The Violent Munkee

Timothy Plew

Died- Monday, June 25, 2007

It was early this morning when the kids woke up, as usual, before me, and demanding me to be up. Damn. I wanted to be up before them today. Timothy died yesterday. I Washed my hair in the sink, just to get the bed-head out, and then attempted to sneak out the back door unnoticed. With plastic zip loc bags in my hand and sticky $11 “leather” sandals on my feet, I set out on my “morticious” mission.

I came to Timothy’s cage under the strange looking tropical tree. There he laid, in a cheap zinc metal enclosure on loan from a neighbor, stiff as a stuffed guinea pig, ants running in and out of his oral and nasal cavities. “Sorry Timothy”, I whispered, feeling I had failed this guy. With a shudder of “gross” I picked up his body with the small plastic bag and placed it in the large plastic bag. Almost as if it was timed, the back door opened and out came Basil and Juliana, sensing with their magical child radar that something interesting was taking place.

Basil looked at the bag and gave the plastic a couple of strokes, “Are you gonna throw him in the trash daddy?” Embarrassedly I fumbled with what to say and finally admitted, “Well, I don’t have enough time to bury him.” “Do you want to me to pray for Timothy?” I asked Basil. “Sure.” my dear boy replied with just a bit of smile in his face. “Lord Jesus Christ, thank you for our dear pet Timothy, thank you for how happy he made us, thank you for making him. Maybe we can meet him again someday. Amen.”

We walked together to the large grey plastic barrel, waiting lamely under the grapefruit tree, lifted the lid and tossed him in. “Daddy, can I look at him?” Basil asked. I lifted the lid and allowed Basil to peek at his first real pet, lying dead amongst the week’s trash. Basil turned back to his sister and said firmly, “J, Timothy is DEAD, he’s dead J.” “Daddy, should we write his name on it?” Basil asked motioning to the barrel. Taken off guard by a few tears I said calmly, “Sorry buddy, no.”

The two children accompanied me as I rolled the clumsy barrel through shaggy, dewy Saint Augustine grass out to the curb. As we passed “Mufasa”, a neighbor cat, perched atop the cinder block wall and looking down on us with some interest, Basil again proclaimed, “Timothy is DEAD, Mufasa, he’s dead.” I looked quizzically at my 3-year old mourner, “They were friends, daddy.”

So this is fatherhood? I can barely get through a pet “burial”, how am I going to survive the difficult times?