Turtle Love and Loss

I once had a red eared slider turtle called Bandit, named for the black rings around his eyes. I washed out his aquarium every week, scrubbed out the algae, took a nail brush to his two large granite rocks and plastic plant decorations, and rinsed out the water circulation system. Bandit grew and grew, on a steady diet of chicken hearts, pet store supplements, and live freshwater snails when I could get them.

We had ten years together, having turtle races down the hallway, caring for his shedding shell, watching each other through the glass of the aquarium as life happened on either side.

Seeing me through my last elementary school years, my depression filled high school years, and all of university where I finally broke through the depression and started to build my sense of self, Bandit was there; watching as I struggled, changed, moved from the main floor of the house, to the basement, then out to my first out of town job. He endured the 2 hour drive in the back of my car, sharing a cramped one bedroom arrangement, then the drive back again when the seasonal work was over.

A promise of new, long term work, using the background of my university degree, brought me and Bandit to another small town, where he again had to endure a one and a half hour drive in the back seat of my car. Once we settled into the one bedroom basement apartment, I started to acclimatize to the community. Bandit was there to greet me when I got home from work, and watched me as I ate supper and took in taped reruns of MASH and Star Trek: The Next Generation.

Not long after coming to this new environment, I met my first boyfriend. I was over the moon! A boy found me interesting enough to want to date me! I had never thought myself desirable up till that point. Finally validation from the universe that I was worthy of love. Things went well for a few months, but every time this boy came to sleep over, he would complain about the smell of Bandit’s aquarium, or the splashing sounds he made in his tank. Having grown up without pets, he was not used to such things.

Sadly, being so new to my freshly built sense of self, and new to the idea of romantic love, and coming from a family background where I had been shown that men know what is best in a relationship, I was very easily talked into giving Bandit up to a new family, with encouragement from this new influence in my life. Ten years of living together was easily trumped by the perceived wise words of a love that did not even last 6 months after Bandit and I parted ways.

To this day, I still have recurring nightmares where I find Bandit in his aquarium, dead, head hanging long and limp on his granite rock, water half dried up, starved to death because I forgot to feed him for days or weeks. Regret, yes. It hangs heavy on me. Turtles can live decades. I could have had Bandit with me into my forties, where I am now in life.

Much has happened since then, new loves, new losses, pets, short lived, and long lived have been present. The regret about giving up Bandit has been constant however, and he will be with me for the rest of my life I expect.

Perhaps it is because of this regret that I have given the pets that have entered my life after Bandit more care, attention and love, for their own sake, but also a deep seated need to try to make up for past mistakes. I would never be talked into giving away a pet again, that is for sure. Bandit, I just hope you had, or are still living your best life, wherever you are.