My mom used to dig holes every year. They
wouldn’t be pretty things or hard to spot. She’d find a place under the Manzanita
next to our apartment and dig. It wasn’t technically part of the property we
rented but it was close enough to us and far enough away from everyone else
that no one minded. When she was done she’d paint oblong rocks with little
designs and a name on them then set the rock at the head of where the hole used
to be. Every day for weeks after she’d make the hole I’d walk past it on my way
home and squint through the afternoon sun into the shade of the trees at the
mounds of freshly turned earth. I always felt a sort of abstraction from the
whole thing. Something would happen—a car usually—and mom would have to dig a
hole. She never seemed sad about it. I remember when it was Murphy the cat my
little brother didn’t cry. My dad thought the whole thing was an inconvenience
from the looks of it. The first time there wasn’t a hole my older brother cried
when he got the news. I was the first to know.
It was late at night and I had snuck
downstairs for a drink but I didn’t get that far. As soon as he saw me, he
whined. McCartney was on the rug we had that ran from the step down of the
entry way and the kitchen. He looked up at me with fear in his eyes and yowled.
I was scared, I didn’t want to get caught out of my room that late at night so
I hurried out of the room and stood there, listening. He called after me. I
couldn’t stay away. I’d never heard him sound like that.
So I crept back in and he scooted his way
to me. It looked like he was trying to run away from his back legs. They
weren’t moving, just trailing after him, tail flat and lifeless. McCartney made
this hollow noise, looking up at me, his eyes round and wide. I reached out and
touched his head, scratching behind his ears. He lay down after that and meowed
again. I didn’t know what to do—I was just a kid and I’d never been the one to
find them before – so I woke my dad (who had slept through McCartney’s cries like
a baby not two feet away) then ran upstairs and woke my mom.
They took him to the vet and I went back
to bed, worried but comforted that my parents were taking care of it. When my
older brother came home from staying over at his friends there was no ceremony
to it, no “we have to talk” or “I have some bad news” from mom or dad. Mom just
walked up to him and said, “McCartney had a stroke. We took him to the vet but
there was nothing they could do.” They both made comments like my older brother
would like that his cat died high as a kite. I was revolted by this but decided
they must know better how to deliver this news than I. After all, this was the
first time I had discovered a reason for a hole.
But the hole never came. Two years later
when Squirt, the turtle, died because of parasites there was no hole either. My
dad just picked him up, put him in one of mom’s many shoeboxes, and tossed him
in the trash. I felt as removed from it as I had when my mom dug the holes.
Today I dug my first hole. It was for
Cecil who was white with a blond vest, shy, and liked to kiss my nose. I used
to call him my fatty ratty, my mushmallow, my baby boy. Because that’s what you
do when you hold a little life in your hands; you fill it up with love and
tenderness and soft touches until they give you a reason to dig a hole.
The thing I didn’t know about digging
holes is that there are choices you can make which will display your sentiments
and your care (or lack thereof). My mom’s holes were always over-filled. She’d
put all the dirt back in it until the ground bloated up over the bodies. She’d
leave a visible mark where something once living was now decaying. She’d take a
rock and paint it but always used water colors which meant the paint would fade
then disappear, leaving only a lump of earth that would eventually erode away
to subtle bumps. Cecil’s hole was not like that.
I borrowed a shovel from a friend. It had
a long handle but a small head, just wide enough to make a good-sized hole. I
looked around the backyard, I tried a few places. The ground is pretty hard
this time of year so I tested the soil by pushing the shovel in and standing on
it to see how long it took to sink below the grass and into the soil. I found a
good spot by the chain link fence. It’s in the sun but near where a bush grows during
the heat of summer. I framed my chosen spot by stabbing the earth, using my
weight to sink the shovel into the ground. I made a rectangle half a foot wide
and eight inches long then pushed the shovel back into the line. I put my boot
on the back and pried until I got the grass up in one piece. I looked kind of
silly, I know, prying up the grass like that. I’m sure Cecil would have loved
it. Rats love to dig and play in grass.
After that I dug about a foot down,
making sure to keep it in that geometric shape because I watch too much TV and
they always dig these impossibly perfectly rectangular holes. Mine was less
than perfect but I was pleased with it anyway. It was mostly rectangle at its
entrance but belled like a hammock at the bottom. When I finished, I gathered
up Cecil – now wrapped in the first sheet he ever destroyed (never leave rats
unattended with your bedding as they will make it their bedding)—and put him inside a fast food box that had once
contained chicken. He loved chicken. It was the perfect size for him even with
how bloated in death he’d gotten. The box went in the hole and I put back only
half the dirt I’d taken out then flipped the square of grass I’d pried off back
over and hit the ground until it lay flat.
The only way you can tell that I dug a
hole today is the dark soil still sitting next to where it is and the small toy
I placed at the head of it. The toy was Cecil’s favorite; a brightly colored
ball made out of chewing logs with an actual wood ball in the center so it
rattled when he rolled it. I thought he might like that. Though I wasn’t
thinking of anything when I dug the hole. Before I thought about it; I debated
the best place to put it, what box to use, where I could find a shovel, what
time of day to do it, what to do after I dug it, whether or not I should get a
rock like my mom used to do. But I never thought of a single thing except
digging while I was making that hole. The first thing that came to mind when I
was done, standing in the sun with a shovel over my shoulder and staring at
Cecil’s grave, was “There’s an art to digging holes.” I have to wonder if my
mom thought the same thing when she made her first hole.
