with specific reference to people. Why do we bury animals. I suppose it’s the same sort of closure… or ingrained ritual. They’re the animals we love and we want to do something proper for them, for everything they’ve given us through life. In some cases, people would say that their pet has been more loyal to them than anyone in their life. So it would make sense, then, to give the animal a funeral fit for such a deed.

Why is it though, that I tried to save a bird today… and it died… and I buried it. And cried. What is it about death in such basic forms that saddens us so. I didn’t know that bird before this morning. It’s not as though I had some connection with it that in and of itself would be more than enough justification for my reaction. It’s something simply in how many of us as the living, breathing, carbon-based life forms that we are view death.

Life is an amazing thing. I believe, at least in my case anyway, that it’s the loss of life that is the issue, not the event of death. That little bird was a tiny little life.

I did everything I could to save it. My mom found it outside, it was choking on something. After we got the pebble or whatever it was out of it’s throat, Will put it into a little pool of water so it could have a drink. It fluttered around in there for a while, took a huge drink, and then hopped out of the water and on it’s way. Will found it again 15 minutes later sitting outside the barn door, and it let him pick it up without any resistance. So Will brought it back in to me. I decided to hang onto it for the afternoon, give it electrolyte fluids and birdseed to eat, and release it later that day. It died late in the afternoon. I buried it under the lilacs that I recently planted for my mom.

It just occurred to me as I’m writing this why it effected me so much. It’s not the death of a random bird. It’s the fact that I tried to save it and I couldn’t.

Interesting.

My mother is the least spiritual person I know. In fact, I think maybe she’s the only person I know who I can truly say isn’t spiritual at all. This isn’t in any way a bad thing… It’s just the conclusion I’ve come to based on recent observations. It’s not new information. It’s one of those things… like when someone tells you the meaning of a specific word, and after they tell you, you hear it all over the place, but you never heard it before. The person giving you the meaning didn’t cause everyone to start saying it all the time… It just never occurred to you to listen for it. My mom didn’t just suddenly become nonspiritual. Recent events have caused me to be more aware of it.

Recent events have caused a lot of things.

I’ve been listening more when people talk about their spirituality. How it effects their life, what role it plays. People talk about it a lot, and half the time, I don’t think they realise they are. For some people, it’s just such an integrated part of their life, that practically everything they talk about, somehow relates to it. For some people, it’s fallen from spirituality to a somewhat superficial habit. The chic trend. For others, it’s a source of identity or reason for the way things are. Some use their spirituality to define who they are and the choices they make. Others operate under the “everything happens for a reason” theory.

The one thing that seems to stand out the most, is that most people are hypocritical. They’ll talk until they’re blue in the face about their spirituality and what it means to them and how it governs their everyday choices, then in the same breath or moment, say or do something that completely contradicts everything they just stated. I’m not sure I can say that I’ve ever met someone who actually follows through with what they verbalise as their spirituality. Ever. That’s ridiculous. Hypocrisy drives me nuts. It’s such an avoidable thing. Admit your true intentions and it’s a simple thing to follow them, because it’s actually how you feel. That’s the issue with most of those people. They claim to have a certain set of beliefs either because they’re told to or it’s what’s “right” or “correct” in their world… Or any number of reasons. But they don’t follow any of it. Because it’s nothing more than words to them.

It just doesn’t seem like you could be truly happy if you’re not honest with yourself. Though, ignorance is bliss. And the whole thing certainly seems ignorant.

I came home today and she could hardly move. I took her to the vet again. He said that the probable possibility was kidney failure. It was the only explanation that made sense, considering she’d had such a healthy appearance all along, and then went so abruptly downhill. But even that sort of baffled him. Kidney issues rarely show up in such a young ferret. He said he’d not seen a ferret that sick. And that there was nothing he could do. They could keep her, give her IV fluids, force feed her… Do bloodwork to verify what was wrong… But ferrets don’t have that much blood in the first place. And he didn’t think she would come through anyway. She would be miserable through all of it. Only to find out later that we’d have to euthanise her anyway…

So I did the only thing I could.

I can’t help but look at the situation. There was a point in time where she was the only reason I bothered to get out of bed. I had to feed her and take care of her and play with her. If I hadn’t had such responsibilities and priviledges, I wouldn’t have bothered to get up. I was depressed, sad, and she was what kept me going. She was there for me when I needed her. She kept me company on my miserable drive home from Florida. She helped me through the inital times at home, until things were settled, my life was ok, and I was happy again. Then she let go. I honestly can’t help but wonder if she just knew, in her own little ferret way, how important she was to me, and held on until she knew she didn’t need to anymore. Something hadn’t been right with her for a while.

It’s a kind of silly notion, I suppose. But I couldn’t help but let it cross my mind.

I love her dearly and will miss her terribly.

She meant the world to me and will never be forgotten.