Our Loss

We shed many tears Friday February 1. For unknown reasons, two baby rabbits we had given to Jordan and Terra to celebrate Jordan’s birthday, died. The girls had been begging us to get them each a rabbit. They don’t have pet stores here. No one, except ex-patriots have “pets.” But along the roadsides you will pass young boys, holding their arms up to passing cars, and in each hand they display a baby animal of some kind: kittens, puppies, bunnies. So, the day before Jordan’s birthday, while she was over at a friend’s house, we stopped by the side of the road and Terra picked out two flea bitten little bunnies. We took them to a vet, she dusted them with flea powder and they were good to go.

The girls grabbed the Chichewa-English dictionary. Jordan named her bunny Kalulu (rabbit) and Terra named her bunny Patapata (slippers) because her rabbit had extra fur around his toes. We all fell in love with these rabbits. Amidst all the stress of life here, these two little creatures brought us so much joy. The girls fed them before leaving for school and immediately coming home from school. The rabbits quickly learned that when they heard the girls coming, it meant feeding time. They would stand on hind legs, reaching up on their cage with their front paws, begging to be picked up and fed. Then the girls would release them in the yard and they would dart around on the grass, stop for an occasional nibble and then run again, sometimes leaping through the air. We laughed, catching them when they strayed too far.

The rabbits were thriving under the care of the girls. Their tummies were filling out, their fur was shiny and fluffy. We had them for less than a week. On Friday morning, Jordan and I went out to feed them before leaving for school. They huddled in a corner of their cage. Strange. We tickled their noses with a cabbage leaf. No interest. Uh-oh. Bad sign. I walked Jordan to school and immediately came home to doctor them. They had no energy, no life in them. Something was seriously wrong. We took them back to the vet but there was nothing she could do. By noon they were dead.

The girls took it very hard, as most children do with the loss of a pet. This was the first time the girls had to deal with a significant death that they could remember. They both handled it completely different. Jordan wanted to go out and see their bodies. She kept returning to the box in which their corpses lay. I would see her outside, standing in their empty cage, audibly crying. She helped Stephen make a cross for their grave site and she was very indignant when Stephen dug the burial hole next to the compost pile. “Can’t we show some respect! Next to the dump!” Terra on the other hand, refused to look at them, wanted to be by herself, slammed her bedroom door and quietly cried into her pillow. Yet, in an hour she had worked through much of the emotion and when she and Stephen ran errands, she wanted to talk and hear about the saddest death Stephen had ever experienced.

This inexplicable, untimely death gave us the opportunity to talk with the girls about death and loss. We reflected with them on how the people of Malawi and most of Africa are suffering from death of parents, the death of a child and the loss of uncles and aunts and cousins. It did not make their pain any less, but it did create a moment to connect, sympathize and feel compassionate toward our brothers and sisters.