Under our feet

I'm sitting in the shade in the outline of what will be the foundation of my long- planned shack-in-the-back, drinking a bottle of water and watching Bea and her friend Molly quite literally dancing on Tater's grave.

To the uninformed eye it might have looked like wrestling but I know pure dog joy when I see it and they were really dancing, feeling good, and enjoying life. It sounds stupid but seriously - they were absolutely engaged in the present, they were in flow.

I felt so happy seeing that. I still miss him and it feels good to see new life growing and enjoying its existence. They are not thinking about the past, I'm pretty sure.

I actually love that expression, "to dance on one's grave." I know it's meant to refer to the happiness you feel in an enemy's defeat, but to me it always seems like a happy thought to know that some living person would be around after I'm gone, dancing and feeling happy, and that they might include me in the moment too by doing it on my grave.

It seems like the greatest compliment or honor you could offer a dead person, living well and with intention.

I guess that's what dogs don't do - they do seem to know how to live well, they just don't THINK about it.

Anyway, I started to mentally blog about it (the dogs are back for round 2 of wrestle mania / love Fest), thinking about how everyone who has ever lived is still here in body if not in life - and so the whole world is in a way, a graveyard - which I realize is not my own original idea - and so we can honor life by living as if we are always dancing on the earth, etc ....

Also not a new idea, I'm sure.

Anyway, that's what I'm thinking about today. Planting seeds, too. I've been planting gardens all my life and every spring I find myself still secretly skeptical that anything will happen. Every year it seems like a brand new miracle to me when the little seedlings actually appear. By the time I'm cutting flowers I've usually forgotten all about how I felt in the beginning. I like to remember those times though.

Hence this post.

"Heaven is under our feet as well as I over our heads," said Henry David Thoreau. That about covers it for me today.

And I feel fine

Haven't checked in for awhile and wanted to reassure my nonexistent readers that I am fine. Funny how I still always feel guilty saying that, as if I'm being not quite 100% honest. It's true though. I feel good, I feel fine, I feel happy most if the time these days. It's pretty gratifying.

I was reading a blog of another anxiety prone person recently and felt good to be able to notice that not only have I not felt my old crippling anxiety in quite a long time, I hadn't even thought about it in awhile. Not even to notice its absence.

As usual I still feel compelled to qualify these statements with the disclaimer that of course I'm not saying everything is perfect, or that I've figured out how to stop worrying about my standard list of issues - which has changed somewhat, but then again, maybe not so much. Worrying is still part of how my mind seems to be made and I don't expect that will change.

One thing I would like to work on changing is this tendency to want to qualify whatever happiness comes my way. To learn how to accept joy without having to balance it out with "...but..."

My worries are boring to me lately.

What makes me happy is this.

1. Bea is the little light of my life. Shes turned out to be more of a border collie than I would've felt comfortable committing to when I was looking for my next puppy, and it's actually kind of fun. I always felt that it's best to have a dog who is smart, but not too smart - or she would surely get bored with the simple life I have to offer. Bea is so smart though that she teaches Me new games, at the rate of about one per day, and is so quick to pick up on what I teach her that my being boring hasn't really come into it. I need to give her more exercise (something I need too) and now that my big project has gone to press and it's getting lighter again at the end if the day, this is something that can and will happen.

2. Seaweed snacks! I've renewed my efforts to feed myself well and have been loving eating a lot of my favorite old things that I had set aside over the last several months, like seaweed and liver pâté (or just plain old liver & ketchup) and winter squash and roasted chicken ... I had sort of gone off the deep end in terms of nutrition for the duration of my work crunch. Day after day of hurried,lackluster meal planning plus multiple baskets full of Halloween candy, Thanksgiving cookies, Christmas treats - not good. I'm attempting to give up my food shame and train myself to ask, before I eat something, not "How many grams of sugar?" ( which too often leads to the answer, "too many" and immediate capitulation to whatever temptation has sucked me under) but "Does this food nourish and strengthen me?" Or sometimes "HOW does this food nourish and strengthen me?" This phrase is borrowed from the mealtime prayer my family said when I was growing up and has a lot more to do with the relationship I would like to have with my food than the guilt-inducing meditations I've been punishing myself with. Another good self- reminder: "I am allowed to eat!" Walking around with a pocket full of ham and dried seaweed might seem funny to some people ... But it's working for me.

