Milo

2 months ago, a cockatiel came into my life. Colleen took care of it for the most part. She made sure Milo was well-fed, well-rested, and was able to have a lot of play time. I mostly just played with it, kissed it, and let it stay in my head or shoulders as I do literally anything from attending important meetings to brushing my teeth. I can’t point out exactly when, but at some point, I started loving the bird and the other day, it passed away.

It hurts. Colleen and I can’t stop crying. We are grief-stricken as we lost our precious baby girl bird that gave us nothing but love, joy, and poop to clean.

It breaks my heart that she’ll never get to perch on me again. It sickens me that I’ll never come to the house with a sharp loud chirp greeting me as it flies to my head. My heart sinks as I can only experience her presence in my memory.

I feel the pleasure of the endorphins surging in my bloodstream as my body attempts to make me feel better as I bawl over this loss. My breathing patterns starts to do a double inhale prior to an exhale as my body tells me to calm down as I sob over the pain of missing Milo.

It only takes a second for everything to change, sending us into a limbo where we don’t know how long it’s gonna last. We don’t know when we’re going to be strong enough to not shed a tear as we pass by the living room that she used to fly around in.

At the back of my head, there’s an objective part of me saying that after all of this - there’s no heaven.That’s just it. We, along with the people we love, just die - and that’s the end of it. I know that we can look at it the other way - that we should celebrate because our finite lives are worth celebrating - but at some point I can’t help but acknowledge the depressing idea that some things are just never gonna happen again. Our memory lives on in the hearts of the creatures we touched but our lives just really don’t.

All my life I’m in the side of logic. I loved math when I was in high school. I develop software as a living. I enjoy consuming content and asking whether or not the ideas are really following each other in a reasonable manner. As a human being with a human mind, I just simply desire the truth. Given that depressing idea in mind however - that after we exist, it’s just nothing - I do choose to believe that Milo, her essence, her soul, her energy, is in paradise with all the space she can fly in, flowers she can peck, gadgets she can destroy, and pellets she could eat - because this reality - that she’s gone in our lives - is just too much too bear.

Milo, it’s heart-wrenching to feel the presence of your absence. It’s time for you to be the one looking after us now. Mommy and Daddy loves you so much. We'll take care of each other for now.