Funeral for a pet

It is Monday, September 24 and I have just come from a funeral. I'm wearing black denim Wranglers and one of my favourite shirts, the soft grey one with cross-hatched laces at the chest. I'm sitting alone at the Greek Garden sipping Chardonnay. This is one of my favourite restaurants, just a block down the street from my apartment, but I've never come for lunch before.

They're playing a CD of that British nightclub sensation singing popular Italian songs, his voice sometimes inflected to imitate operatic timbre, sometimes sounding almost Arabic, but usually just a lot like Paul Simon. And I think, bird song would be better.

My parents had dropped by yesterday afternoon when I discovered my canary dead. I lifted him from the cage and gently stroked his soft feathers, something he would never allow, as he had not been finger trained. Mom said they could take and bury him in their garden, 300 kilometers away. But I said no, I would bury him in the park near one of the places I like to visit.

This morning as I tried to remember where I had put my trowel, I remembered that I didn't bury the baby budgie that died shortly after I bought it last year. I saw fit to place its tiny body in the cleft of a tree, surrounded by air and light. Wouldn't it be appropriate to treat my dear Sunny the same way, who loved having his cage soaked in sunshine, who cheered my heart for more than five years with his bright songs and conversational twittering?

Not bury him? My heart recoils from the thought. Something might get him, his bones might lie naked to the sky! Then I remember that this is the way of all nature. In fact, this is the way of the religious Parsis, followers of the prophet Zoroaster in India, who place their dead atop a tower of silence to be exposed to the sun and consumed by vultures.

I conclude that burial would only relate to my personal sensibilities. It would not be especially natural or meaningful.

In the kitchen craft drawer I find an end of cloth patterned with purple feathers, the colour of royalty. I cut a portion of it for a shroud. I also cut a fragment of paper and write this quote on it:

"All those golden autumn days the sky was full of wings."
~Laura Ingalls Wilder
The copyright of the article Funeral for a pet in Living With Nature is owned by Van Waffle. Permission to republish Funeral for a pet in print or online must be granted by the author in writing.

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