Tag Archives: loss

Jun12

ode to pretzel rod, the gentle mighty warrior, on his final odyssey.

Posted on June 12, 2025 by beth

below is a repost, originally posted in 2016, when my grandchildren’s beloved pet, pretzel rod, embarked on a crazy near death odyssey, and lived to tell the tale. now here is an update.

June 2025 – sadly, pretzel rod has embarked on his final odyssey to the great leopard gecko land in the universe. he will be buried in the Pretzel Rod Memorial Apple Orchard in their yard marked by his tiny house, but will be remembered forever as a peaceful warrior who survived against all odds and was a friendly and mellow dude. Happy Trails, Pretzel Rod!!

—

December 2016

pretzel rod, the albino leopard gecko (pre-odyssey).

last weekend

i stayed with the grandies

while their mom and dad were out of town

and

for some reason

during the last hour i was there

the two friendly house cats

decided to make a snack out of p-rod.

i had no idea this happened until i got home and got the call:

“the cats somehow got the screen off of the top of his terrarium and ate the gecko!”

imagine how badly i felt

that the murder had happened on my watch.

grandie f had just gotten this young gecko

for his birthday 6 weeks ago and was very sad.

he had replaced pretzel,

the tiny, twisty snake who was let go in the backyard.

the next day i picked him up at school and we planned

to make a memorial stone for pretzel rod to put in the garden.

we talked for a while about love and loss and pets and nature.

imagine my surprise when i got a call late that night that he had been found!

he must have crawled into the boys’ dirty laundry

which was on their bedroom floor

to escape the cats

hid out for 24 hours

then was scooped up

unknowingly

put in the washing machine

with the laundry

where he was washed, rinsed and spun.

what?!

he had survived

a feline attack

a day in smelly boy pants

fear

starvation

and

waterboarding?

he was washed, spun and rinsed

but there he was

sitting on the bottom of the washer

and after all of this, he was alive!

f yelled out over the phone:

“and he’s getting stronger by the minute!”

mom and dad said he looked rough and didn’t know if he’d make it

but he was indeed alive.

my task the next day was to get him some special treats

wax worms

(the big macs of the lizard world)

from the pet store to see if he would eat.

sure enough, he had some dinner

the first he’d eaten in a few days.

hopefully he’s on the mend

and we won’t have to go through a ‘second death’.

he looks a little lighter in color,

has some bite marks from the cats,

and doesn’t move as much

but he is alive and that is amazing.

—

“it is not the strongest or the most intelligent who will survive

but those who can best manage change.”
― leon c. megginson

May27

lest we forget.

Posted on May 27, 2024 by beth

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“heroism doesn’t always happen in a burst of glory.

sometimes small triumphs and large hearts change the course of history.”

–mary roach

—

there are very few families in this country who have not been touched in some way by the military conflicts, both current and past. thank you for your sacrifice. “LEST WE FORGET” is so very important for a reason. it implores us to be wary as a nation, because a nation that forgets runs the risk of losing freedom or repeating mistakes of the past.

Jan6

tribute.

Posted on January 6, 2024 by beth

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during the wake

we all gathered inside

close together

to talk, eat, laugh, cry, listen to music, tell stories, remember

celebrate a life

the children from 4-10

all played together

went outside

chalk in hand

wrote a beautiful welcome to all who would come

and loving tributes to the one who had left.

“tears are words that need to be written.”

-paul coelho

Jan5

time runs out.

Posted on January 5, 2024 by beth

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“It is easy to mourn the lives we aren’t living. Easy to wish we’d developed other talents, said yes to different offers. Easy to wish we’d worked harder, loved better, handled our finances more astutely, been more popular, stayed in the band, gone to Australia, said yes to the coffee or done more bloody yoga.

It takes no effort to miss the friends we didn’t make and the work we didn’t do the people we didn’t do and the people we didn’t marry and the children we didn’t have. It is not difficult to see yourself through the lens of other people, and to wish you were all the different kaleidoscopic versions of you they wanted you to be. It is easy to regret, and keep regretting, ad infinitum, until our time runs out.

But it is not lives we regret not living that are the real problem. It is the regret itself. It’s the regret that makes us shrivel and wither and feel like our own and other people’s worst enemy.

We can’t tell if any of those other versions would have been better or worse. Those lives are happening, it is true, but you are happening as well, and that is the happening we have to focus on.”

—

in memoriam of r.s. – you will be greatly missed and thanks for the music

—

credits:

text: Matt Haig – The Midnight Library, 2020.

art: Grant Haffner – Into the night, 1978