Angel

My brother spent almost half of his childhood in hospitals. He was born a blue baby (the third Rh+ child born to an Rh- mother) and was an intersex child (which through DNA tests, they assessed him to be male and entered him (with my mother’s permission) into their experimental program of surgically making those in the program appear and function more like everyone else of their gender.

When I was 6 years old, my brother came home from one of his surgeries with a cage with two white mice he had managed to charm the nurses and lab people into letting him take home. He gave me one of them so I could have my own pet.

I named her Angel and loved playing with her, feeding her, and taking care of her. I kept her cage by my bedside at night and would be happy waking up in the morning and seeing her jumping up and down, happy to see me. I’d pick her up and hold her in my hands and she’d let out a soft squeak, then I’d feed her and she’d eat out of my hand.

One morning I woke up and she wasn’t responding the way she usually did. I picked her up, worried what was wrong. She curled up in my hand and barely moved. I called to my father. He took one look at her and said, “Let’s see if she eats anything. But if not, maybe it’s time for her to go.” I didn’t understand and held her close to me.

She didn’t want any food, not even her favorite, a piece of toast she liked to nibble on. My father would check on me from time to time to see how I was doing. She had started shaking a little. Then she stopped shaking and didn’t move at all. She just stopped. I kept calling to her and tried to get her to move, but she remained still and motionless.

My father came in, looked at her, and gently told me that Angel had died and I needed to set her down and find a way that would feel to me to be comfortable for her. I made a little bed for herin the cage and lay her down on it. She did not move at all and then it hit me what dying meant and I sobbed uncontrollably.

My brother came in (his mouse was still well) and sympathized with me, but I was inconsolable. My father went out and returned with one of those school-bound notebooks. I was still sobbing and crying out, “Angel, Angel. Please come back.” He handed me the notebook and a pencil, put his arm around me and said, “Put your feelings into words and write them down in this.” He and my brother got up and left the room.

I held the notebook and pencil in my hands and tried to breathe and think what I could possibly write to express my love for Angel and my grief at her passing. I understood death then in a very visceral way, and then wrote my first poem, entitled “For Angel”

Later that day my brother and I found a small shoebox to put her in, I lined it with a soft piece of fabric and I put some of my childhood treasures in to be with her, a triple acorn twig, some leaves and my poem to her. We carried it down to the backyard land under our 3rd floor windows, dug a hole to bury the box and said some prayers we made up and sang a song we made up. Then we buried her and made a cross from two twigs on the ground and placed it to mark her grace.

The next few mornings were hard for me. I could feel the loss of her and of the joy she gave me. And I would write in the notebook about what I missed with her gone.

That was my first poem and my first direct experience with death. I will always be grateful for my father’s wisdom in recognizing the need to express in words, which launched me on my life-long need to write.