I'm sorry for your loss! My piggie is almost six so I'm preparing myself for the inevitable. He's healthy right now so hopefully he's got some time left in him.

You reminded me of my husband. When we first moved in together he could finally have a pet but we couldn't have cats or dogs. So we got a hamster. This hamster was the sweetest, most docile hamster you could ever imagine. You really roll the dice with hamsters because some can be high strung and nasty but this one wasn't. He would just sit on my husband shoulder and watch tv. But one day he got sick. We took him to the vet and it turned out he had a tumor in his chest that couldn't be removed. The vet said the kindest thing would be to put him down.

My husband lost it. He cried and sobbed over this hamster for days. Before we left the vet she pushed his front paws into plaster and wrote his name in it so we could always have a memory of it. My husband was so upset and his family didn't understand why he would be crying over a hamster. But that hamster was his first real pet and his friend. He loved hi like family.

So I understand how losing something, even though it was "just a Guinea pig", could be devastating. I hope you are able to work through the grief without much issue.