The death of our first pet
We all need time for our losses to register and to figure out what went wrong, so we can do right in future.
IT started with the flutter of a wing and a diminutive chirp.
Just like that, the baby budgie – sprouting tufts of cerulean-blue feathers – became our family’s first pet.
Our girls named her Blueberry, though it sometimes got shortened to “Bluey” or simply, “Birdie”.
That was last Tuesday evening. By last Thursday night, Blueberry was dead.
I came home from the office after 9pm, peeked into the box that was her temporary home, and found her little body nestled amid the strips of paper towels. My husband reported checking in on her after the kids had gone to bed at 8pm, and she had appeared well then.
That day, she had had her formula, which we fed through a tube attached to a syringe. The girls gently cupped her in their hands and sang her songs.
We all wept. The girls, for their loss of a pet that they had quickly become attached to; and my husband and I, partially out of guilt that we had taken on a responsibility that we were perhaps not fully equipped to discharge.
Some well-meaning friends advised us to quickly get the girls a new pet. “My experience with such things is to replace fast,” said one. “Takes away the attention, the sadness.”
Moving on thus was tempting. It would stop the tears. But we decided against such a salve, at least for the time being. We need time to grieve, for the loss to register, and to figure out what went wrong, so that we can do right in future.
Amnesia is not resilience
A bit of soul searching would also be prudent as Singapore rushes past the trauma of the last two years to embrace its future.
The country of the past two weeks looks vastly different from what it was for much of 2020 and last year. Peak-hour traffic has returned with a vengeance, suggesting that people are returning to offices in droves. Family and friends gather for celebrations big and small, at home and in restaurants. Sales fill malls with a welcome buzz and most people I know are talking about where they will be travelling to – if they are not already on a plane.
Some are not yet ready, but I, for one, welcome the return to a Singapore that has more than a passing resemblance to pre-covid-19 times. It feels like we are collectively healing and that a scab is beginning to form over the wound inflicted on our society and our communities.
The wound is not a pretty one. There have been the Covid-19related deaths – 1,361 as at Friday. There are also those who grapple with the long tail of Covid-19. And then there are those who suffered – and continue to suffer – ailments relating to the social isolation and intense pressures on healthcare resources of the past two years, ranging from mental disorders to chronic diseases to developmental lags in our children. There have been many other deaths too: of businesses, careers, relationships, and dreams.
In a way, we have been processing and making sense of these losses in different ways, as the world carefully makes its way through the current transition to Covid-19 resilience.
Yet, as our cities roar back to life and we plunge back into it, I wonder what lessons, what postmortem takeaways we have absorbed from the ledger of the past two years – for ourselves, our families, the people that we work with and the broader community. How are we conducting ourselves and doing things differently from 2019, before Covid-19 killed six million people worldwide? Or is it going to be the same-old same-old?
“We need to honour the lives tragically cut short, lives we lost and we must hold ourselves and our policymakers accountable,” Dr Samira Asma, the World Health Organisation’s data chief, told a press conference. The responsibility not to just let the past two years slip into a black hole of the past – even as we fix our eyes firmly on the future – applies to us all wherever we are.
It sounds like I am picking rather at the scab, and perhaps I am. But when we neglect to take stock and when we forget too quickly, the price can be a high one.
It is perhaps human nature to want to hurry past pain and unpleasantness. Some might see such an ability to move on as a mark of resilience. But amnesia is not resilience.
Resilience is being able to remember the past – warts, mistakes and all – with some detachment, so that one can try to avoid making the same errors again. It is also the ability to call on those qualities that helped one get through this crisis, and again in the next crisis, which is certain to happen. It is just a question of when.
No room for introspection
On the morning of last Tuesday, before we had Blueberry, there was actually Sunshine.
A yellow budgie had flown into our home the day before. We came home from a barbecue organised by our neighbours to find her doing a little dance while perched on a paper bag on the kitchen counter.
Even as I quickly put out the call on various Facebook groups for lost and found birds, we had already lost our hearts to her, as she zoomed around the kitchen and pecked at a piece of corn cob. We called her Sunshine.
Last Tuesday afternoon, Sunshine deftly found a small opening in the windows. She hopped out and stood on the frame for a while as she surveyed the world outside. I called the girls. “Say goodbye to Sunshine.” And off Sunshine went.
The girls were distraught. We walked around the neighbourhood, with my three-year-old daughter in tears and waving another piece of corn in the air, in case we saw Sunshine again.
I left no room for introspection. Because I wanted them to forget their sadness, I spoke to my cousin when we got home, and he found us Blueberry.
Thus began our headlong rush into a decision with unintended consequences – one which I will not forget for a long time.
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