The Little White Bunny and Hope

My previous post (about the duck family) reminded me of a series of old photographs I took long ago -- photos I took for my mother -- of various animals we had at the time.

One of the pictures was of a white bunny. Of course, now that it’s Easter season, one sees bunnies in every form, in every store -- including hopping wind-up bunnies.

But this bunny in the photo I am talking about (the bunny in the photo below) was a real one -- a real bunny.

He was a little white rabbit that my mother had gotten from a man at work (at Boeing). The man raised rabbits. One of his rabbits had a litter of bunnies, and one of those bunnies had a broken arm. The man knew that my mother loved animals, and that she had a way with them. She had already healed a chicken which had a bad eye.

At that time, we had several chickens, a couple ducks, and for a while we even had a goose and a turkey. If I remember correctly, my father was given a pair of pheasants, which sometimes squawked in the far side of our back yard.

Anyway, the rabbit man told my mom about the bunny with the broken arm. He was going to kill it, because a bunny with a broken arm was no good to him.

“Do you want it?” he said. “I’ll give it to you. I’ll just kill it otherwise.”

Of course, my mom wanted the bunny.

The next afternoon my mom came home with the little white bunny. He was small enough to just barely fill both palms of her hands. We had a tall box set up in the middle of our kitchen, with a safe light over it, to keep the bunny warm. We got some rabbit food and a small dish of water. The poor little guy looked so sad with his broken front arm – there was a tear in his skin, and you could see the flesh from the wound just underneath his white fur. His arm looked as if it were hanging loose – but with the wound looking the way it did, it was hard to tell how much his little arm was connected to the rest of his body.

Mom got some aloe vera, a plant that apparently has healing properties. Several times every day my mom would clean the bunny’s wound, and then she would treat the wound with aloe vera.

Over time, the wound got better and better, until it healed completely -- and the bone healed, too!

 

The little white bunny grew into a big, white rabbit. I don’t remember the name we gave him. He lived to old age, in a rabbit hutch in our back yard.

One thing I always remember from this incident is how it was so easy for someone to just want to get rid of an animal that was wounded and seemed beyond hope. Although maybe the rabbit man had his ‘reasons’, it just seemed cruel to want to kill a rabbit if there was a possibility that the rabbit could be saved. But the man’s attitude – “why bother?” -- was not atypical.

In modern day society, people sometimes cast off their pets if the pets become too “difficult” – if the cat scratches the couch, the owners get rid of the cat, instead of figuring out a way to work with the cat to get it to stop (or getting the cat to scratch something else). If the cat misses the litter box – they’ll sometimes get rid of it. If the dog poops in the house, they get rid of it.

We see this tendency in human relationships, also. People sometimes give up on their partner because their partner (or the relationship) becomes difficult, or sometimes they'll do it if their partner has gotten an illness of some sort. Their partner may become alcoholic or addicted, and instead of learning to cope and be of some support to the other person -- and still show love towards the other person -- they'll just dump them outright.

I’ve noticed this “if things get difficult, dump it”, throwaway attitude in American society and I find it a bit disturbing, especially when it applies to living beings, like pets and people.

People will split with a partner or spouse for no other reason than “things just aren’t working out.” It is true that some relationships get so dysfunctional they can become beyond repair, but I’ve seen people split over stuff that just seems fairly petty – stuff that could easily have been “fixed” if they just had the love, and the will, to find a way. Love is supposed to cover a lot of things. But too often, love doesn’t seem to cover enough.

My mom never gave up on the little white rabbit. She also never gave up on people.

She never gave up on my step dad when he became ill with cancer in 2002. My mother sought out treatment for him, when he just accepted that he was going to die. She became his daily nurse-maid for over a year, while he was getting chemo. It was very physically demanding. She would walk him to the bathroom, supporting his weight the entire way because he was too weak to walk by himself. She would walk him to the kitchen, or to the living room so he could watch some TV – once again, supporting much of his weight the entire way. She did it willingly, because she loved him. 

She finally took him to a university clinic in New York City to get him treatment. In the end my step dad passed away – but my mom never gave up.

A lot of partners would have been more passive about it. “Go get your chemo honey, I’ll call the visiting nurse.” 

But my mother is anything but passive.

I don’t know all the answers to life, but I know that in modern day American society we tend to throw things away a little too easily. We immediately dump the old car for a brand new one, even though the old one still works well; we dump the old phone for the newest model, even if the old one still works perfectly; we dump houses, we dump furniture, we dump TV’s, we dump computers, we dump pets – and we even sometimes do the same thing to people.

I myself have tried to follow my mom’s example, but I don't know if I’ve done it well enough. In the back of my mind, I always think that if there is a chance to make something work, I’ll at least try – whether it’s a job or a project; whether it's dealing with a difficult person, dealing with a difficult pet, dealing with a difficult family situation (and there have been those), or even in a relationship. With any thing that fell apart, at least I can look in the mirror and tell myself that I tried. 

It's hard to know exactly when to cut your losses, but I think it's harder when you can't say you did all you could.
I do have this tendency to stick with things: I'm loyal to a fault.
I don't just dump out of something when things get tough. It's just not my nature. I'm not sure if it's my weakness, or if it's a strength. I know this, though: I never want to end up kicking my own ass some day, telling myself I should have done better or tried harder.

 

I like to think that this concept is something I learned from seeing that little white bunny respond to the love my mother gave it, and seeing a hopeless case turn out to be a strong, healthy rabbit. 

And I suppose that is something I shall reflect on this Easter day.