I Bury My Mouse In Flowers

In the last days of their life, I spend a lot of time holding Hex. I feel as their body gets smaller and frailer and colder. On Christmas Day, between family gatherings, I hold them for half an hour. Their body is cold, their breathing is labored. Hardly a paw twitches. Later, I return to the room, in search of a board game to play after dinner and see them there, huddled in their nest, no longer breathing. I brush a thumb over their cold fur, their stiff body. I take Scattergories out to the living room and set it down. I find my wife in the kitchen, I tell them that Hex has died, and they hug me. 

On Tuesday, I feed the fatty fat girls--Thistle and Ghost--and my soul revolts as I put the lid back on the mouse food without having given a handful of seeds to Hex. Hex is gone but my bones don't know it yet--days later they still won't. On Tuesday morning, Hex's body is wrapped in a tissue and closed in a small cardboard box. Their cage looks just as they left it: a smattering of seeds, the tissue paper nest they breathed their last breath in, a wheel with bits of bedding stuck to it, and water still in their water bottle. I keep expecting to see their nose pop out from their nest. I keep expecting to see their paws pressed against the glass wall of their cage, their face tilted up to me, begging to be held. 

I drive to work with an ache in my chest. On the Tuesday after Christmas, the Tuesday before New Years, I'm the only one in the office. My day is leisurely and free from the usual dramas that play out as I try to resolve customer complaints. My mind can't help but periodically circle back to the small, cold body of my good, good mouse, wrapped in a tissue and enclosed in a box.

On the way home, I stop by Hy-Vee. I buy a chai tea latte--coconut milk, no water, and a couple of pumps of pumpkin--and then carry my drink to the florist. I buy a $6.00 "just because" bouquet. The flowers are deep reds and soft greens. A Christmas bouquet for Hex. Just because, I think, I lost you on Christmas day. 

The flowers sit on the passenger seat. I listen to David Brooks read his book How to Know a Person as I drive. Then I'm home. My wife finishes up an email, puts on a coat, and follows me outside. It is very cold, but the ground is moist, and it takes me just two shovelfuls to dig a suitable hole. We go inside and when we return to the burial site, I hold the box with Hex in it and my wife carries the bouquet and a pair of scissors. I kneel on the ground, my tight clad knees pressing into the dirt, and unwrap Hex's body. I set them down, nestled into the hole, a bit of tissue beneath them so as to not set them directly on the cold ground. I cut about six of the flowers from their stems and use them to surround my sweet mouse. 

This is my tradition, but it's one that I took and morphed after seeing a photo gallery of Amanda Stronza's memorials for the dead animals she has encountered. Using the flowers, I try to resurrect the beauty and vitality my mice had in their lives. With Luna, I used flowers to cover the tumors that killed her. With Goblin, I placed a flower in her paws and covered any sign of her seizure. With Hex, I line their back, where they'd developed a hunch in old age, with flowers and place another at the round little belly I so adored. I whisper an apology as I cover them with dirt. 

My wife displays the remaining flowers in a little cup on our cabinet. This is their tradition. After Marigold died, I found a bouquet of the remaining flowers where her cage had been. After Goblin, a small bouquet next to the cage where Sprout still lived. After Merlin, a bouquet in place of his cage. 

My hope is that this routine, this tradition, offers closure. But even today, as I feed the fatty fat girls, I feel hollow and confused when I don't give a handful to Hex. Even today, I frown at the empty cage, half expecting them to somehow still be there. Hex's death wasn't abrupt or shocking--they were nearly two, geriatric for a mouse, and the past week had shown a steady decline in their health. I think, though, they must have just taken up a lot of space for such a little guy and the nest in my heart where they used to live is left an aching cavern.