THE SMALLEST GOD
Let me tell you a story.
Leeloo, the younger dog, found a rabbit’s nest underneath a bush in our yard last week. In it – a tiny baby rabbit. So small, so delicate, he seemed made of fuzzy love and worry.
He had been abandoned, or lost, or simply handed a bad bargain by life. He was alone and it didn’t seem like his mom was coming back. From time to time he would appear at the mouth of the burrow and look out with such strange, unguarded patience that it seemed, at least to me, he was waiting for someone.
That night there was quite a storm. Major winds, lightning. Cold rain.
In the morning he was at the edge of his burrow, lying in the sun, trying to warm up. Not moving much. Skinnier. Smaller looking. A tiny handful of sorrow.
I panicked – he seemed so fragile and the yard so full of snakes and cats and vultures and bad things.
That night we took him, in a box, with some grass from his home so it smelled like it, and put it inside so he would be warm.
It stormed again – rain and wind – so I thought, great, he will not be outside a second night, alone and cold in that storm. But in the morning, he didn’t look good. We put him back outside, in his home, in the sun. He lied there, in the burrow, not moving. Few hours later he died.
We tried to save him. Perhaps we helped. Perhaps we only loved him at the edge of what could not be changed. But for three days he was seen, sheltered, spoken to gently, and held in a human heart as if he mattered entirely. Which he did.
I could not bear that such a creature should vanish unnamed. So we named him. We named him Zeus, which was absurd and perfect, because fate sometimes gives the grandest names to the frailest creatures.
Yesterday we buried Zeus beneath our magnolia. We buried him there, beside Laika’s ashes, and set a stone that will read: Zeus. Beloved and Immortal. A small creature loved completely.
Life is not fair. It is savage, careless, magnificent. But sometimes, in the middle of all that indifference, a small creature is loved completely. And I think that matters. I think it matters more than we know.
Last night, the magnolia bloomed.
PS. And of course, the 16th was Chaika’s ( my anima, the dog for which my love knew no bounds) birthday. There are no coincidences.
