The Most Perfect Dead Bunny

3/19/2014  This is what I wrote the day my brother Mark died. 

It was warm again after another light dusting of snow in Denver. So nice so, I decided to clean up the sticks, that fall from the neighbors tree when the wind blows hard. It fills up my yard, and his yard with millions of broken sticks from the tree. I take care of his yard too.

It felt so great to be outside in the warm sun, picking up sticks. Then I saw it, some piece of funny looking trash. On second look, my mind finally put the pieces together and realized it was a dead bunny.

Now bunnies are rare in my neighborhood.

Ever since we moved here, you never saw a bunny. Years go by and not one bunny to be seen. Unlike my friends and family who live further south where there is ample supply of bunnies, so much so that they hate the little cute critters. We live closer in to the inner city. It's old town where I live, and the wild life has eaten most of the good pickings of bunnies in this part of town.

So to see a live bunny let alone a dead one is super rare for me. But there he was, the most perfect dead bunny I'd ever seen. I stood over him looking at him and wondered why had he died? There was no rip marks of an attack from the large pack of coyotes that run my hood. There were no crush marks from a car hitting the poor thing. It just lay there in the most perfect form, with out a scratch that I could see. It was laying just outside the big blue spruce tree in plane site, on it's side, as if to say to me, look at me!

I decided I should take a picture of this poor little bunny. Something was amiss and I wasn't sure what, but he had a story and I wanted to know it. I put some gloves on, and moved his body into a bag. I felt sad that it had to be a grocery bag and not some pretty decorated coffin of honor, but he was a bunny and the bag would be sufficient. Nothing appeared wrong with him from the outside, so I thought maybe he got into some kind of poison. It was as if, his life just ended in that spot for no apparent reason, like maybe he had a heart attack or something.

I picked up the little beautiful creature and gave him is burial in my trash can. I didn't want to see him rot and be eaten by maggots over the next few months, surly the trash can was a beautiful placement as any bunny could expect.

A few hours later my mom called.

She said, are you alone? Well yes and no, why? Well I got a call from the Arizona police and it's what we always have expected she said. I knew what she meant. My brother, he was dead. But I couldn't say it to her, I said WHAT? instead. She told me the story of how he's most likely been dead in his apartment for over two weeks and they just found him. We always expected suicide, but right now we don't know what, because he's been dead so long they don't know.

I thought about my bunny friend.

There had to be a connection. It was the most unlikely thing I could find in the yard. The perfect dead bunny. And now my brother was dead. The day turned into evening and the swirling thoughts in my head went from how I missed the opportunity to save my brother, to how was the bunny a part of it?

What was wrong with my senses? I used to always know when someone was going to die. I had a sixth sense about these things, and here my brother whom I grew up with like a twin, gave me no prior sense that something was wrong. I had no idea he was coming upon his death bed. Did he send the bunny to tell me something?

The bunny lay perfectly dead.

No trauma, was that what my brother was telling me? He died peacefully with no trauma? He died perfectly with no pain? He just died, that's all. Is that what my brother was telling me though the bunny?

He just died, that's all?

It's not a suicide it's not a murder, it's not old age death, it's just he died. He lay there unnoticed for over two weeks. He died lonely. Maybe he died from alcohol, but really he died lonely and alone. He pushed us away, he could not handle people loving him.

Loneliness is prevalent among us

I've seen it displayed on the last App I ever told my brother about. WhisperApp. In fact the very last text I sent my brother was this: “Hey check out WhisperApp, you might like it” I sent to him. But he could have been dead when I sent it. I think WhisperApp would have been a good place for him. He could have connected with humans, but had the anonymity he needed. He had a hard time getting close to people, yet that's what all lonely people want. They want other humans in their life. I see it every day on Whisper, lonely people seeking human contact.

My brother never responded to my last text. I don't know if he was dead at the time I sent it. I got a new phone and my old phone was wiped clean, so I don't know when I sent the text to him. The last time I ever got a response from him was shortly after the new year. I asked him if he got my package and he replied “Yes” that’s it. That's the last words from my brother to me. Yes. One word, his last word to me was, YES.