It always marvels me where thoughts come from. Ideas, dreams, and memories bubble up to the surface at the weirdest of times. I was at my parent's house a few weekends back looking at a tree as I rocked back and forth on their patio. I was studying the way the leaves clung to one particular branch. Not for any rhyme or reason. It was more or less because I was there, it was there, and it was something to look at.
As I sat there rocking, gazing up at the branch a memory sprang up. Something I hadn't thought of in ages. In the technical sense I hadn't remembered it happening until that very moment. This is probably because I chose to forget the whole situation due to guilt.
I don't know exactly what my father said. All I remember was that I was sitting in our old van and I got the impression from him that my mother was going to have a baby. If you know my father, you know he has a very snarky, sarcastic, dry sense of humor. I am going to assume my father was being sarcastic. Either way, the seed was planted that I would pretty soon no longer be the youngest child in my family.
This was an Earth shattering moment for me. I was the baby of the family. That was my identity. Think of it as a midlife crisis in fifth grade. If I wasn't the baby of the family anymore who was I?
What was worse was my mother never talked about it. For what seemed like weeks I sat there waiting for my mother to break the news so I could properly grieve over my lost status. But it never came. Which was worse.
In school we were studying parts of the Old Testament. In case you didn't know God was very vengeful in the Old Testament. Burning cities, flooding the Earth, and making people walk in the desert for forty years. I know I am paraphrasing. Still that stuff can be pretty terrifying for a child.
With Old Testament God on my shoulders, I couldn't help thinking I did something wrong. He was punishing me with a younger sibling for something I had done.
One day after school my mother brought my sister and I into the car. She said she had something important to tell us. I prayed, "Dear God, let it be anything else. Anything but another kid. Please anything, but that."
"Laura, your gerbil is dead," I started crying. But not for the reasons that you would think.
I loved my gerbil, PJ. Don't get me wrong. He could do back flips. He had a slightly grey butt that made it look like he was wearing underwear. He also didn't bight very often. Minus the fact his cage could get pretty smelly he was an awesome pet. Still my crying wasn't from grief over him like it should have been. It was from fear and guilt.
Fear because I thought God granted my prayer but took my gerbil as payment. Guilt because if that was the case PJ's death was my fault.
I didn't know what to do. It wasn't fair. While PJ wasn't the dog I always pushed my parents to get, he was still MY pet. I was responsible for him. I kept thinking of what I could have done differently. What would have kept that from happening? My thoughts kept creeping back to Old Testament God. How PJ's life was sacrificed to answer my prayers, like a lot of animals in the Old Testament. Nothing could get rid of the guilt I felt.
PJ was placed in small white card board box from a department store. The kind of box that normally housed jewelry was taped up with my dead gerbil inside of it. I cried as I held it. Stroking it. Thinking of how I would do anything to have PJ back.
Then my thoughts bounced to Lazarus. It could be because that was the name of the department store on the box. I am not too sure. Either way the story of Jesus resurrecting Lazarus came to mind. If my prayers took away PJs life why couldn't they bring him back? Jesus did it so easily. If I prayed hard enough then it could potentially work. In case you were wondering, yes this was my first big brush with death.
I prayed as hard as I could with my hand hovering over the box. Asking God to forgive me for what I had done and telling PJ to rise. Moments later I started to panic. Realizing that if PJ did wake up he was pretty well taped up in that box and was probably suffocating to death again.
I begged my mom to let me open it up. I didn't tell her it was because I thought he was alive again. I think I simply told her it was because I wanted to pet him. Neil Gaiman said it right when he wrote, "I knew enough about adults to know that if I did tell them what had happened, I would not be believed."
Thinking back as an adult I know my mother was right to not open the box. Gerbils carry a lot of bacteria when they are alive. Who knows how much they carry when they are dead? But in my childhood brain PJ was not dead. Well not dead yet. It was a classic Schrodinger situation. Although I didn't know who Schrodinger was at the time.
After a couple minutes passed I felt doubly guilty. I not only killed my gerbil with prayer, I brought him back only to kill him again.
PJ was laid to rest on the side yard of the old house. Mom read some prayers from a children's prayer book. I placed some small purple flowers on his grave as well as a rock to mark where he was. After that I think I had to go to basketball practice.
It is strange to remember the thoughts that I had then. Thinking back I still feel a small amount of guilt. I know it is irrational. But I can't help thinking, what if it was true?
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