3. Knitting a lot this winter and finally submitting myself to the discipline of learning to follow a pattern, achieve the proper gauge, block everything, and give away more than I keep. Hats are still my favorites and I'm trying some new shapes.

4. Hair. My hair has been stressed and sort of fragile since about September so I'm doing a year-long no ponytail challenge to see if I can grow out the area where the elastics have caused it to fray a bit. Possibly I might cut it all short, if I get really tired of dealing with it. When you have red hair people make it a huge part of your identity whether you personally identify with it or not, and sometimes I think it might be interesting to have some radically different kind of hair for awhile. I've never done it before because I've usually loved my hair the way it was. Now that its changing, maybe it would be a good time to experiment.

5. And not but. This has to do with making it a habit to embrace and enjoy, more than question and qualify. Try it. A lot of the time I find I can use the word "and" instead of the word "but" and it doesn't negate my meaning, it simply expands it, makes it more inclusive.

Funny - it's now the end of February and I just looked in on this blog trying to find a description of a dream I had last year, and I found this entry is still here, after all. I started it in January, writing on my iPhone during lunch at work, and then it somehow got deleted when I tried to save the draft. Except that it didn't. A Blogger miracle!

I did not find the dream I was looking for (yet) so I'll record again the gist of it, which is that I was a passenger on a plane that was about to crash, and then it did crash, and as soon as I realized I was dead I said to myself, "Well, that wasn't so bad after all!"

I'm reading a book about the dreams and visions people experience as they're getting ready to die, and it says dreams about being in danger and *about* to die are very common, yet people very rarely report dreams in which they actually *do* die. Usually we wake up first. I'm typical in this way, because this is the only dream I can remember ever having in which I actually die.

In my 20s I had a fascination with birth and played for a little while with the idea of becoming a midwife. Now that I'm coming up on 50 I seem to have developed a similar interest in death, dying, and the grieving process. It's all just so moving to me, to think of how hard people strive to find or create meaning in their lives, even though we all know how it's going to end.

I saw a long montage of Victorian post mortem photos on YouTube and could not stop thinking about all those people, many of them in quite humble circumstances, and all the care they had put into memorializing their loved ones. I don't understand why so many people think those photos are creepy, and I also don't totally understand why I find them so beautiful. Even when the dead person looks terrible ... In a way those ones are maybe the most poignant of all. Nobody wants to remember their child like that, but to these people it was clearly better than not remembering them at all.

Another thought - I notice when I look at these photos I'm not thinking about the person who has died. I'm thinking about the people who were left behind, the ones who arranged to have the photos taken. To me the photos are not about death - they're evidence of love. A connection to humanity.

I feel embarrassed sometimes about my interest in these things. I don't know anyone else who is into them. Still, it's part of what feels alive to me right now. Mourning jewelry, memorial candles, dream paintings, antique photos of dead people ... It all feels somehow heart-opening and life affirming.

Like the bumper sticker says, "Believe in what makes you shine."

Six months

I'm out here in the tent with Bea curled up behind my legs with her head on my hip, listening to strange night birds and coyotes and the wind, wide awake and so full of emotion - happiness and something else - and finally realizing why I can't sleep.

I knew that tomorrow was going to be the six-month anniversary of Tater's death ... But it didn't occur to me until just now that this night is also an anniversary, of the last night of his life. I stayed awake with him off and on all night listening to him breathe and cry and try to get comfortable, knowing that in a few hours he would be gone.

I don't know why I never thought to mention that this tent where I've been sleeping for so many months is only a few yards away from where we buried him.

In fact, the whole reason for the tent in the first place was supposed to be so I could sleep with him outside, so he wouldn't have to negotiate the dog door alone at night. I thought the tent would be easier, and spare him the indignity of possibly not making it outside in time as his legs got weaker. Mr. A got it out of storage for me before he left on his LA trip, but Tater died before I got a chance to use it.

