I spent 15 minutes writing today, about 1.5 pages.

A main character deals with the loss of a parent. Shock, denial, and feeling numb. She reflects on how everyone is handling the situation, and guilt is settling in over the last moments and day of his life; what was unsaid, unmet.

I decided to title this chapter “Say Goodbye”, after the Cheap Trick song. When I lost my one guinea pig, Dixie, last June, that was a song that HS brought to me, and really helped me process and grieve her. She’d just had a bladder stone removed, she’d lost a considerable amount of weight from her chunk status. I was hoping now with the stone gone she’d be on the mend. I came home the day after her surgery, and found she had passed in her log cabin hidey. I believe she wasn’t in pain, as she was laying in a comfortable napping position, and she hadn’t been gone for long.

Dixie was a sweet, sensitive and tentative girl, almost never the one to initiate or strike out on her own. And that day she had her awfully big adventure. A quote from Peter Pan, which the Holy Spirit gave me from that book, really helped: “To die would be an awfully big adventure.” — That was sweet Dixie, taking her big adventure, on her own.

I miss my little chunk! She was so sweet, and always had something to say, chattering away when she was held. She loved to snuggle (whether Pixie wanted to or not, was another story! haha!)

I miss her still today, but I am grateful for the time I had her, and that she wasn’t in pain when she went. She was peaceful.

Say Goodbye by Cheap Trick