My first pet was a terrapin when I was 7 years old. Well, it was more like 2 terrapins in a plastic tank which I had very little feelings for it, rather than a pet.
I fed them daily, watched them move occasionally around the tank and changed the water for the terrapins weekly, but that was about it. I recalled that their lives were short-lived as well, as I had them for under a year. Dad then flushed the dead terrapins down the toilet, but I was too nonchalant to care.
So when hb wanted to get Kyle his first pet, a pair of hamsters, almost 2 years ago. I vehemently disagreed with the idea of giving a 3 year old a pet, when he can’t even take care of toileting routines by himself. But when a dad promises his 3 year old, he has to make good on his promise. Besides dh felt that it was a good idea to start teaching K to be responsible for taking care of a pet.
That did not quite worked out as hb planned, as my previous helper and I took turns to feed and care for the hamsters. K really did not feel much affinity for the hamsters and hardly even looked at them.
So what happened to the pair of hamsters? Doh-Doh, the pudding colored dwarf hamster didn’t survive for very long when the pearl-grey hamster Ah-Go, ferociously bit her butt when the pair were in a cage together. We separated them, but Doh-Doh did not recover from her assault by Ah-Go, lived in constant fear despite being alone in another cage and eventually withered away.
Insensitive mom figured since K didn’t care for the hamsters, I got my helper then to throw the dead hamster down the rubbish chute. I was chided by hb for being so insensitive to have dealt with the death of K’s first pet the way I did.
So when Ah Go passed away this weekend, we had our first pet memorial ‘service’ at the foresty area next to where we are staying.
We chose a shady spot next to a bush and dh digged a hole with a screw-driver (could not find any shovels at home!) and put Ah Go in. Dh realized that the hole wasn’t deep enough, so we took Ah Go out again. Then dh digged deeper, and we placed Ah Go the hamster back into the hole.
The three of us looked at Ah Go laying in her final resting place for a couple of seconds. Probably thought to ourselves about how the last 2 two weeks has been for Ah Go, where she was able to enjoy bits of fruits and vegetables (apart from her usual hamster grub) given by grand dad. So her last days weren’t that bad after all, by hamster standards.
We said our goodbye’s, and dh and K said, “Bye Ah Go, we will see you in heaven again…”
This will most likely be our easiest experience in handling loss (if there was any to start with for K), as there was no grieve nor tears involved and the only thing that K asked when we got back home was, “Are you going to throw away Ah Go’s things?”
We kept the cage, some hamster accessories. Not because we were planning to get another hamster so soon, rather, we felt that it was a waste just to throw away $250 dollars worth of hamster things.
As for this ‘memorial service’, it was an effort to bring some closure to K’s loss of a pet, even if it did seemed that he was barely affected by the loss. Nonetheless, I overheard him saying to his friend at the playground yesterday evening, “My hamster Ah Go died on Sunday, and my dad, mom and I buried him next to the bush in the forest over there…”
Bragging rights or closure? I can’t quite tell. But insensitive mom have learnt some life lessons from this; I can be quite certain that K will not flush/throw his kid’s first terrapin/fish/hamster down the toilet/rubbish chute when it comes to his turn to be someone else’s dad.
