RIP Chester

I got my first apartment in the summer of 1995, a small little second floor one-bedroom in the next town over. It wasn’t much but there was a balcony I could sit on and watch traffic, video and liquor stores directly across the street, a pizza place that delivered and a disreputable bar with a pool table about five hundred steps around the corner. Six hundred on a Friday night.

There were no pets permitted but I considered this an affront to my new freedoms so we got ourselves a cute little brown bunny named Kahlua, litter trained him and gave him free reign of the place. I’m not sure how inebriated I am in this picture but did I mention my proximity to the bar?

Photo by Jeremy Barnes

It was a relatively short chapter in my life story but one I look back on fondly. Seventeen years later when the family was begging for a dog I considered myself pretty clever by instead bringing home another bunny. Chester wasn’t nearly as cute as the one from my youth, cost me a fortune to fix after he spent the first month in his new home humping the youngest’s  Dora the Explorer plastic ball and chasing the wife around the living room but he settled down eventually and was about as easy a pet to have as you could ask for.

Photo by Jeremy Barnes

We ended up getting a dog, the three to one battle one I was foolish to ever think I would win, and it didn’t take long before I was supplying most of the care and attention. He spent less and less time running around the house and more just hanging around in his cage. As he got older he grew lazier, as we all seem too. Even when granted a chance to run he was more and more content to just stay put and wait for the next treat or handful of lettuce. He’d sit on my lap and watch TV for a few minutes but as recently as last week I mentioned that I couldn’t remember the last time he’d actually jumped.

Those jumping days are over now. Earlier this week I noticed that he wasn’t eating. A harsh cough quickly followed, wheezing and difficulty breathing right behind. Three days after becoming concerned and one day after warning the family that he wasn’t doing well Chester was gone.

On  Easter morning, and if you can think of a worse time for a little girl’s first real pet to go, a pet bunny,  I’d be interested to hear it.

It was a private burial, Alaina choosing not to attend. She stood at the door to his room and said goodbye and then headed to her room to grieve. Later that day she opened her basket from the magical bunny that has avoided being sick in these trying times, a bunny T shirt, bunny pajamas, a stuffed animal bunny and several different types of chocolate bunnies among the things that he had brought. Already weird because of the lack of extended family present it quickly became the most awkward Easter since the first person raised their hand and suggested that bunnies should really be part of this  celebration.

Photo by Jeremy Barnes

We made the most of it of course, because that’s what you do.  Her friends and my parent’s have lost pets in the last several years so she knows that these things happen. It’s just one more hit in a year that doesn’t seem inclined to stop dishing them out anytime soon.

I’m ready for it to stop but resigned to the fact that there is much more to come and that she’ll be taking her cues on how to react from us. It’s something that we all need to keep in mind during these trying times.

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This post was previously published on Thirsty Daddy and is republished on Medium.

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