Tag: willow

#oneaday Day 966: Rest in Peace, Willow

This is Willow. She was lovely and cute and adorable and liked to bite people a little bit too much. She was a scaredy-rat but was slowly starting to come out of her shell. The first day we got her, she just sat in her box, too petrified to move, but over time she became more and more confident and started to assert herself more. Her cagemate (and possibly sister) Lara was very much the dominant one in their relationship, but Willow very occasionally managed to come out on top — more so as she grew older, larger and more confident in herself.

Willow died this morning. I feel like we had barely had time to get to know her — we’d only had her about two months or so — before she was snatched away from us far too soon. She’d been ill for around a week — she’d been out of sorts and dirty — but we’d been told that rats were prone to this sort of thing at times, and she’d probably get over it.

Unfortunately, she didn’t. Last night, she was very shaky on her feet, but was at least walking around, unsteadily getting food and drinking water. When I came down this morning, she was lying on the floor of the cage, unable to support her own weight. I put food and water in front of her and she couldn’t summon the strength to take it. Her sister was fussing around her, trying to clean her, obviously trying to liven her up. It was heartbreaking to see. Rats can’t talk, but all I could hear in my imagination was Lara whispering “please don’t die, please don’t die.” I was saying it to myself, too.

Half an hour later, she was gone, lying peacefully on the floor of the cage in silence. I don’t know if rats feel emotions or not, but her sister looked sad, and was sitting in her little house, keeping away from the body. She looked at me with sparkling eyes and I just broke down in tears. Little Willow was gone, and poor Lara was left all alone.

I buried Willow in the garden and left Roger the squirrel, a garden ornament who had taken up temporary residence in our living room, guarding her. She’s at peace now. I hope she didn’t suffer too much.

I’ve often found the subject of death to be an interesting one to write about creatively — if you follow my “Creative Writing” category you’ll find plenty in there — but I find it a terrifying prospect to deal with in real life. Not the prospect of dying myself, mind — that doesn’t occur to me — but the prospect of having to deal with bereavement. Today was a potent reminder that I have had to deal with relatively little tragedy in my life compared to some people — but at the same time, a lack of experience in dealing with death makes it all the more difficult to know how to respond when it does happen.

You may feel that a little rat is not worth mourning or grieving over — particularly when we had so little time together in the grand scheme of things — but I get very attached to pets, regardless of size and species. It is perfectly normal and healthy to mourn the loss of someone or something that has been a “fixture” in your life, something you came to expect to see every day, which is why I feel great sorrow at Willow’s passing.

Rest in piece, little rat. We loved you dearly and hope you’re in a better, more peaceful place now. If you see Kitty wherever you are, I hope you’ll be friends.

#oneaday, Day 208: Keeping Buff

I started re-watching Buffy the Vampire Slayer a few weeks ago. I’m just up to the start of season four now, which means I’ve also started re-watching Angel, too. Both shows remain absolutely fantastic examples of how to get television right. Spoilarz ahead, naturally.

The main thing both shows get right is in having strong characters. Given that they’re both named after their protagonists, this is an important factor. Buffy herself is a pretty multifaceted character with a good line in one-liners, quips as well as pouty American teen-ness. But it’s the supporting cast that steal the show. Xander’s deadpan-ness. Willow’s meekness, often at odds with the important things she is trying to say. Oz’s taciturn nature. And Giles. Dear old Giles, one of the greatest characters of any show ever.

In fact, ironically for Angel, the weakest link in Buffy’s cast is probably Angel himself. When he’s broody, soul-having Angel, he’s pretty, well, boring a lot of the time. When he’s Angelus he’s genuinely threatening. But for the majority of the time he’s brooding over Buffy, he’s not really that interesting. But as soon as he takes centre stage in Angel, he comes into his own. He gets much more in the way of a personality. He quips and verbally spars with the bad guys more. And he’s just a much more interesting character. Presumably the reason he was written out of Buffy in the first place was the fact that he had a ton of untapped potential which was never going to be explored while the doomed romance between him and the Slayer was dragged out.

That’s not to say I don’t like the Buffy/Angel romance plotline. Far from it. In fact, Season Two remains one of my favourite pieces of television simply because of the utterly tragic nature of much of it. The finale to that season is magnificently emotional.

I remember when I first watched Buffy. It was derided by a lot of my friends who hadn’t seen it as being a stupid show with no depth. And with a title like Buffy the Vampire Slayer and its 6pm dinnertime slot on BBC2, it’s easy to see why people assumed that. In fact, even in its early seasons (arguably slightly less so in the first season), it demonstrated an emotional maturity and a sense of “telling it like it is” that few shows have managed to replicate. I think I also found some emotional resonance with at least some of the characters, too, since I was the same age as them at the time of its original broadcast. I was going through the same stages of life at the same time they did. Admittedly, with less frequent apocalypses. But I recognised myself in many of the situations they encountered.

The reason I like Buffy is the same reason I enjoy the Persona series. The juxtaposition between the fantastic and the mundane. The knowledge that even if you’re a superhero with special powers who can save the world, you’ll still have “life stuff” to deal with. The demonstration that we’re all human, whatever our abilities. I can relate to that. Everyone has demons to fight, struggles to face, whether those things are real, physical things, or personal things locked inside.