It sat on the back porch next to the dog door for three months. Then one night I was feeling hot and irritable and in need of space, so I finally set it up. And have been sleeping in it ever since, between my two dogs - one in the ground under the trees, and the other keeping me warm and guarding my door.

I still can't seem to believe he's really gone ... So in a weird way I'm grateful for that awful/aweful night, because my memory of it helps me feel more grounded in the knowledge that it really did happen. He really died, and I really will not be seeing him again. Although sometimes I'm not sure it's all that great to know that, to Know that I know it.

This grieving experience continues to grow the capacity of my heart to open wider than I ever would have thought it could. Death is more real to me now and it hurts when I think about it - which I don't make a point of doing - but when it does come up, like tonight, I try to let it be.

I feel like I want to stay awake all night with him again.

Will he still be here tomorrow? Or will he be gone again, for good?

The sky remains

Ran across this today from Rilke's Book of Hours. It's just a fragment from the end of something – not the whole poem.

Through the empty branches the sky remains. It is what you have.
Be earth now, and evensong.
Be the ground lying under that sky.
Be modest now, like a thing
ripened until it is real,
so that he who began it all
can feel you when he reaches for you.

I feel like my life is becoming more and more modest these days. I mostly like it, very much. Although I do still question myself, sometimes. Seems like as a younger person I often felt like I should be trying to make a big splash in the world, creating something spectacular to offer up – but something in me always resisted stepping into the spotlight. It still does. Is that lazy and fearful, and selfish? Or is it really OK to stay humble and human-scaled, to share with fellow beings quietly and one-on-one, instead of on the rock star stage?

I think it is OK. Just making sure I actually do that – connect with people in my own way, give what I can even though it's small and not many people will ever see it – that's what matters to me.

Going feral

It's been awhile ... I'm still here, just haven't felt like writing much.

Good things are happening. In July I moved my sleeping area out of the house and into a tent out behind the house, under the apple trees. I've always had my own bedroom (except during my very short marriage) but even with my own space this is still just a very small house. The fresh air, the quiet, the birds and stars and wind in the leaves and fog and and and – I just really love being outside. I'm sleeping well and feeling healthy. Very glad to have time away from people and all the noisy chaotic and/or beautiful things they make, do, and say ... And space to be with my own quiet mind in a non-built environment with plants and rocks and breezes – things that don't need people for anything.

Although of course I am still grateful for my tent and my very comfortable cot. And my battery-operated remote control candles. And the occasional Netflix on wi-fi! OK, so I'm only going semi-feral.

Having a hard time thinking of words – I didn't realize I was getting so out of practice. All I really want to say is that I'm spending a lot more time outside lately than I have in years – even though much of that time is spent asleep – and I think it's been really great for me.

Not sure how I'm going to transition when it starts raining, which is supposed to be this week. I have a pretty good setup for cold weather, but I don't like the damp and I imagine I'll probably end up back inside before too long. I've been looking at various other options – a wall tent, a teepee, a small building (the infamous "building" I've been planning for how many years now?) with a solar panel and a tiny EPA-approved wood stove (certification required in this county) and a sleeping porch ... blah blah blah. Any of those things will be an investment and a bit of a project though so for now I'm just enjoying the weather for as long as it holds.

It's kind of cute, right?

I actually went and checked out (are you ready?) the Tuff Shed factory this afternoon ... They've got some very cool custom options so I could basically work with them on my design, have them build the shell, and then have it installed in just one day! And then take my time finishing the inside to my own specifications. It's not really much more expensive than building it myself, especially when you consider the time it would take, and the mistakes I would be likely to make.

Would that be totally weird and/or depressing, to live off the grid in a 160 square foot barn in the back forty behind my boyfriend's house? It's not exactly how I ever pictured my life, but then again – I don't really need or want an entire regular house of my own anyway, even if I could somehow afford it, which I cannot. I like sharing a house with Mr. A. I just like sleeping in a separate space. Also, the older I get, the more owning "stuff" makes me feel nervous – while getting rid of stuff makes me feel calm and peaceful. So I'm thinking about downsizing, even though I'm already living pretty small.

