The Hamster Funeral That Healed Us

“Mom, Doris is dead,” my oldest son reported from down the hall.

It was the early afternoon. Doris, a Syrian hamster, was surely just taking a disco nap, I assured him. She had probably been doing the Hamster Hustle all night long. She was nocturnal, after all. Plus, she had spooked us like this before. 

“No, Mom. I’m sure. I tried to move her and she wouldn’t move. I think she got crushed somehow under her wheel.”

Damn, Doris.

I put my arm around my son and we sat on my bed. Our voices became hushed and his got a little quakey and we hugged.

My son commended the hamster’s final acts: “She knew exactly what to do. She just crept into her little burrow where she knew she would be safe and could rest,” my son consoled himself, tears starting to pool in his eyes, “She was the smartest hamster ever.”

Doris had come to us by way of one of my former students, just before Christmas. The student was preparing for his study abroad semester and knew a hamster would not be a welcome amica in his Italian dorm. 

I didn’t tell the kids that a hamster was going to be making us a family of five. I wanted them to be surprised. So I simply told them that on that very night, we were going to have a visitor and her name was Doris and not to freak out so they didn’t scare her.

They had waited on our front porch in their pajamas as my student rolled up. He presented Doris in her cage, with all her hamster accoutrements. Christmas had come early, with this creature stirring--not a mouse, but a close cousin. 

I didn’t grow up with pets other than goldfish, so life with a furry housemate was new for me. My oldest son taught me how to not only coexist with Doris, but how to adopt her into our clan. Every evening before bed, he visited with Doris and earned the favor of this rodent who was overfed and overstimulated. I had asked him before our move if he would consider rehoming Doris so we didn’t have to transport her over what would be a three-day voyage. “No, Mom. Not for all the money in the world would I give up Doris.”

Doris had made the cross-country journey and had been one of the constants in the kids’ lives during a year of difficult transition. She was an easy conversation topic with new friends, and a welcome reminder of what remained from their life in Tennessee. 

The day after Deceased Doris was discovered, we planned to bury her after the kids got home from school. There were some complications, however. Chief among them was that we were renting an apartment in the city and so the burial grounds were not exactly ours. Further, as my son noted, we weren’t always going to live in this apartment. What if the kids wanted to “visit Doris” in the future? 

We settled on a flower bed next to our apartment building. We dug with a garden trowel we found in the basement. 

The kids both said sweet things to Doris as though she were present for her own Hamster of the Year award ceremony.

Then we all sniffled and cried and we all hugged some more. Other kids walking home from school passed by, probably wondering what this family was doing, falling apart in front of a flower bed. 

My oldest put on some gloves from our first aid kit and laid Doris to rest. Doris was so peaceful looking, her eyes closed, her paws turned in.

We troweled dirt on top of Doris, hoping no neighborhood dogs would sniff out our Pet Cemetery. Then my oldest remembered he had wanted to bury a letter he wrote to Doris along with her, so I encouraged him to just dig a hole next to Doris and to bury the letter there. 

We buried in the ground that day a beloved pet, but we also exhumed some of the thorny feelings of a difficult transition that we needed to experience. A chubby-cheeked furball facilitated that. 

This last weekend, I was reunited with both of my sons. The oldest had just begun college, and the youngest was visiting his big brother’s dorm for the first time. As part of the family weekend festivities, we sat on a grassy knoll while the oldest “stuffed a plush.” We watched as he filled a fuzzy horse mold with wads of fluffy cotton-like material. In an absurd way, I felt glad for my son that he would now have a cozy companion in his new home, one who would not require a messy habitat of woodchips and toilet paper rolls. This furball would, with any luck, survive a cross country move or two in the future, and never require a permanent burial at a temporary place of rest.