Stacy the guinea pig had lived a long, happy life. I, however, felt terrible. My husband and son were adventuring in Canada while I held down the fort at home. Not twenty-four hours into my solo parenting time, I began to feel the telltale signs of strep throat. You can only “mom” so well from the couch, which narrowed my goal to basic survival.
We were getting by on Pop-Tarts, PBS Kids, and amoxicillin when my daughter’s loud question woke me. “Why is Stacy so stiff?” My eyes popped open, and I was suddenly wide awake. The guinea pig was in her outstretched hands, inches from my face. Its arms were outstretched, too, in the final pose of obvious death. My daughter was four. I was sick, and Scott was off the grid in the Canadian wilderness. This was not the moment I had scripted for a serious discussion about death.
We found a Stacy-sized shoe box and then realized we faced a conundrum: burying her. She belonged to my son, who was gone, and it didn’t seem right to bury her without him home. My mind, in its drug-induced haze, offered only one solution. Put her, shoe box and all, in the deep freeze and wait for them to get home.
The boys came home, but life got away from us, and the little shoe box in the back of the deep freeze was forgotten. People usually laugh at this part of the story, imagining a guinea pig alongside our hamburgers and pork roasts. My brother-in-law had a different take. He contemplatively said, “Maybe a guinea pig in your freezer is a sign that your life is too busy.”
Join me at The Glorious Table to finish this essay and read about the lessons I learned about leaving the too-busy life behind.
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