Last Days

Today is the last day before the Last Day of Elementary School for Will.  Tomorrow is the official "Last Day" but today is the last day before that last day.  Today I'm feeling grateful for Last Days.

So many of our traditions celebrate firsts and many "last days" we pass without every knowing that they are the last.  The last time your little girl asks for "uppie".  The last time they crawl.  The last time you feed them yourself.  The last diaper you change.

Today we woke up and our guinea pig, Marshie, was gone.  She had died sometime in the early morning; her body was still warm but she was gone.   Lindsay had been gone most of the day yesterday and so I had fed Marshie her greens which she ate happily.  I had noticed that she seemed a little "off" and we've had her several years, about the normal guinea pig lifespan, I suppose.  The thought crossed my mind that I hoped she would not die next week when we are gone and our neighbor is looking after her.   I made a special trip to Kahoots yesterday and bought her new hay because she hadn't been eating her hay and Lindsay thought it was because I had purchased the wrong kind.   I gave her a huge handful of the new hay - which she didn't seem to appreciate either - but she ate her greens, apple and carrots happily.   Looking back, perhaps I could have known that yesterday was her "last day" but I didn't and the day passed unnoticed.

Lindsay discovered her this morning and was devastated.  We all were, really.  Watching Lindsay, sobbing with grief, was heartbreaking for us all.  Marshie was her "first" pet and though we all "loved" her, Lindsay loved her most and best.   I watched Lindsay throughout the rest of the day, through the festivities of DanceFest and GoldDust Or Bust! - she put on a brave face but inside her heart was broken just a little.   Yesterday was a "last day" that I missed.  Could I have eased Lindsay's suffering if I hadn't?  If I had noted the day, told Lindsay that Marshie seemed "off".  Would that have prepared her?  Would it have softened the blow?

Of course I'll never know the answer to that and that kind of loss, softened or not, still leaves a hole, as I like to say, that is deep and wide.  I was also 10 when I experienced my first loss; actually it was the same loss - the death of my guinea pig "Petunia".  I've never forgotten it.  I don't remember how or when my first guinea pig, Timmy, died, perhaps because although he was my first guinea pig, he wasn't the first to go.  That distinction belongs to my second guinea pig Petunia, who came into my life second but left it first.  I remember every detail of Petunia's death because her loss was my first experience with the death of something close to me, my first "last day".   I knew that Petunia, or "Tuny" was not well when I left for school that morning but I didn't know when I left for school that it was be the first of the important "last days" in my life.  My mom came to school to tell me that Petunia had died.   I remember everything about that moment:  sitting on the bench outside of the school office, the quality of light, the sloping grass in front of me, the concrete walkway below my feet.   I remember how my mom just let me grieve and I remember how deeply deeply sad I felt.  Almost 40 years later I now understand that that "last day" led me here to this one when I held my little girl and listened to her sob.

I'm grateful to my friend Kelly Bruhn who called me last week to ask about her 8th grade son going to the Fair with his friends without parents.  What did I think of this, she wondered.   I didn't have an answer for her but something about that conversation hit home with me and that afternoon, after school, on a whim, I took my kids to the Fair.  We skipped our plans for the day and instead spent an afternoon full of rides, fair food and tons of just pure joy.  Will is entering Middle School and soon he won't tolerate afternoons at the Fair with his mother and younger sister, but on this day, this Maybe-Last-Day,  we shopped, we rode, we looked at farm animals, we ate "Fair Food", we checked out photography and art exhibits and both Lindsay and Will kept spontaneously telling me how much fun they were having, how great it was and how thankful they were that we had come.  In short, it was a nearly perfect afternoon and I did it because I recognized on this journey through life that these Last Days, when you can catch them, are special times to be lingered over, to be cherished.  I don't know for sure that that afternoon at the Fair will be one of those Last Days - maybe I will be given another "Last" day at the Fair with Will.  And maybe not.

I recognize that celebrating a Last Day is also a kind of grieving, a mourning for times and things that have come and gone.  It's a way to acknowledge their importance in our lives and, so doing, to say good-bye.  So today, on the cusp of another Last Day - Will's Last Day of Elementary School - I'm grateful.  I'm grateful to be here, recognizing and celebrating this "Last Day" and knowing we will never pass this way again.   So thanks Marshie and thanks Del Mar Heights Elementary - we love you.