FLOWERS FOR PIGGY

The news came late last night. Shortly before midnight.

‘Mama’, my younger daughter texted. ‘Is it you and not sage’, she continued, wanting to make sure it was me and not her brother. Because sometimes he would use my phone to text for me when my hands were full or I was otherwise occupied.

‘It’s me, I replied.

‘Ok’, she wrote back. Then, ‘Piggy died’. Their beloved guinea pig that they had for four years was now dead.

‘Oh no. How?’, I texted back. ‘That’s so sad’, I continued.

‘Papa just went to feed the animals and noticed’, she explained.

‘Please tell Sage’, I wrote.

‘My suspicion is that he didn’t have enough pebbles which is why I feel even worse abt it’, she explained the ‘how’.

Even though my son didn’t see Piggy often, he was my son’s favourite pet at his father’s house. Piggy was very friendly, but was seemingly neglected. My son would often be angry at the disregard of the animals at their house. To include two bunnies and a tarantula. There was another bunny before the other two bunnies, called Hopper, who died a few years ago of old age.

One of the issues that bothered my son was that Piggy’s claws were never trimmed. They were so grown out that they curled under his feet, causing him pain. The lack of food and water in Piggy’s cage was another issue that concerned my son.

Less than a month ago, there was an even more disturbing instance where Piggy’s cage was grossly unsanitary and overgrown with mushrooms. When my son showed me the photo that his sister sent him, I felt nauseous. Even though Piggy was spending time outside his cage, it was unbelievable that things would get to that point.

I told my daughter to call her brother and let him know what happened.

‘But I told papa we should have a funeral for piggy tomorrow and I bet he’d prolly wanna come’, she replied. Then she called Sage on FaceTime.

The called didn’t last long, as my son ended the call abruptly. Sage was devastated when he heard the sad news. He was heartbroken and angry at the same time.

My daughter texted back to let me know they talked for a bit before her brother hung up the call. She let me know they would put Piggy in the freezer before his burial. I told her that Sage wanted to come in the morning and that he would bring flowers.

‘Sage is prolly gonna make his nature bouquet huh?’, she asked.

‘I think so’, I replied back.

We made plans to go pick flowers for Piggy this morning. Sage knew where the wildflowers were by our apartments, and he set out to pick a beautiful assortment. He also found a fluffy white shrub, Clematis Vitalba, growing on a fence that he used for the box in which they placed Piggy.

Around 12,30h, we then drove to his father’s house where Sage stayed until late tonight. He spent time with his sister and his father preparing the little coffin and grave. But first they needed to go to Home Depot, where they found even more flowers for Piggy, to get dirt for the grave as the hole they dug was mostly a large boulder they had to mine to remove. Sage later used the broken pieces of the boulder for encircling Piggy’s grave.

Cinnamon lined the hat box with a beautiful soft fabric that had pink roses on it. Sage then placed the grape leaves upside down in the box, exposing the fluffy side. Then he placed the white shrubs on top of that and a handmade pillow that still had the other bunnies’ fur on it – so that his friends were forever with him. The children each also wrote a message on the fabric.

One by one, they each dropped a small shovelful of dirt onto the coffin and then covered it with more dirt and stone set in a circular pattern, bidding Piggy a final farewell.