Holding Hands at the Edge
Bianca has a tumor. Many female rats develop these mammary tumors. They are benign but fast-growing, to the point that the animal can no longer function — can’t eat, walk, or bathe herself effectively. This is not yet the case for Bianca, who continues to bounce happily across the bed to greet me, groom herself with the furry fervor of a kitten, and optimistically stockpile pieces of toast under cushions for me to discover and remove later.
The lifespan of a domestic rat (the breed we use for laboratory experiments, snake food, and companion animals) is typically 30 months. Bianca was half that age when the tumor began to grow between her front legs. I took her to the vet, knowing that our choices from here on out would become increasingly uncomfortable. The animal hospital at MSPCA-Angell is on the other side of the city and more expensive than I can easily afford, but it is the only place I have found that will treat “exotic” animals. (It amuses me that rats are included in this category. There are few things less exotic than rats, which followed human expansion to virtually every inhabited place on the globe, eating our food, living in our spaces, and wreaking destruction on other species [though a lot less destruction than we do].) The vets at Angell are terrific, anyway, kind and straightforward. They pulled up an estimate for the surgery that would remove Bianca’s tumor, and nodded sympathetically when I told them that I would have to think about it. As I was leaving, one of the vets said, “The whole existence of these little guys is a moral quandary.”
Rats are intelligent, friendly to humans, and above all sturdy, which is why I chose them as pets in the first place. They can eat any human food with gusto, along with many things I wouldn’t consider palatable. I once put several smooth stones in their cage for decoration, and several days later I found the rocks gnawed down to nubbins. The hardiness that has allowed their species to permeate every continent except Antarctica and outnumber humans in many major cities serves them well with me as their absent-minded guardian. And yet Bianca is already middle-aged. Even if we cut out her tumor, it’s likely that her rogue pituitary gland will simply grow more. I decided against the surgery. It was financially implausible, I told myself. My focus needed to be on her quality of life. For a rat, death is not a tragedy. I will simply make sure that she is comfortable, until she can’t be any more.
— -
Though they’re considerably bigger than a mouse or hamster, each of my three rats still weighs less than a cup of coffee. Bear, like her namesake, is bossy, always hungry, and prone to grumpiness. Drusilla is a socially maladapted misfit who bites my fingers and is alternately embraced and beaten up by the others. Bianca is the explorer, more interested in adventures than food, and likes to huddle in the crook of my elbow or between my cupped hands, her outstretched tail vibrating ecstatically. All of them are curious and hilarious and hop like bunnies when they’re feeling cheerful.
What I have learned through caring for them is that rats are people, of a sort. They might not be people like humans are people. They may not even be people like dogs. But they have personalities, relationships, and moods. Their lives must be taken into account. And yet I’ve chosen not to extend Bianca’s life through surgery. Even though I don’t have to, I am letting it end.
I like to think I’m pretty smart, but it wasn’t until I’d written up to this point that I realized I was writing also about the end of my marriage, which is recent, or imminent, depending on how you define things. We were together for twelve years, married for six, the best of friends and sturdiest of partnerships for so long that it took us years to understand that those things had ceased to be the case. Being married to my husband was — still is — the great pride and honor of my life. And now it is over. We could keep running the salvage operation, trying to find enough usable scrap to forge something new with the tools we have. We’re both loyal and persistent and creative enough that we could have built something. But it wouldn’t have been the relationship we used to have; and it wouldn’t have been the marriage we longed for. So instead, we moved out of the scrapheap and let it be done.
— -
In Christianity, Ash Wednesday is the day we set aside to tell ourselves and others that we are going to die. It’s been my favorite holiday for the last few years. During a time of the year when I’m usually deep in the throes of major depression, I get one day where everyone else stares into the abyss right alongside me.
This fall felt similar, as if my private griefs were subsumed into the great public grief of my city and country. I’ve had a rough year, but then, so has everyone else. Some days I feel cheated. I would like to be able to imagine that my grief is even a little bit exceptional. But most days I feel a solace in the shared mourning.
There are two good things we can do with grief. First we live it; and then we use it. I’m living my griefs — small and large — right now; but I find that I’m trying to use them to map out, fumblingly, a way forward in my political engagement as well. I’m thinking about what we can salvage, whether that be the comradeship that my husband and I have regained in our post-marriage friendship, or the sense of doing what I can that comes from rallying and calling my representatives. And I’m trying to work out how we respond when it’s time for something to die — a relationship, an animal, an idea of what our society is. What needs to be over? What can we let go of? And what must we cling to?
The rats remind me to resist men who do not value lives that are frail or easy to overlook. I curate my rage and sadness, making it last, trying to make it useful. Someone asks me how I’m holding up, and I can’t tell whether they’re talking about the breakdown of my marriage or of my country. Does it matter? We’re all staring into the abyss now; but at least we’re holding hands.
