by Ms P. K. Styles

Created on: July 25, 2008

R. I. P. TUCSON

What do you say about a friend when they have passed away? What is the right way to react? The right way to feel? I feel a terrible blank, an aching, a hole in my heart where my friend used to be.

It may come across as silly to a lot of people that I can sit here and mourn my lizard. I mean, it's not like I lost my dog, right? But Tucson was more than a lizard. To someone without much family, Tucson was my best friend of ten years. He may not have pulled me from a burning building or helped me get over a break up or sat up all night playing video games with me, but he was my friend just by sitting with me and being there to listen, even if his brain was the size of peanut.

Granted, animals don't have feelings as rich and complex as ours (most animals, anyway) but they DO have feelings. I believe I made Tucson happy for ten years and he certainly did the same for me, which is why I was so devastated to find he had passed on today.

Let me begin at the beginning. October 1998. I had just turned twelve. I walked into a pet store with my mother and there he was: Tucson was running back and forth behind the glass of an aquarium, young and beautiful, just one-year-old. A young, male bearded-dragon full of energy and spark and life. I was drawn to him. I went to the glass and put my hand on it and begged to take him home. He was more than a hundred bucks, but my mother bought him because I guess . . . I needed a friend.

I have always had an affinity for small creatures. For lizards and rats and creatures that scurry about, so when I took Tucson home, I was the happiest kid in the world. From that day forward, he was my best friend. He sat on my head while I watched tv, slept on my pillow beside me, rode my shoulder as I worked in my garden. Everywhere I went, he went too. I even took him with me to the fair ground. I used to kiss his head all the time and call him my Tu-tu. I loved him and I like to think that he loved me in his own special way. I won't waste my time trying to convince people that lizards can love their owners. Just know that they can, the same way dogs and cats and rats and birds love their owners, Tucson loved me.

So why do I feel so horribly guilty? Because the last time I picked Tucson up, kissed him, and held him was . . . December. He passed on in Feburary. As any lizard keeper can tell you, bearded-dragons hibernate through the winter if kept in cold states. Tucson was still in hibernation when he died. I shouldn't have even woken him up in December, but it was almost like I knew the end was near. I knew and yet . . . I still didn't realize.

The week before he died, I kept thinking about him everyday. I kept telling myself to go and hug him and kiss him . . . it was almost like he was calling to me, pulling at my mind.

And what did I do? I procrastinated. I kept telling myself he would always be there the next day to pick up and hold and hug . . . but when I finally came to see him . . . he wasn't there. His eyes were empty and . . . so was my soul.

Needless to say, I feel awful that I didn't say goodbye to him when it was clear that in some way, he was calling me to do so. Call me silly, call me crazy, call me stupid, but it's true.

I love you, Tucson. I should have said goodbye long before now but I didn't and . . . god, I'm so sorry.

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