A year ago, today, I woke up having lost what was my heart dog, forever dog, whatever you call that dog that is your shadow, and so pure, and just a perfect entity inside this cold and dark universe. I do not compare animals… my Deoghi, my Pavlov… they were pure souls just as this girl, but something happened with my bond with Norway. And what happened is that for the first time I feel like a lot of who I am actually left with her. I can’t explain it, but it’s taken me a year to unpack the compartmentalized grief because I couldn’t even cope. I ran and hid from it, expertly, sadly. I feel I cheated her, but here I am finally being able to address it head on. The ways I coped and ran from the shattering grief has made this a terrible year for me in so many ways. One of the worst.
But is that sadness worth the experience of the life you led together? The answer must be yes. But, this has me knocked down for months to a year, and it feels irresponsible to hide from my mourning or grief any longer. I would never trade what I am feeling now for never having known her. What a joy. A scruffy little tater-tot of heart, and a will to survive the terrible, and to exit into love. Having had the most difficult of life, trapped in a cage for 5 years, a entity treated a handmaids tale of existence… she just didn’t care and found a joy filled life of love and left all the sadness and pain behind. It’s a lesson for all of us.
There are three deaths: the first is when the body ceases to function. The second is when the body is consigned to the grave. The third is that moment, sometime in the future, when your name is spoken for the last time. – David Eagleman
This post isn’t about sadness. It’s about grief, and that nefarious notion of mourning being so non-linear, it feels like fractals relentlessly folding into itself, so that it’s further apart and closer than ever at any given heartbeat, constantly falling back in love with what’s lost. But like the above quote, nothing is lost as long as you carry it with you. So this is also about recovering, and moving forward. You have a duty to carry the people and things you love with you, and carry them forward into a present they can’t join with you. But they’re still here, and it’s your job to bring them with you.
This isn’t just a post about a dog. This is a post about how to suffer the slings and arrows of the existential side of human existence that sprawls into what, at times, seems like a cosmic horror that makes no sense. This post is meant to help all of you reconcile the grief, and move lockstep forward into the future with celebration, love, and understanding the value of the pain you feel as an indicator of your greatest human achievements.
The pain means you loved, and to love is the pinnacle of our human condition. – me
It took me 6 months a full year to write this. I started this immediately after she passed away on October 22nd of 2021. It should say a lot about processing grief that I couldn’t even look at the post after the shock and awe period… when grief was supposed to turn into recovery. I didn’t process my grief well at all, and there were multiple stages, a lot of head work. Truly, it’s been an agonizing year of panic attacks and anxiety. I hadn’t realized in this ridiculously hyperbolic world of “therapy dogs”, that me bonding with a dog was a massively stabilizing force in my life for day to day and year to year calm, confidence, de-stressor, etc.
This precisely encapsulates my loss of words for 12 months, and inability to enter into pure grief vs loss and sad rage. This is specifically about the word we use: LOSS:
“Perhaps because I was still in those early, distorted days of mourning, when so much of the familiar world feels alien and inaccessible, I was struck, as I had never been before, by the strangeness of the phrase. Obviously my father hadn’t wandered away from me like a toddler at a picnic, or vanished like an important document in a messy office. And yet, unlike other oblique ways of talking about death, this one did not seem cagey or empty. It seemed plain, plaintive, and lonely, like grief itself. From the first time I said it, that day on the phone, it felt like something I could use, as one uses a shovel or a bell-pull: cold and ringing, containing within it both something desperate and something resigned, accurate to the confusion and desolation of bereavement.” https://www.themarginalian.org/2022/03/10/kathryn-schulz-lost-and-found/
For 25 years, I’ve had a dog by my side, and I just thought it was a best friend, when it was actually a balancing force. Norway was the most incredible and sweet creature, and I didn’t really “get” that I needed her as much, if not more, than she even needed us. When I lost Pavlov, my previous pooch, I was ready for a new pooch almost immediately, and it’s because this little girl was working her way into our lives, and hearts. But they’re like the energy of Buddha. “Hold on to the center.”, from Lao Tzu’s Tao te Ching. The pups keep you there!
It’s hard to understand the path we walk in life, and to make sense of things that don’t seem to be sensible… but if Pavlov hadn’t of left when he did, we never would have found this sweet, incredible creature. Here she is after she had been rescued from a puppy mill in Missouri. The transformation is obvious in the other photos, but she cratered my heart and stole me away from anything else… and we rushed to find and help her.
The glance is natural magic… We look into the eyes to know if this other form is another self, and the eyes will not lie, but make a faithful confession what inhabitant is there. The revelations are sometimes terrific.” Ralph Waldo Emerson, “Behavior: The Conduct of Life”
My joy of her existence was worn across my entire face and body, and when she was stripped from us I broke, and specifically this year has seen me in the worst mental and physical health of my life, as a result. That’s not being mopey, and I’m not being negative… it’s just self-awareness speaking truth. I’ll get out of it, but part of it is resolving why this event of Norway so broke me / us.
Our empty hallways and broken routines hovered over us in 2022, suffocating us and so much of our joy in life. – me
We never took her for granted. She was more than a shadow, she and I spent 24 hours a day together for 6 1/2 years, and that was amplified during the pandemic, of course. It’s as if we gave her the best life possible, and the deal was that she’d get us through the pandemic, but I needed her for so much more. Still do.
