Yesterday morning I got up early because I knew I needed to dig a grave before going into work. I couldn’t leave the lifeless body there for the whole day while I was at work, and then into the evening as we were going to a charity dinner. My worst fear was that the house would start to smell like decomposing body. Kecia said “Make sure the hole is deep enough this time.”

I tried to make that paragraph as catchy as I could, and if you are reading this far then I know it worked. Unfortunately the entire first paragraph is true. Our ginnea pig died two days ago. I got a call from Kecia on Wednesday morning saying how Cinnamon, our six year old ginnea pig was making a funny sound that she had never heard before. Cinnamon also had a mass on her abdomen that seems very recent and was large enough that it made it difficult for her to get into her little house. In the afternoon Kecia was going to take her to the vet, but when she arrived home in the afternoon, Cinnamon was dead. The call I got from Kecia was heartbreaking.

After Gregory’s school concert that evening was no time to be finding a spot to bury the little guy and digging in the backyard in the dark of night seemed a little sinister. Reminds me of the show Southland that Kecia loves and every episode I catch is so gruesome that it turns my stomach to think about it, let alone play out a scene in my backyard.

So Thursday morning I got up early and found a nice spot in the woods between our house and our neighbors, where we could look at the spot, and who knows maybe a tree will grow like Old Yeller. Our shovel was gone so all I had to dig was a pick axe and a hoe…pretty lame I know. I’ll never make a good grave digger at this pace. Still I ended up being proficient and digging deep enough, and fast enough to produce a blister next to my ring finger.

We put Cinnamon in a shoe box, draped her in a tee shirt, and filled the box with a note from all of us, our picture, a rose, and a stuffed animal. We wrote how she was the best ginnea pig ever, and best of luck on the next leg of her journey, and of course that we loved her.

She had lived for about six years, which is three times what we thought she would live. She outlasted Marshmellow by a bunch of years, and seemed happy to be in her cage alone. She was sweet when everyone else was holding her, sometimes pooping a few pellets during the visit, or at least I was waiting for that to happen. I didn’t hold her much, if only once, as I was not that psyched to hold her. Each night I would give her a carrot, or some vegetable that I had handy. Any time someone crinkled a plastic bag, you would hear her screeching in the other room, wanting whatever was in the bag. The whole family would screech right back to her, and then of course give her whatever she wanted. She was a fat ginnea pig, and one that was part of our lives and the kids lives for most of their years.

I’ll write about the life that offsets this story in my next post. This one got too long, and I wanted to give Cinnamon her piece. Rest In Peace 2007 – 2013.