A Letter to Woodstock

Dear Woody,
It was one year ago today that we let you go to the Rainbow Bridge after your valiant fight first with crippling spondylosis and then cancer. I still cannot think of you or talk about you without crying. You were and always will be my heart bunny. I can smile now in remembering you but always,
always through tears. I still laugh when I recall the day you ripped open the bag of Care Fresh and spread it all over our basement carpet in protest of our spending too much time at the computer and not with you. You stood there so proud as “Dad” and I laughed and took your picture.

And how sweet were you when Cinnamon, so young when she came to us that she could not yet be spayed, kept trying to mount you, and you patiently endured it, occasionally giving her big kisses on her head to calm her down?

So much has happened since that very sad day when we said goodbye. Your “dad” and I are divorced. I live in a new place and never see Dad or the other rabbits now. Cinnamon is still with me. She has had a tough year too. She lost her second friend Boo only two months after they met and fell in love. Now she shares her home with a handsome and sweet grey rex named Benjamin, who was saved from certain death at a kill shelter by Lori Sundberg of Friends of Rabbits. You would like him, Woody—he is very very sweet though sometimes a little clueless when it comes to Cinnamon. He needs to kiss her a little more. It is so funny how he gives me this puzzled look when Cinnamon nips him in the butt out of frustration. Still, she adores him and gives him so much love just as she had loved you. Cinnamon took such good care of you. I tell Benjamin he must never take her for granted, when she loves another bunny, she really loves that bunny. Benjamin is a very lucky rabbit in so many ways.


I only wish he would react to Cinnamon the same way he reacts to a slice of watermelon! Women of any species do not appreciate coming in second after food!

It is so strange to be in a place where there are no memories of you ready to spring up and haunt me. In a way this should be comforting, starting a new life for both Cinnamon and me in a place that will not conjure up sadness and loss. And yet I wish your presence was here somewhere. I even miss those hard days during those last months when we had to bathe you every night. I might have been tired and exhausted after a long day at work, but it was a privilege to be able to care for you and give you as much good quality of life as we could as those days grew to a close. I still smile when I think how you enjoyed your spa treatment in the foot spa converted to a hydrotherapy pool. How it drove Dad crazy when I sang “Happy Talk” to you at bathtime. He so hated South Pacific, that song in particular. But it made you happy. And how you loved your treats, even up to the day you died, you just loved those sugar free cookies Dad used to eat. To this day, I cannot look at those cookies in the store anymore without wanting to cry.
I hope the day will come when I can talk freely and often of you without crying. As I look back on this year, I know that day is not here yet. I weep even as I write this letter. I hope somehow the feelings behind these words are reaching you somehow. I do believe in my heart that one day we will all be together again. Call it Heaven, Rainbow Bridge, whatever. I look forward to seeing you run to me, a whole bunny once more, and leap in my arms just like you did two weeks after we brought you into our home, when you showed me that despite how badly you were treated in your first home, you still trusted human beings enough to know I would catch you when you jumped. I miss you, Woody and will love you forever, as I am sure in her heart, Cinnamon will too.
Love, your mom