"love song for the dear departed"

12.19.13.2.9 3 Muluc 7 Cumhu
My sweet Goober died last night. She was 15. She hatched at Thanksgiving time in 1990, my very first baby lory ever. I hand-fed her from 19 days old. She has never been apart from me, never been owned by someone else or even spent a night at the vet for being sick. Only when I went on vacation were we parted.
I thought she was a boy when she hatched, so hence the name Goober. When Goober was six, he laid an egg and became Goobette. Since she lived with her brother, Zeebo, we called them the BoBo Twins--Zeebo and Goobo. (Zeebo's from a different clutch; he's 12.)
Last night around 10:30 I was half-asleep and Will came running up the stairs saying "Something's wrong with Goobette" and by the time I got down there she was dead. She had a seizure (Her, Zeebo and their father Lance all have epilepsy) and I think she broke her neck. She was sitting in her food bowl with her beak hooked over the edge and her tail sticking up. Not that this was unusual--all my lories like to sit in their bowls and sometimes sleep in them. But I think with her beak hooked like that the siezure broke her neck. Willy insisted she had been breathing and moving and alive when he came up but as soon as I saw her I was almost postive she was dead. It took a minute to get Zeebo away from her (horribly reminiscent of when we had to pry Lance away from Gwennie's body this summer) then I took her out in the bowl and she was dead. Will kept saying she was breathing, but when I took her out of the bowl she was totally limp and cool and just dead. Not alive. My sweet little baby bird who loved her father and her brother equally. I was going to switch her to Lance's side of the cage this weekend so she could preen his pinfeathers and because he's been plucking his legs. Now what am I going to do?
A year ago I had six birds, three happy pairs. Now I have a daddy without a mommy and a brother without his sister. Before I got out of bed this morning Zeebo was calling and calling, making that 2-note contact call lories make when they're looking for something. Then he started throwing his dishes around and going "hey-hey-hey" and then he got Lance going too. When I went in there Zeebo was hanging upside down like a bat just looking around with his eyes wild. He wouldn't come to me or even look at me.
My heart is just broken. I am trying to console myself, thinking that she's with her mommy now (Scarlett, who died in 1994 at only 6 years old), and Gwennie, and Alf-dog and Patches and Streaker and Nippy and all my hamsters and guinea pigs, and maybe even Goober's couple of siblings that died at a few days old, and of course they're all with my grandpa who loved animals and would surely care for all mine until I get to wherever heaven is to claim them. I imagine him with Gwennie on one shoulder, Scarlett on the other, and now Goobs on his head. He'd have a cat or two in his arms, the dog and the others at his feet. Take good care of them for me, Grandpa.
On Yahoo answers there was a question a few weeks ago: "Do you think dogs and cats go to heaven?" and the answer I voted for, the one that got the most votes, was "I hope so."
Because what kind of god would separate us from our animal friends forever?
BTW, the title of this post is from the new Korn album, called "See you on the other side" (apt, huh?)