And really, who exactly do I have to please with these arrangements, besides Mr. A and myself? What do I care if some unknown person might think I'm ... what? Not acting like a grown-up?

Since I'm writing (and this is the second or third edit I've done since I first posted this blog, so I guess I do have something to say after all) – I will mention that this idea of being an adult is something I've been thinking a lot about lately. Would I feel more like a "real" grown-up if I'd raised a few kids? Or if I owned a house with a mortgage? Or if I understood everything about managing my own investments, instead of having the guy at Fidelity do it for me? Somehow I've managed to reach middle age without ever quite feeling 100% competent and legit. Do other people feel that way too? Or am I just hopelessly retarded – in the sense of being "delayed or held back in terms of progress, development or accomplishment"?

Part of me knows that everyone has these feelings in some area of their life, no matter how confident and together they appear to everyone else. It's just human, isn't it? Another part of me thinks NO, it's just me! Everyone else really is together – I'm the only one who feels like I'm not sure quite what I'm doing, or what I ought to be doing ....

So that's where my vulnerability is these days, I guess. It's an area I'm working with. Learning to be OK with where I am in my life, and own the decisions I've made and continue to make – realizing I don't need approval from anyone but myself.

Moving on!

I've been doing more art (drawing mostly, nothing I want to share yet), more walking, more outdoor stuff in general. Spending a bit of time on the water, learning about kayaking, looking at getting my own setup for that probably before spring. Swimming in the river and the ocean, eating a lot of fish and vegetables and genmaicha. In love with blueberries, scarlet nantes carrots, kale salad, rare steak, seaweed chips. Pine nuts!

Stopped doing yoga when I injured my elbow several months back and am thinking (just thinking) about getting back to it. I've been working out with weights and doing physical therapy for my messed up knees ... Still not in the greatest shape of my life but working on getting better.

Madly in love with Bea still. She likes sleeping outside too and has adopted one of the lounge chairs just outside the tent door as her official guard station. I love how dogs just automatically take on the job of watching over us, without being taught or asked or anything. All the dogs we've ever had have slept either right next to me or in the doorway of my room – never Mr. A's room. I wonder if they think I'm more in need of protection than he is, or if it's because I'm the one who feeds them, or what ... I've always found it very pleasing – flattering, even.

We spend an awful lot of time at the dog park. It's actually my main social activity these days. Is that weird? Hmm. I find I really don't care if it is. It's fun!

I still miss Tater a lot. It's amazing to feel that socked-in-the-stomach feeling when I remember him sometimes; I've never felt that hard hit even with close human friends who have died. I'm working on a little Dia de los Muertos tribute to him with flowery dog skull, candles, bones, marigolds, etc. etc. My first sketch is sitting here on the desk and looking at it makes me smile. I invited some friends over to decorate skulls and make altar items. It's my favorite holiday.

The leaves are turning red on the dogwood tree I bought to plant on his grave – very pretty. It's been on the back patio all summer, waiting for the real rains to start before we put it in the ground. I want to do it on November 3 – the 6-month anniversary of his death, and the day after Dia de los Muertos.

I spent the last two weekends volunteering at a fall festival in one of the regional parks. Last weekend I taught tiny humans how to card and spin wool, and today I taught them how to pick up and hold newly hatched baby chicks. Tomorrow I'm doing face painting and crazy hair-dos for the community Halloween pageant. I burned out on volunteer work (mainly fund-raising for capital campaigns) a few years ago so it's been fun to start getting back into it in a new way that doesn't require me to ask anyone for money. I just stand at my station and cute little kids come up to me and I get to teach them how to do new things, or make them look like zombies. It's pretty sweet.

Next weekend – a hike and a kayak. Possibly camping on the river, if I can get anyone to go with me (doubtful if it's still raining, but I'm going to try).

What else? Nothing, for now. Just wanted to check in and report on my life in the wild.

Two more things

Two more things I wish I had thought to do:

1. I could have asked our vet for some pain medication or sedative to keep in the house, just in case a situation developed overnight or at some other time when the clinic was closed. If I'd planned ahead for that, I would have been able to give him something much earlier, and saved him several hours of pain and fear.

