happy new year, still very sad

12.19.13.3.7 8 Manik 0 Pop Happy new year!

I am still so very sad over losing Goober. I can't remember how long I kept crying over her mother, Scarlett. It was the same thing-a seemingly healthy bird one day, a dead bird the next. Scarlett was only 6 years old when she died in 1994. Goober was 4 then, and still considered a "he" because "he" didn't lay "his" first egg until 1996. (Thus becoming a "she" and becoming informally known as "Goobette" which is truly awful--my husband called her that.)

After Scarlett died, there was this song, "It Won't Rain All The Time" off The Crow soundtrack, which I used to listen to and just cry and cry for my beautiful red bird.

"When I'm lonely, I lay awake at night, and I wish you were here. I miss you. Can you tell me-Is there something more to believe in? Or is this all there is? It won't rain all the time, the sky won't fall forever and though the night seems long your tears won't fall forever."

I thought the first time I heard it (it's on my Launchcast station) after Goober died that I would lose it. And it is still sad. But it was the Annie Lenox song from Lord of the Rings Return of the King which makes me just cry and cry, even at work. (Of course, also on my Launchcast station.) If you've seen Return of the King, the song is about when Frodo is getting on the ship and leaving Middle Earth--a tear jerking scene.

"Lay down your sweet and weary head. Night is falling, you have come to journey's end. Sleep now and dream of the ones who came before. They are calling from across a distant shore. Why do you weep? What are these tears upon your face? Soon you will see All of your fears will pass away. Safe in my arms, you're only sleepingAll souls pass into the West.Don't say we have come now to the end. You and I will meet again, and you'll be here in my arms just sleeping."

I just keep thinking about how I ran down the stairs and we got Zeebo away from her but I knew she was already dead, laying there in my hands, already cooling. Hugging the ziplock with her sad little body in it, waiting in line at the vet's, just crying and crying.

Even finding Gwennie dead and rotten didn't affect me this much. Mostly I was pissed, not that she was dead, but that she was in her nesting box rotting and wasn't removed by the person watching my animals. Not that I didn't cry and grieve for her. But I didn't have the attachment I had to Goober, who was literally an egg in my hands in November 1990 and now a corpse in my hands last month. I bought Gwennie for Lance, because he missed Scarlett so much. She was Lance's bird. In a way, Scarlett was Lance's bird too, but Scarlett was tame and Gwennie wasn't. (Ironic, because Scarlett, like Lance, was wild-caught, and Gwennie was hand-fed.) And for a few years, it was just me, Lance and Scarlett (until Goober hatched) so there was that bond too.

Then again, it's only been a couple of weeks since Goober died. Maybe it's not an undue amount of grieving after all.

By the way, Zeebo's blood tests came back fine. He doesn't have bad kidneys.