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I am 100% a pessimist. The second I get a shred of hope about something, I can talk myself into believing the worst will happen. I point out all the times that it has (ignoring the times that it hasn’t) and allow myself to feel miserable twice. The first bout of misery is assuming the worst. The second bout of misery is when I need to actually deal with the worst. And if the worst doesn’t happen, I chalk it up to a good day that I was only miserable once.

But I tried to be different when it came to Linus.

When the operation began, I had no information. For me, he was essentially Schrödinger’s cat—alive and dead at the same time. The doctor clearly knew which one was true, but I didn’t. Without any other facts skewing the results (because there were no facts), there was a 50% chance that everything was okay and a 50% chance that everything was terrible. Both were equally possible, so I opted (doing better during some minutes than others) to believe that everything was good because it was my choice at the moment.

I guess it’s always my choice. But in this case, it really felt like my choice. And I was going to choose to believe that Linus would be home that night.

Even as we learned facts from the doctor during surgery, each time the equation reset. Yes, things were going sideways, but at this moment, it was equally possible that things would be okay or that things would not be okay. And I should keep choosing okay.

It gets harder once you have facts, but I kept saying to myself, “Choose okay.” It was like that recurring phrase in Wonder—”choose kind.” You can do anything, all possibilities being equal, so why not choose the kind option rather than the jerk option?

It was hard to put this mentality into practice. I found myself tossing it aside with each setback we encountered. And ultimately, I went through a lot of thought as to whether choosing hope was actually the better option when we were driving back to the animal hospital to pick him up for burial. Because everything, in the end, was not okay. The pessimist would have been correct.

Yet despite that, I keep trying to apply it as we navigate the days after without him and COVID-19 and the terribleness that is 2020. It’s sort of like breathing exercises where you have to keep bringing your focus back to the breath when your mind wanders. I have no information about the future, so all possibilities are equally likely. I’m choosing right now that everything will be okay. Even though my heart knows that the other possibility also exists, even if I’m not choosing it.

Linus died in the afternoon.

We saw him in the morning. The vet told us we could come see him; he thought he might perk up and eat if he could hear our voices and feel us. They brought him out to the hospital porch, and we got to sit with him for a long time.

He was not himself and he was himself, both at the same time. The Wolvog always got him excited, and Linus tried to play with him when he stroked his head. But he gave up on the idea of play wrestling after a single head nod. And he perked up when ChickieNob asked him if he wanted a spiky leaf (which is what we call frisée with him), but he just gently moved his teeth up and down without really chewing it. He accepted two timothy treats from me, and we thought he was eating them, but he was just moving them back and forth over his tongue. He was so tired.

We went home in the morning believing that he just needed the anesthesia to wear off. That he would be a different pig at the end of the day.

I called the vet for an update at 1:30 pm, and he told me he had just given him fluids ten minutes earlier and he was resting. He asked if we wanted to come back and visit in the evening, and we made plans to go down there at 4 pm. We were going to try to feed him again and say goodnight.

But the vet called at 3:30 pm, sounding stricken, and he said that Linus had just died. He had been syringe feeding him, and he looked up at the vet, let out one sigh, and died. No warning. It was peaceful, and he wasn’t in pain, but it was sudden and unexpected.

It was a hard afternoon. We cried for a long time, and told Linus stories. Like how he used to dangle one piece of bedding outside the bars of his cage, waiting until I looked over so he could drop it. And I would say, “Linus. Stop it.” And he would pick up another piece of bedding and dangle it… Or how he wheeked every single morning when I went into staff pose during yoga because he knew that kicked off the final sequences of positions, and he would soon be getting his beloved vitamin-C tablet.

He would go “full pancake” when he wanted his side rubbed, seemingly going boneless while he blissed out with his little feet kicked to the side. How he always tried to suck the plastic duck from inside the water bottle, or fight his woven hay carrot (named, uncreatively, Mr. Carrot) instead of eating it, or pick up his food bowl and throw it. We called him the ringmaster because he would flip his food dish upside down and stand on it, so damn proud of himself.

The ChickieNob commented at one point that she was glad our goodbye was not a goodbye. When we left him in the morning, we thought we’d see him later in the day or the next morning. So we said a very loving goodbye, but when the vet brought him back inside, we didn’t have the weight of wanting to hold onto him one last time. It was truly a good goodbye because it was an unencumbered ungoodbye.

