Before I met my budgie Tovi in December of 1999, I had made a commitment to myself.
I had previously been so wrecked by the pain of loss that I promised myself that I
would never ever open my heart fully to another of these fragile beautiful little
people again. I needed to have a bird in my life ... it was like having air to
breathe for me ... but this time, I promised myself, I would be cautious and not lay
myself so open. I knew I would love - of course I would. But never again so openly
and without restraint. It was just a recipe for pain.
That commitment, that promise to myself, lasted a grand total of three whole days of
having Tovi in my life. Three. Whole. Days. All he did was just be himself and I was
gone. Completely and utterly in love. No barriers, no holding back, complete and
utter abandon. My heart was completely and utterly his. After three days.
I met him when he was 6 weeks old. He lived for nearly 15 years. He in died in my
hands this past Wednesday, August 13 2014.
As the years have passed in our life together, I've known that given the budgie
lifespan versus the human lifespan, I would likely outlive him. It is still a horror
that I can't fathom. I've been reading about grief and it seems to me that I have a
fair amount of disbelief still going on. I keep thinking I should go see how he's
doing, keep expecting him to be there when I walk in the room where he lived, keep
looking at his cage and asking him how is it even possible that he's not here. I
sleep with one of his feathers in my hand. I'm turning his cage into a shrine and I
have his ashes in there already.
I can feel the screaming pain inside myself, muffled by whatever coping mechanism I
have going on right now, and I know that it's only a matter of time and circumstance
before it breaks free. I know that the measure of love is the exact measure of the
pain in there and the love was off the charts.
-------------------------------------
And you know what? He wanted to stay. He fought to live so hard on Wednesday - and this is not what budgies (and other little birds, I don’t know about the bigger ones) usually do. They are easily affected by stress and they tend to die quickly due to that.
But Tovi is a fighter and has been that way all along. I've never known anyone like
this and I can't personally relate to it myself since my own physical life isn't
that huge of a deal to me and I have no resistance to my own death as someone who's mortal. It wasn't that Tovi was afraid to die, not at all. He just really really wanted to live.
He hasn't been all the way well since February. In March, he stopped being able to
fly. I thought then I was going to lose him very soon. But he just adapted. He built
new routines of how to move around, he let me know in no uncertain terms that he
still needed and wanted to love and be loved, and that he didn't want his age or
illness to define our connection. I was in awe of how he reacted to his situation
and did the best I could to meet him where he was at. He wanted us to keep on as we
had been. To love.
I had to remain focused on him as a person I loved - not as someone who was elderly
and not really well and nearing the end of his life. He needed to love and be loved
like he needed to breathe and eat and drink, and loving him was the most natural
thing in the world for me to do. I continued to focus on how wonderful he is, how
beautiful and smart and amazing he is, what a fine figure of birdhood he is, how
amazing and gorgeous and great and brilliant. How lucky I am to have him in my life,
to see him every single day, to hear his voice and kiss him and just be around him.
I told him that he took such good care of me, which he always did, preening me and
loving me and just being his magnificent self.
And I knew I was going to lose him but I couldn't focus on that. Because in the
moments when I did, it overwhelmed me. There was a point five months ago when he had first stopped flying and I though I would lose him within the week if not sooner, I
was freaking out about losing him in one room, walked into the other room and my
partner said something to me. She actually said "Tovi isn't doing too well right
now" but I was so caught in my terror of loss that I actually heard her say "Tovi just had a seizure." Which she didn't and he hadn't (the only time he had seizures was the day he died five months later). But in the haze of my terror, I heard her say what she had not actually said, and I thought I would lose him right then and I actually bit through the skin of one of my fingers so hard I made a wound that didn't heal for weeks and weeks.
So I realized I was going to lose my mind or something and I saw that Tovi was still
there and wanted to live and wanted me to love him and not freak out or see him (as
someone I might lose) as a source of pain and terror. So I deliberately and
specifically focused my attention and energy. I would love him and be loved by him,
just like always. I would stay open and just keep on with the love.
-------------------------------------
When he took another turn for the worse on Monday, I told myself not to panic. I
reminded myself of how he had adapted so far and thought it was possible that it
would happen again.
But he couldn't. He would have been 15 in October. That's very old for his species.
As much as he wanted to live, his body was mortal. On Wednesday morning, he called
me out of bed and I uncovered his cage. I saw him struggling to find a new way to
move around and I saw that it was really really hard for him. When he started
screaming in distress (something he never did) because he couldn't hold onto his food cup, I took him into my hands. He generally didn't allow me to hold him in my hands. Our physical cuddling was face and beak related. He certainly didn't like being held in human hands. But I held him and he stopped screaming and stayed there, exhausted, and then fell asleep.
I held him cupped in my hands for 6+ hours. He mostly slept, but had a few
intermittent seizures. I worked up the courage to tell him it was okay for him to
go. He didn't want to go. I put him down in a soft makeshift nest (he couldn't
perch) for a few minutes and started calling around to see if there are any vets who
make house calls who would peacefully euthanize a bird. Not surprisingly, this is
not something that usually needs doing - given their response to stress and distress
and pain, birds don't generally need help to die.
My girlfriend - who understood something about the will to live and mortal bodies
far more than I was able to - came home and explained to me that I needed to tell
him not only that it was okay for him to go, but that it was time for him to go.
In his last hour or so, he was seizing a lot and I had to find the spaces where he
was present enough to hear me tell him it was time for him to go. And oh, he didn't
want to. But his body was giving out. When he died, the end to his suffering felt
like a relief. And the part of me that had been screaming in panic terror at his
suffering and his death and this loss beyond anything I ever imagined possible was
still behind glass and as of this writing still hasn't yet managed to break free.
-------------------------------------
I know that the measure of love is the exact measure of pain lurking in me right
now. While in a way I had little choice but to fall totally in love with him three
days into first knowing him, I have consciously and deliberately made the choice to
completely openly love him and deepen this more and more over the years, made this
choice over and over in our many years together.
And I tell myself now, and it is true, that the love was and remains worth any pain
of loss. More than worth it, actually. I would not change this choice if I could,
would not lose a single millisecond of the experience of my heart totally and
completely belonging to this amazing little person - without barrier, without
reservation.
My girlfriend said he was the great love of my life. My brother said he was my soul
mate. The depth of this love is beyond anything I can express in words.
And all of it started with me promising myself that while I would love him, I would
be moderate, I would keep up some barriers, not open up completely, for my own
protection, to protect myself from the pain of loss that would be the inevitable
ending to a connection with this little budgie person. Well, three days with him
blew that one right out of the water.
And after almost 15 years with him, the love just got more and more and more and
more. I can't even brace for the pain when it really hits. Like the love, I think it
will take me instinctively wherever it takes me. I really don't like pain. But I do
know the love was worth it and I wouldn't change that for anything.