A parakeet in the trunk is worth what?

On my way home from class tonight I was thinking about you and a horrible twinge of pain started to grow in the pit of my stomach. It is strange that at times I can think of you as though you are still living happily in the house a stone’s throw from mine, these are the happier times, and then there are times that I think of you with mournful twinges of the life that you will miss out on; these are the more miserable times.

During class tonight we painstakingly reviewed the breath out of accounting preparing for the impending doom that is our final, for which I gathered no new information nor elevated my brain to higher level of understanding. Once in the car, speeding away, leaving the horrible institution called college in my dust, I began to think about the upcoming finals and how this would have marked a great milestone in your life, the end of your first year of college, and what a wild first year it was. I was thinking about your friends preparing themselves for their finals thus marking the end of their freshman year, how they will begin making plans for summer jobs, vacations, or pure, blissful laziness. I then thought about you will never get that opportunity. That is when the pain began to slowly grow in the very bottom of my chest. I kept thinking that life should come with warning labels, like poison has a skull and cross bones or a creepy neighbor’s house has a “Beware of Dog” sign on the front gate (even though it is really only a Chihuahua). There should be some sort of warning or beware sign that pops up a week or two before tragedy strikes so that we all have time to prepare ourselves for the moment that will ultimately change our lives forever.

I was on route 129 North and passed our old 93 Thompson Trail house and I was remembering a time when you were struck with “tragedy” and you made it known. I am not really sure how we came to be the proud owners of the obnoxious parakeet, I believe a handy man gave it to us after a job he had done, and if you ask me, for that fact mom should have gotten whatever payment she gave him back because we lost on that deal. This had to be the dumbest, most annoying creature that has ever graced the face of earth, and somehow you found a way to love it. So after purchasing a cage and some food for your new found pet of the week (which, I might add, included, not all at once, a squirrel, a turtle, two cats, a dog, and a rabbit), we gladly made him a home in your room (on the opposite side of the house from my own room). You creatively named him Birdy but because, at 9 years old, you still had a speech impediment and could not properly say r’s or double l’s,  his name became “Birwdy”. The rest of the family quickly caught on and lovingly called him “Birwdy” as well because we thought it was so funny but mainly because we always loved to pick on you. Mom would often let Birwdy out during the day to fly around the house while she was there, but one afternoon she forgot to put him back in his cage before running out. When she returned later that day, all that was left of Birwdy was a small piece of what was assumed to be his body and a single feather sticking out of Onyx’s (our black lab) mouth. Later that afternoon when you got home from school Mom explained to you what had happened to Birwdy and the devastation rolled in. In one of your more dramatic moments, you made invitations to Birwdy’s funeral in which all in attendance should dress nicely. During Birwdy’s funeral, everyone gathered around his grave and shoebox and you instructed us to all share our favorite memories of Birwdy. When it got around to Vince, he looked up and, in his reserved tone, said, “My favorite memory of Birwdy is that he is dead”. Hysterics mixed with laughter quickly ensued. This has become something of a legend in our family, one that is told at many family gatherings, and eventually even you laughed along at its telling.

This memory lead into a time not long ago when another parakeet graced you with it's presence for several days. This one, however, was already dead when you got him. Your grandmother’s beloved parakeet passed away from, who knows what because Don (long story), was the only person around when he died. In a moment of grief, your grandmother asked you to take the bird, placed in a box, in a plastic bin, from Atlanta up to Cleveland so that he could be buried next to her cocker spaniel. You cautiously, but graciously, agreed. You just failed to mention that you weren’t due to head back to Cleveland for three more days, so you drove around for almost four days with a dead parakeet in the trunk of your car! When you arrived here for the weekend and told us that you had been driving around with a dead bird in your trunk we, of course, started coming up with bizarre scenarios of how the situation could have played out. You can imagine how that went.

While these memories didn’t erase the ache I felt for you I did manage a good laugh at the thought of you in heaven with Birwdy, in your own bird menagerie, surrounded by a bunch of parakeets and bird poop.

So I guess a parakeet in the trunk is worth a lot to me because it gave me yet another cherished memory of you.