2. I would like to have taken a moment to listen to him one last time, instead of being so desperate to express my own feelings, to tell him how much I loved him. Yes, he was barely conscious, and as a dog, he obviously didn't know how to talk ... Still. He was always so good at letting me know what he wanted, and how he felt. I wish I had thought to say, "If there's anything you want to communicate with me while we're both still here together, I am listening." I suppose this is something I can still do. With him, and also with the people I love – my parents in particular.

My relationship with this dog taught me that there are limits to what can be communicated with words, and so much that can be shared without them. With people though, words are still important. Especially when they're people I don't get to actually see and be with very often.

Tater thoughts

These are some thoughts I wrote down in the days after his death.

Mon, May 7, 2012 at 5:08 PM

He's only been gone for four days and already I feel him slipping away. I want to remember everything, everything about him.
His soft fur, under his throat and along his cheeks, the sides of his mouth, his ears, the space between his eyes, the top of his head when he would wake up from napping with his hair standing straight up and those wide, sweet eyes.
How bony his hips and shoulders were.
The way it felt to hold him, to carry him up the creek bank, how he leaned into me and let me carry him half way back to the house.
His smile.
The sound of him panting.
Drinking water from his bowl, or from the toilet.
Holding his hand when we were falling asleep. The way he used to curl his fingers and squeeze my hand.
Holding his hand when he was dying, and after he was dead.
Holding him so many times with my hand on his heart while he slept, practicing for the day when I would hold him and feel his heart beat for the last time.
Holding him that day.
The way he kept getting sweeter and sweeter every day at the end, leaning his head into our hands and snuggling.
The Tater Dance.
Meeting him when he was two days old, seeing all ten puppies and instantly zooming in on the one with the feather on his forehead.
His puppy smell, and his chubby little paws with the tiny black claws.
Watching him sucking in his sleep, the way human babies do.
The day he crawled into the sleeve of my cream-colored cotton sweater and fell asleep.
Putting the Metacam in my aromatherapy cabinet instead of in the dog medicine drawer, because the smell reminds me of him.
The way he would jump and dance when it was time for his food, or when he wanted to play.
I watched the video of Bea chasing the ball, and felt bad that I did not have a ball for Tater too, that day. He so clearly wanted to play and I just kept throwing it for Bea. What was I thinking?
Watching his ears bounce when he walked.
Watching his legs and feet walk.
Seeing his head peek up over the side of my bed when I came into the room.
Watching him sleeping on my bed, and knowing that was where I would lay him down to die someday. And feeling so grateful to have that safe, loving space available for him.
The way he would come into the bathroom to visit with me when I was finally a captive audience.
I resented Bea in a weird way for taking attention away from him.

 

Tue, May 8, 2012 at 8:40 AM

When  he was crying and trying to get up, I thought he'd just gotten uncomfortable on that side and so I turned him over. It hurt him to move, and I didn't want to move him any more than necessary - but now I wish I had thought to change his bedding. I didn't realize how wet it was until morning. Also, I'm obsessed with the thought that it might have been bunched up under him, and hurting him.

That hollow spot under his ribs, where his back muscles and bones were all that was left.

How strong his neck still felt, and how good it was to massage him there.

That gentle massage behind his ears.

Lying on the floor with him that last night with our faces together, holding him and breathing the same air.

He didn't want to drink any water so I pulled some up into one of the syringes from his medicine and flowed a little at a time into his mouth to help with the dryness from all his panting. He seemed to appreciate that.

I could not bring myself to dump out the rest of the water from that bowl. I poured it into my little blue offering bowl and put it on my altar, to evaporate on its own. The water that was left in the syringe, I put into a little blue glass bottle to keep. My holy water.

The first time we took him to the water, at Monte Rio. He ran right into the river after his mother, with no hesitation at all. All the other times there with him, swimming across the river to pick blackberries from the far bank. Watching him swim. His joy in the water.

He would take himself swimming in the winter creek at our Broadway house, then come in and jump into the tub for a warm shower.

His tail was always wagging. He never had a day when he didn't wag his tail.

He would push past my legs to get under the desk.

