Filling in the tiny grave.

Our sweet little Afil Hamster died yesterday.  We are all sad.  I have known some pretty calm and friendly hamsters over the years, and Afil is probably the sweetest one I’ve met.  She would sit still in the crook of an arm to be petted.  When she was out running in her rolling ball, she was always underfoot, following the people feet around the house.  Rodents don’t look you in the eye in quite the way cats and dogs do–they don’t have time for that–but it seemed that Afil could stand the briefest moments of eye contact.

Jon laid her out on a bed of moss in a little box, and we buried her in the bare spot where the beehives were.  Both hives died over the winter, which is another great sadness, so it felt apt to put our little Afil there.  Children have a natural understanding of ritual and ceremony.  It shouldn’t amaze me anymore.  They knew what to do.  Plus, they like to dig, so there’s that.

Such a tiny creature, but she held such a big place in our hearts.  I’m going to miss those bright black eyes, and the little sneezy noises she would make when she woke up to get our attention, how she would climb up into her loft to wait for one of us to open her cage door and pick her up.

Gratitude List:
1. The small furry people
2. Rituals
3. Bees.  Bless the bees.  May other hives and colonies flourish.
4. Three yellow crocus.  Some years no yellow ones appear, and sometimes one or two.  This is, so far, a three-bloom year.  They’re a deeper gold than the sunny aconites.
5. The way you can see the sap rising in the trees down at Flinchbaugh’s Orchard.  There’s a new vigor and color to the limbs.

May we walk in Beauty.