My heart hurts a lot tonight.

This morning, I drove Linus over to the vet by myself, and I was actually calm. I narrated the journey because Linus’s carrier needs to be closed while the car is in motion. (He likes to stand up with his head out, looking around, whenever we’re parked.)

When we got there, I knew that we had chosen the right place. The nurse was organized and caring. The surgeon came outside to speak to me in the parking lot and meet Linus. He won points for remarking that Linus is such a cute pig. (He is such a cute pig. This is his hopeful, “maybe there’s a second treat?” face that he made before he went into the hospital.)

I got to have a few final moments of cuddling and whispering that I love him, and then the surgeon brought him into the building, telling me that he would likely do the surgery in the late morning, and Linus would go home around 7 pm.

I went home to try to work.

His surgery got pushed back a few hours because of other surgeries, but the vet called to let me know they were starting. Soon after he called to say that his testicles looked abnormal, and they were recommending removing them because they were likely cancerous. At this point, I was concerned but also felt lucky that we caught this other problem early. I agreed that we should remove the testicles while he was already under general anesthesia.

Then the surgeon called back to say that they knew there was a stone because they had taken new x-rays, except it wasn’t in the bladder anymore. The surgery had become a lot more complicated. Another doctor was brought in and two nurses. They needed to reconstruct his urethra. He was under anesthesia for over three hours. The vet told me he had never seen anything like this. But he was one strong pig. And he’s currently waking up slowly.

This was not the aftermath we thought we’d have. We thought we’d bring him home and coax him to eat and drink. But he can’t come home tonight. The vet told me that he would bring him back to his house when he left the hospital so he wouldn’t be alone with the other animals and he could have someone watching him if he made noise in the night. We may be able to bring him home tomorrow. We may not. I guess we won’t know until he’s ready to go home. In any case, he said he’d call me a few times this evening with updates.

I am so grateful for people who care about animals. Who understand that caring about animals is one way to care about the people who love them.

Linus is having surgery this morning for the bladder stone. It has been… a lot of stress. We needed to find a different surgeon to perform the surgery, which meant a miserable weekend of trying to coax Linus to eat a few leaves of spring mix while he whimpered. ChickieNob was particularly adept at getting him to accept food. The Wolvog was adept at getting Linus to show glimpses of his old self and stand on his hind legs, sniffing the air to see if the Wolvog was about to give him a treat. I cried a lot. I worried a lot. I second-guessed myself and ran through worst-case-scenarios and didn’t sleep.

But Monday morning, our top pick for surgeon returned my call and walked us through what would happen. He is going to do the post-op care, but the main surgeon will be a vet I saw many years ago with my high school guinea pig. He was kind and gentle then, so I’m hoping that the man is kind and gentle now with my boy. I am so grateful this hospital fit him in.

The vet spent 18 minutes on the phone walking us through facts about the surgery and preventing bladder stones in the future. He put Linus on a low-calcium diet, which meant the end to his alfalfa treats. Our local pet store let me exchange the unopened bags for orchard grass, which he loves. It felt good to take care of the things I could take care of.

Because this past weekend was so defeating. I didn’t know how to convey how much my pig meant to me. He’s the center of our family—of course, like any pet—but he is also my stand-in baby. He is my morning coffee companion and meditation interrupter. He is this small, hairy beast tethering me to sanity during COVID-19. But I sense that yesterday’s surgeon got it, and he’s in good hands today.

Hopefully, he will be home tonight. I cannot wait to have my happy boy back.

Eight months into the pandemic, we’ve finally caught on that if we want something for November, we should start trying to get it in September. Which is how I already have a can of pumpkin puree ready to go for Thanksgiving. Maybe pumpkin puree will be plentiful in November. Or maybe it won’t. We didn’t know, and it’s not like the can is going to go bad between now and next month.

We were trying to figure out what would make staying at home through the winter easier. Our list was brief because we already own so many books (plus we got our flu shot and our mail-in ballot). Comfortable slippers. Lounge pants. A lap desk. A back wedge for sitting in bed. (Before you ask what this is, this is a back wedge. And it feels awesome.)

We were pretty proud of the hygge we were building at home when the ChickieNob informed us that it looked like we had robbed a nursing home. “What is with the back wedges?” Um… a lack of bad pain? We’re old.

So easier. But still… not an easy winter.