 

 

Tue, May 8, 2012 at 8:44 AM

 

It hurts to feel him moving away. It is like ships passing – we were each on our own course, then we came together for awhile, and now we're slowly, slowly moving on in different directions. I still feel him here and I wonder how long that will last.

The night he died I fell asleep inviting him to visit me in my dreams, whenever he's ready. I never dream about my closest loved ones until they become in some way symbolic. So if I don't dream about him yet, I guess that could mean it's because he's still real to me in some way. And when that ends, I will see him in my dreams.

Tue, May 8, 2012 at 8:51 AM

We were ready to bury him – I was literally stepping into the grave so Scot could hand him in to me – and my phone rang from across the yard. I hesitated, and Scot said to go ahead and answer it. So I picked it up and it wasn't a phone call. It was my wind chime ring tone that just happened to come up at random as the phone was shuffling through over 2,000 songs.

After we finished filling in the grave I looked up and the full moon was perfectly centered in an opening in the trees directly above us.

Tue, May 8, 2012 at 8:55 AM

 

That first time I saw him looking at me. I held him up in both hands and there was his little eye, open and looking into mine. I was the first and last person he saw in his life.

Looking into his eyes that last night, seeing in his eyes that he was in pain and needed to get out – out of pain, out of his worn-out body.

Thinking of everyone who's ever lost someone they love. Wondering how other people get through it.

 

 

Tue, May 8, 2012 at 10:34 AM

The day after he died, going to work and spending the entire day looking at photos of butterflies for a catalog cover ... butterflies a symbol of transformation ... then going home to bury him. And the next day, seeing butterflies everywhere on the wildflower preserve hike.

 

Tue, May 8, 2012 at 10:45 AM

Butterflies also noted to be seen in Japan as the personification of one's soul. Elsewhere, as a universal symbol of change, resurrection, transformation, celebration, young love and the soul.

"Imagine the whole of your life changing to such an extreme you are unrecognizable at the end of the transformation. Mind you, this change takes place in a short span of about a month too (that's how long the butterfly life cycle is).

Herein lies the deepest symbolic lesson of the butterfly. She asks us to accept the changes in our lives as casually as she does. The butterfly unquestioningly embraces the chances of her environment and her body.

This unwavering acceptance of her metamorphosis is also symbolic of faith. Here the butterfly beckons us to keep our faith as we undergo transitions in our lives. She understands that our toiling, fretting and anger are useless against the turning tides of nature – she asks us to recognize the same.

Interestingly, in many cultures the butterfly is associated with the soul – further linking our animal symbolism of faith with the butterfly.....

Its connection with the soul is rather fitting. We are all on a long journey of the soul. On this journey we encounter endless turns, shifts, and conditions that cause us to morph into ever-finer beings. At our soul-journey's end we are inevitably changed – not at all the same as when we started on the path.

To take this analogy a step further, we can look again to the grace and eloquence of the butterfly and realize that our journey is our only guarantee. Our responsibility is to make our way in faith, accept the change that comes, and emerge from our transitions as brilliantly as the butterfly."

May 12, 2012, at 11:38 AM

The way he loved apples. He would harvest them from under the trees and bring them into the house to suck on and chew. Same with walnuts – cracking them open and digging out the meat, then leaving the broken shells scattered around the living room.

He went crazy for chicken, too. Any kind. He would stand and watch you preparing his plate, and when he couldn't stand it anymore he would say, "Wuff!" I want my chicken!

He never liked peanut butter until the last few months. I started giving him his pill wrapped in a thin skin of organic honey roasted peanut butter from the fridge. Maybe it was the honey he wanted all along.

He also started eating ashes and charcoal from the wood stove, and eating dirt out of the potted plants in the yard. Also, a couple of weeks before he died he grabbed a slice of pizza right off of S.'s plate and wouldn't give it back when S. grabbed it. He has never stolen food or counter surfed in his entire life - was always the dog that could be left alone in a room with a plate of steak on the coffee table, and when you came back he would not have touched it. Laura said maybe pizza was on his bucket list, and he was going for it while he still had the time.

