🪦 Death at First
[ca. 1974]
When I was very young, we had a green-plumed parakeet named Pepper. Pepper's cage was on a counter (built-in, I think) at the northeast end of the dining room. This was at the 1926 Harris Street house in Marysville.
There are a number of photos of me as a toddler on Mom and Dad's bed with Pepper nearby. One series of photos shows me with a piece of lettuce that I offered to Pepper to snack on. The next photo in the series shows me eating the lettuce myself, so I don't know how much Pepper actually got out of that.
I have very vague memories of him flying around that dining room area; I don't recall the lettuce bit at all, though. I must have been two years old at that point.
But I do remember the day Pepper passed away.
It's strange how emotionally-charged moments fix themselves in time. I think this might be one of my very first clear memories.
Mom and Dad were somber, and told me the news. I'm not sure I fully understood. It was night, and the overhead incandescent bulb cast that unnaturally warm light like they do, not quite illuminating the room as much as one would prefer.
I wasn't tall enough to see in Pepper's cage. But Mom and Dad were looking at something in the bottom. They pulled up a chair for me to stand on, and I did.
There was Pepper, unmoving on the newsprint, curled peacefully on his side in unnatural stillness, fixed in my memory.
I don't recall how I felt, exactly. Looking back, it feels like a blend of sadness and confusion, but it's hard to be sure. Mom and Dad were sad, so I would have probably been sad, as well. We wouldn't lose another pet until Peachy (our cat) died in the late 80s.
Now that I'm older, certainly a lot of pets and people I've known have passed on. But wherever they are, I hope they see Pepper.
And give him some lettuce.