Grief (from June, 2009)

Grief (from June, 2009)

Benjamin our bunny, our first bunny and a true friend, died on June 24^th.  He was nine years old and a widower, having lost Jackie-O in February of last year.  Suzanne and I had had Benjamin for 7 years and grieve his loss.  Lillia is three years old, and I think young enough to be spared deep feelings of his loss, though she did like Benjamin, as he was soft and furry, and didn’t show any inclination to bite or scratch, or even move quickly.  She referred to him as “my bunny.”  The evening that he died, when Suzanne and I sat down with Lillia, we told her that Benjamin had been a good bunny that had a long and happy life, but he was old and had gotten sick and had died. We told her that he had been our friend. We had loved him and would miss him, but now he was gone. 

I asked Lillia if she had any questions.  She looked at me and said “So bunny not going to get better?”

“No, sweetheart, he is not going to get better.”

“Okay,” she paused.  “Poor bunny,” very simply and matter-of-fact.

“Yes.  Poor bunny.”

“When he coming back?”

“He’s not coming back, sweetie.  He’s gone.”

“Poor bunny.”

We then distracted her with cartoons, and she was fine.  She has not spoken of him since.

It breaks no new ground to state that part of the work of grief is the recognition and acceptance of the loss of those we have loved.  The deeper the connection, the greater the trauma, and the greater the suffering. Now forgive me for seeming maudlin over the death of a rabbit, but the process is the same whether the loss is of pet, friend, or family.  It is the thickness of the cables that bind us to one another that determines the pain we feel when those cables are cut.

Lillia did not have the opportunity to develop a deep connection to Benjamin.  She is still unsure about the whole pet thing and is disinclined to be with most animals.  And her mind is, of course, still organizing and her intellect and memories formative.  How many of us remember the minor traumas that caused us to cry as toddlers on an almost daily basis?

Different mind, different memories, lighter cables,  She is spared somewhat.

If memory brings suffering, then healing is in part a process of forgetting, for when we forget painful events, or no longer see them as painful, we cease to suffer from their memory.

Enough of this.  Here are some pictures of Benjamin, who Suzanne and I referred to as the King of Bunnies, occasionally adapting “the King of Glory” from Handel’s Messiah to serenade him as we moved him to and from his hutch.  Yes he had a big, curmudgeonly head, but that was his nature.