 

May 12, 2012 at 5:06 PM

I just dreamed my first dream of him. He and Bea were playing in the grass with a black rubber ball. He picked it up to show me, smiling around the ball in his mouth and wagging his tail, and I saw a shiny penny sticking out of the rubber. A lucky penny, I thought when I woke up and remembered it. So good to see him again, even just for a moment.

May 14, 2012 at 3:54 PM

The thought keeps crossing my mind, "I'm never going to see him again." I feel like my heart is breaking all over again. It's like a panic attack. My mind just wants to escape from this fact.

I can't remember ever in my life feeling as consumed with regret as I do about his last day. I wish I had been better prepared. I feel sick with regret about the way I gave him his first dose of the narcotic pain medicine. Why was I so abrupt? I wish I had held him and told him what was happening, and tried to be more gentle instead of being in such a desperate rush to get the medicine into him. I wish I had planned ahead to have something like that in the house just in case, so he wouldn't have had to wait all those hours in such pain. I feel guilty for sleeping, when I knew he had only a few hours left to live. I wish I had been strong enough to stay awake and watch over him all night.

I am not the strong person I thought I was.

I miss him so much. I just can't believe I will never see him again.

That morning when I woke up and it was raining. So perfect a day to say good-bye to him. After I gave him his pain relief and watched him fall asleep I cleaned the house, picked rosemary and roses for his bedside, lit candles and a fire in the wood stove, laid down on the floor to hold him, sing to him, cry. Bea came in and laid down with us, with her face next to his. Later she climbed up on the bed and laid her head across my shoulder.

The weird thoughts you have. Would I trade Bea for Tater, young and healthy again? The question arises, but it feels meaningless, nonsense. My mind doesn't connect with it. Bea is Bea, Tater was Tater. They are not interchangeable.

What if I could get him back again somehow? Equally incomprehensible. I know he's gone. His song was complete, as Scot kept saying - strangely comforting. I do feel very grateful that I knew all his life how special he was, and cherished and loved him every day of his life.

May 17, 2012 at 4:32 PM

I haven't seen him for two whole weeks. I've never gone that long without seeing him since the day he was born, except that time S and I went on that road trip. Actually that was only 10 days. So yeah. This is the longest I've ever not seen him.

Still feeling this grief in a very physical, visceral way. My chest hurts, I'm tired, I can't sleep or concentrate, my appetite is gone. It makes sense in a way, since my relationship with him was so physical and emotional – not mental or intellectual in any way. Maybe that's why I'm having a hard time thinking about this ... I don't WANT to think about it. I just want to feel it. I want to dance it, walk it, experience it in my body. I don't want to understand it. It is un-understandable. So why am I still trying to write? I guess because this is my fall-back response, it's what I know, what I've practiced. Interesting to see that in this case it doesn't seem to be helping me feel better. Has it ever? When I think about why I want to write this, what comes up is that I want to remember what this is like. I want to remember him, and I want to remember my experience of loving him and losing him. I want to claim and remember this part of my life.

Good to see how my old neglected writing practice has risen up from the depths to lift & carry me through this ... And to think how other practices might do the same, if I cultivate them the same way I've cultivated this one. Yoga comes to mind. Running. Breath work. Prayer.

It's a terrible, empty, at times almost frantic feeling to realize I won't be seeing him again. Two weeks.

It just keeps going through my mind, "It's over." This is the life that we had together. Now I have my life without him in it anymore. It's a good life. I just miss him. I can't even say I wish things were different ... What does it even mean to wish something like that? I just miss him. I miss him. I loved him, and I miss him.

He spent so much time sleeping the last couple of years, sometimes it's hard to comprehend that he's actually not still here, just sleeping in his bed in the other room. I remember waking him up to give him his bedtime medicine, and sometimes not giving it to him because he was sleeping so hard I didn't want to disturb him. Sometimes it was hard to wake him up. Once a few weeks ago I even had to shake him awake; for about 10 seconds I thought he might have died in his sleep.

