Death

The family hamster, Hammy passed away in it's sleep apparently. Someone discovered the lifeless, limp and cold body in foetal position at the corner of the cage. In my family, we hardly ever had an experience of a pet dying on us. It was almost hard to relate totally to it, life and death of a human family member was agonizing, but little did we expect to bite the bullet upon an animal's death.

It only goes to show how attached we are to it when it was still alive.

Still, I'd say that the biggest impact Hammy gave was to my mom. My mom always had an abnormal fear of animals, even fishes (but strangely not afraid when they're on her chopping board). As a result, she never reared a pet all her life, and not surprisingly, forbade any of me or my siblings to own one. Hammy was an exception, she was sent away to live with my sister's cousin and friend, respectively, for some reason, none of it worked out well. And by the time it moved to her friend's house, she was actually going through depression and refused to eat. Worried, her friend decided to ask my sister to take it back before Hammy dies of obvious causes.

When we did finally fetch her back, you can tell she was totally elated. Practically did backflips and started eating it's way to good health soon after. The good days then went by, with all of us basically involved in different ways of her antics and cute-ness. We were warned however, consistently, by my sister that Hammy is considered an old hamster for her age, and probably wouldn't live past next year.

And boy was she ever correct.

On the day of itself, while I was turning, I accidentally hit my laptop table leg, and the laptop collapsed off it. Call me superstitious, but that felt like a sign to me considering I have never dropped my laptop on the floor before. Afternoon, my family returned, someone announced the dreaded words - "Hammy's dead".

If anything, a lot of us learned from the experience death that left a stale aftertaste in the mouth. My mom mentioned we are not to rear pets again, but not for the reason of her fear - but rather, the fear of losing it to the death god eventually.