When we woke up on Sunday morning, we could tell it would be the last day. Beorn had been progressively getting worse — he had been to the vet twice in the past week — and while he could swallow water, he couldn’t swallow his critical care.

We debated taking him to an emergency vet about an hour away (most vets don’t specialize in guinea pigs), but as he rested in my arms, I realized that the kinder thing would be to help him go. The infection hadn’t responded to three rounds of antibiotics. He looked so exhausted.

So we held him from a little after 9 am until after 8 pm. That still wasn’t enough, but we wanted him to feel loved for every second of his last day on earth. So we stroked him and listed all of the people who loved him. He FaceTimed with the kids a few times — that was really the only time he perked up when he heard his best friends’ voices. But mostly he rested in our arms and got head rubs and back rubs. We thanked him for helping us through the pandemic and the kids leaving for college. And we told him he was the best pig in the world.

Around 7 pm, he started having seizures. We told him we were so sorry that we didn’t know the solution, and he rested between convulsions and snuggled deeper into my arms. A little after 7:30, he died. He let out one long last breath, then went still and sank a little deeper into my arms. We FaceTimed the kids so they could say goodbye, too, and we gave him last kisses on his head from each person who loved him.

Holding someone I love so deeply, who I needed so badly, and helping them go hurt a lot. It was such an impossibly hard thing to do but it was maybe the most important eleven hours of our relationship. I feel so grateful that we got to be with him until the end. That he was cuddled until the end.

The house feels very empty. I’m still cleaning up his things, but entering the living room and not seeing my pig breaks my heart over and over again. He was my best companion, my always friend, and it is hard to go through the day without him.

Not sure what #MicroblogMondays is? Read the inaugural post which explains the idea and how you can participate too.

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The best pig in the world died last night. I’m not ready to write about Beorn, but he was loved up until his last second on earth, and we continued to hold him and tell him he was loved long after he passed.

I am really really really sad right now.

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Are you also doing #MicroblogMondays? Add your link below. The list will be open until Tuesday morning. Link to the post itself, not your blog URL. (Don’t know what that means? Please read the three rules on this post to understand the difference between a permalink to a post and a blog’s main URL.) Only personal blogs can be added to the list. I will remove any posts connected to businesses or sponsored posts.

The Westing Game was one of my favourite books growing up, and I loved reading it with the twins. All of her books hold a special place on my shelf.

So I was thrilled when Publishers Weekly announced that her estate found two unpublished books, including a sequel to The Westing Game. It’s not written in the style of Ellen Raskin (like Sophie Hannah’s new Agatha Christies) but written by the late Ellen Raskin and squirreled away for years.

Though the strange thing is that one of the books shows up on Google Books as having been published in 2011, and it’s up on GoodReads. This is a mystery fit for… Ellen Raskin characters!

I just love the idea that someone could be gone for a long time — she died in 1984 — and 41 years later, you can read an announcement that you’re getting two new books from her estate. The world is an amazing place.

Another week and another vet visit for Beorn. This time he was having trouble walking on Monday morning. He stumbled around as if he were drunk when he moved at all. The vet took an x-ray but found nothing wrong. He was out of statis, and his stomach and intestines were filled with food. He was a little dehydrated but perked up when given water. He said his teeth looked good despite not coming together yet.

He came home and ate solid food for the first time in weeks — a blueberry — and he followed it up with a chunk of banana the next day. We spent the week working on water consumption because he wasn’t getting it from vegetables.

Poor little Beorn is pretty much the same, though drooling a bit less. Hoping he perks up this weekend because he normally loves Pesach cooking and getting all of the leftover parsley.

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Stop procrastinating. Go make your backups. Don’t have regrets.

Seriously. Stop what you’re doing for a moment. It will take you fifteen minutes, tops. But you will have peace of mind for days and days. It’s the gift to yourself that keeps on giving.

As always, add any new thoughts to the Friday Backup post and peruse new comments to find out about methods, plug-ins, and devices that help you quickly back up your data and accounts.

And now the blogs…

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But first, second, helpings of the posts that appeared in the open comment thread last week. To read the description before clicking over, please return to the open thread:

• Nothing… sniff.

Okay, now my choices this week.

A lovely post from The Next 15,000 Days with pictures from a hike, complete with haiku. She explains: “It was a moment that felt just perfect—I was exactly where I wanted to be … It’s not the life I once planned, but over the years I’ve learned to love it just as it is.” It’s a beautiful poem and post.

Lastly, The Road Less Travelled writes about an emotional weekend. She attended multiple memorial services as well as watched an event that was steeped in recent loss. While difficult to attend, these memorials were also moments of connection. As she wrote about the ride home: “In the car heading home, dh said, ‘I’m so glad we went.’ Me too. Life is short — way too short for some. 🙁 Treasure the people you love. Make the effort. You won’t regret it.” Sending another hug.

The roundup to the Roundup: Over a month of syringe feeding Beorn. Your weekly backup nudge. And lots of great posts to read. So what did you find this week? Please use a permalink to the blog post (written between April 4 – April 11) and not the blog’s main URL. Not understanding why I’m asking you what you found this week. Read the original open thread post here.

Morra Aarons-Mele is one of the smartest people I know, and I love her LinkedIn newsletter. She recently wrote about moving her mother into a memory care unit, and she outlined a hard choice model, pointing out the difference between four types of difficult choices.

Big decisions are not all alike.

I mean, we know this instinctively, but seeing it in the squares made me realize how often I brought the same decision-making anxiety to situations that fall in different categories, such as “big choice” and “hard choice.” And how they actually require different mental framing.

But what I loved was her acknowledgment that we can never know if the choices we make is the “right” choice because we never see the other option play out. Maybe even if things turn out well, the other option would have been better. Knowing that we can’t know can be terrifying OR it can be liberating. It’s not about getting everything right. It’s about making a choice and accepting the situation until the next decision comes along.

She writes,

I made the practical choice, which I hope is also the loving choice. The truth is we’ll never know, and that’s the reality of hard decisions. You just do the best you can with the information that you have at the time.

Go read her newsletter if you’re not already getting it.