Song for Jasmine

On Friday October 3rd at 16:40 CEST, our little Jasmine left her suffering behind. Although her body has gone, she has not left our lives, so I will not speak of her in the past tense.

Jasmine is our African Grey, 'Psittacus Erithacus' to give her latin name. Jasmine doesn't speak latin, she speaks French and English. Her names, to her, are Jasmine, Jazzy-roo, and Jazzy-rooster-roo. Somehow her name just kept getting longer when we called to her, but she knows them all.

Shannon, of Chippers Alley, has already penned a beautiful tribute to Jasmine. Thank you Shannon, we couldn't have put it better. Jasmine loves Shannon as much as she loves us, and always looked forward to her visits. Between visits, Jasmine enjoys talking to Shannon on the phone, and calls to her by name.

Jasmine calls 'Snuggles' (a.k.a. Dweezeljazz) by name too, often just for the fun of laughing when she gets her reply. The only other person she calls by name is me, but she thinks my name is 'hell-OOO-ooo!'. It can be difficult to get my attention when I'm engrossed in something, you often need to shout. Jasmine also knows that when Dweezeljazz calls for 'Snoopers!', the correct response is 'uh-huh?'. Oh well, that about sums me up.

Shannon and Nat both have a lot of experience at handling birds, so Jasmine enjoys playing 'gotchas' and receiving headrubs from them. She also loves having her tummy tickled, as you can see.

I haven't got the hang of that, but I have learned to sing to her. I have lots of little songs for all occasions. They're all silly and stupid, and the words change from time to time because I forget them, but for all my off-key efforts, Jasmine loves them.

I have a little song for the morning, to let her know that it's time to wake up, so she won't be startled when I lift the covers from her night-cage.

I have a song for when we play 'flicksies' in the shower, when I flick water over her while she leans down from the shower-curtain rail to catch the drops.

Then there's the 'hupsy-daisy' song for the end of the shower, when she hops over the shower-curtain rings as I draw it back to step out. She has to hop over the rings before I finish the song, and she always wins.

Another special song is 'birdie-birdie bed-time', when we tuck her in to sleep at night. She always gives us a good-night kiss after that one.

The liveliest of all, however, has to be 'it's the wEEkend!'. She often dances to that one, and always gets very excited.

At other times, any excuse will do to make up a song. In her cage, on her playstation, on my knee, or in a cafe in town, she's a willing listener. Provided it isn't too long, vaguely rhymes, and has her names in it somewhere, she loves it. With that many names to choose from, it's not difficult to come up with something.

I'm still singing to her now, and I always will. She put those songs in my heart and that's where they belong. Thank you, Jazzy-roo.

Our Sweet Jasmine

It has been one week now. Our little Jasmine was beginning to suffer too much and we had to let her go. My friend Shannon knew Jasmine well and she has written a beautiful tribute to Jasmine in a way that I cannot find words to do. If you have time please read Shannon's tribute: Fly Free, Jazzy!.

We were unable to provide a clean enough air environment - it was filled with home cleaning products entering our air space from neighboring apartments. She was a healthy, robust girl - but she couldn't breathe the contaminated air we're making around us. I'm angry, I'm sad, I could rant about how stupid we human beings are. But at the same time, I feel sorry for all the pain and sorrow that will come to us from our lack of awareness. Most of all, it's the hollow of grief left from the loss of a very loving being who is no longer physically in our midst - and for a very pointless reason.

Jasmine was a vibrant, fun-loving little girl. She had her own mind and knew what she liked and she went at life wholeheartedly, enjoying every moment of it. She spread joy and love to just about everyone she met, and meeting people was the absolute highlight of her life (along with banana, of course).

We went to the market last Saturday and she was missed. A little boy in the cafe came running up looking to say hello to her; her friends at the roast chicken stall always enjoyed seeing her each week...

She would always listen and look up adoringly as Tony spoke to her, absorbing each word he said.

She joined in on any activity...
and helped things along in whatever way she thought would be fun...
and she loved to play.
She asked to go out: for a walk or to go shopping. Every time we would go to the bio store for our weekly shopping, if we occasionally had to leave Jazzy at home, everyone would ask where she was. We haven't gone this week...we'd rather make do with the food we have left this week than face feeling the pain of not having her with us there.

She loved loafing around on her playstation, being silly, having fun, playing......watching to see what new toy configurations we would think up for her to play with next.She loved being mischievous to get our attention, that's what she wanted most, our attention to play and have fun.
She always had loads of fun when we were out, and so did we. And she was ever eager to try new things.



She made us laugh so easily, and so often - she spread her joy, that was what she did best.





Enthusiasm is also a good word to describe Jazzy. Zest for life.

And of course, beauty.
Jasmine would have turned three at the beginning of this November, in just a couple of weeks' time. She already had a huge vocabulary. I've been writing down all the things she said. She made up her own sentences and they made sense. She spoke her own mind, she didn't just copy or imitate, though she did enjoy doing that too, in its place. She had a personality plus.

We miss her, always there, always full of cheer. And when we think of her now, we try to hold that cheer and love and joy that she gave us. Hopefully time will help us with our feelings of loss.

As she said herself: "Beautiful Jasmine!"