This is how living things fade, when they're given the time. Except for the pain those last few hours of the night, maybe it wasn't such a bad way to go. I'm so grateful I got to hold him. So grateful I was there, and we had that time at the creek, and our walk, and the chance to carry him home. Whispering "I love you" with every step. I'm so grateful I have that physical memory of how it felt to hold his body, to carry his weight, to feel his head resting against my shoulder. To hold him while he died.

I had practiced that with him his whole life, almost 14 years. When you fall in love with an animal it's a pretty good bet that you will know him and love him every day until he dies, and that you will be the one who decides when that happens. So we practiced for that moment. I would hold him with my hand on his heart, kissing his head, and thinking, "Someday I'll hold him just like this, and I'll feel his heart stop beating." And I would count the beats, and try to pour all the love I had into my hands, into his heart. I'm so grateful that in that way his death was exactly as I'd imagined it. I was heartbroken, but able to stay present and accept what was happening, and really experience it, without resistance. A new kind of experience for me.

I found a duration calculator online that says Tater's lifetime amounted to 5086 days – 13 years, 11 months, and 3 days. 122,064 hours. 7,323,840 minutes. 439,430,400 seconds. All that last night and day I kept the house silent, so I could hear him breathing. The other thing I heard was the little clock ticking away next to my bed. Ticking off the last seconds of his life.

June 4, 2012 at 3:18 PM

His birthday came and went. Today it's a month since we buried him; to commemorate the occasion I'm going to a full moon yoga class with a few friends who came to help that night.

Mr. A's sister said, "Don't be surprised if you still see him around sometimes." And the other day I did. I looked out the kitchen window and saw him coming toward the house through the flowers ... and then after a couple of seconds I realized it was Bea, not Tater. My heart did a flip, then sank. Then after awhile it rose up again, happy to have seen him and grateful to Bea for helping me remember him.

I took her to the vet this morning for a foxtail in her ear (which turned out not to be there – it's just allergies) and one of the nurses kept calling her "Tater." The other one kept saying, "That's not Tater!" and looking at me apologetically ... and then we all had to kind of laugh, because they all knew him almost as long as I did, and they loved him too. Then while I was waiting, a man came into the reception area in tears because one of his chickens was dying and he didn't know what to do, and I couldn't stop myself from crying with him.

I'm still crying a little most days, what I guess you could call "healing tears." It's usually only when I'm going to sleep, when we used to have our goodnight ritual. Bea likes to sleep under the bed instead of on it or next to it, so we're evolving our own ritual. I'm amazed and very happy about how our relationship has changed in the last month; it's almost like she was holding back all this time (or maybe it was me) to give me space to be with Tater, and now that he's gone I'm finally open enough to really let her in. The day he died I remember praying, please let me grow to love her just as much, because as much as it hurts to lose him I want to always have this kind of love in my life.

Mostly though I'm actually feeling really happy. Calm and even sort of joyful, like everything is OK in the world, even though nothing much has changed since I was last feeling so anxious. Maybe it's as simple as finally finding the right drug! Whatever it is, I'm grateful and I feel like losing my boy is part of it. My heart hasn't been so broken in a very long time, or maybe ever, and I do feel like it's "growing stronger in the broken places," as the papa said.

I did a volunteer shift at the Ox Roast yesterday and one of the women I was working with shared that it was the birthday of her daughter Heidi, who was killed by a drunk driver in 1985, when she was only 13 years old. I thought, but didn't say, that I spent 13 years with my dog and felt like I was going to die when he died; I honestly can't imagine how parents get through losing actual human children. I really did feel like his death might have literally broken my heart – my chest ached for so long that I finally went to the doctor for an EKG, to make sure I hadn't had a heart attack. He said everything looks great, all my numbers are great, I'm great, etc. etc. ... And we concluded that what I was feeling was just muscle strain from overdoing it on upper body workouts at the gym.

Anyway. The body! Watching him grow from a potato-sized pupster to an exuberant, healthy adult, to a frail, fading flower of a beautiful boy ... and then disappear back into the mystery ... It's humbling. I feel more love and compassion than ever for the people around me, and for my own sweet little human body. Peace and gratitude are taking up ever more space in my heart these days, maybe because I'm learning how to let them grow instead of crowding them out with fears and projections about the future. The work of a lifetime.