Time does feel like a thief, all too often. – me
To not write my thoughts would be to not resolve my grief by hiding away it, locking it away, compartmentalizing out of some sort of weakness. It simply would be a betrayal to one of the most special moments, experiences, and treasured relationships of my existence, and that’s this sweet little girl named Norway. She was as pure as they come, almost recklessly stealing hearts, and hoarding them while she counts off another one as her own. This happened to everyone that came upon her… they were their own person, until a panting wag and smile would steal their beating hearts straight from their chest, another vanquished mind, a victory of pure love. A gravely, gruff ruff of approval and joy echoed into the air and our ears. All was well.
We are all simply tiny snapshots in time. All of us. The girl, you, me. – me
There is no such thing as time, there are only moments.
She left, shuffled that mortal coil, before Lauren and I leave you, and after Pavlov left us, and we all go and will find our time to do so, and that manic sadness is simply a testament to how profoundly beautiful the experience of life and love is.
You are here now, the past behind you, an unshaped, unborn future sprawls ahead with or without you, but it is yet to be. – me
You are present. Here with us, now. – me
So lets explore this love, shall we? In this sense, I “studied” in preparation for resolving this grief, just to realize that grief will never go away, like a hole in the fabric of space-time, the pregnant silence between notes on a trumpet. In studying my grief, I found some beautiful, and profound things, that might help us resolve the brutality of needing to know and experience someone, vs the pain of when they leave you, vs never knowing them at all. It’s the binary deal of existence, and as humans we get to choose.
This poem, and the last line, changed my life. It gave me an understanding that rested in peace and calm. We’re all headed there, just find that joy, find that presence, and if you have a fluff, please hug and pet that sweet thing right now. This isn’t just for beloved animals, though… this poem may help you get through the roughest of human losses, as well.
IN PASSING
by Lisel Mueller
How swiftly the strained honey
of afternoon light
flows into darkness
and the closed bud shrugs off
its special mystery
in order to break into blossom:
as if what exists, exists
so that it can be lost
and become precious.
“The world is full of signs and wonders that come, and go, and if you are lucky you might be alive to see them.” – Helen Macdonald
“The archaeology of grief is not ordered. It is more like earth under a spade, turning up things you had forgotten. Surprising things come to light: not simply memories, but states of mind, emotions, older ways of seeing the world. Here’s a word. Bereavement. Or, Bereaved. Bereft. It’s from the Old English bereafian, meaning ‘to deprive of, take away, seize, rob.’ Robbed. Seized. It happens to everyone. But you feel it alone. Shocking loss isn’t to be shared, no matter how hard you try.” – Helen Macdonald, H-is-for-Hawk https://www.themarginalian.org/2015/12/16/h-is-for-hawk/?mc_cid=c4373df9f0&mc_eid=ef619e3582
To wit, death is brutally hard. And complex. But, how can it cast a morbid, suffocating net over the joy of a recently endlessly sprawling existence, that was halted just due to biology and existence and a few bad days?
The following will still be exposition, but I’ll be sharing so much of what helped me heal, which may never fully resolve itself. But looking straight into the eyes of the dark side of our biologically agreement, it helped a lot to get me to the point of healing this inevitable, mortal agreement.
Not for everyone, Duncan Trussell is a wild madman philosopher. He’s also one of those “real” people that speak plainly about reality and existence, with nothing to hide, fearlessly so. But he’s not for everyone. That being said, the final Midnight Gospel episode found a profound way to talk about death 4 Duncan Trussell reflects on grief and life, with his mom who was dying from cancer. It’s PROFOUND, also quite surreal, but you don’t need to watch vs listen: https://www.polygon.com/animation-cartoons/2020/4/28/21239836/the-midnight-gospel-season-1-ending-duncan-trussell-mother
I only mention it because the timing of this episode helped me so much.
Andrew Garfield was able to talk about his mom in such an elevated, exalted, and loving way. What’s more, in this he intones the first quote about three deaths, and that we desperately need awareness it is our job to carry them forward, share them with all, and speak their names, and let other people know they existed. It is worth letting other people know someone or something amazing that entered your soul. Again, I hope this helps you with your grieving as it did mine, and I encourage all of you to send this to people you love while they are still here.
this is one of the most gorgeous outlooks on grief i have ever heard pic.twitter.com/UwWlPMQo4r
— lucy ford ???? (@lucyj_ford) November 23, 2021
Some more thoughts I either worked out myself, or read from intellectuals and luminaries that are able to encapsulate the complexity of the human condition with words, in a far better way than I might be capable of. It’s hard to write through tears, of course.
“The great secret of death, and perhaps its deepest connection with us, is this: that, in taking from us a being we have loved and venerated, death does not wound us without, at the same time, lifting us toward a more perfect understanding of this being and of ourselves.” – Rainer Maria Rilke
We’ll never stop loving her, learning about our love for her, and growing towards a perfection of love that we cherish and understand even more deeply than when she was here. – me
@unclefishbits #duet with @hioutthereitsmesteve I miss you so much Norway. We loved you more than anything. You’re still here. just not as fluffy. I’m going to start posting old videos of her here. It will be healing.
And this is something that was hard to figure out… how could an animal’s death impact you more than a human’s death? Well, finding this helped because I was mystified. The short of it is that I figured out you can communicate and reconcile humans who will understand you, while an animal doesn’t know why you’re taking it to the doctor, nor why it feels so, so ill. The ancient bond of human and dog is transcendent and ethereal. You have every right to be broken, and be the person who grieves as you grieve. Do not let ANYONE ever tell you how to deal with loss. You do you, you be the human you are. I’m not always the best human, but I exist and that’s fine enough.
Why Your Dog’s Death May Be The Most Difficult Event Of Your Life https://drsiew.com/dogs-death-difficult/
(it leads to some fun and silly and marvelous and charming and goofy stuff like this, tho: https://www.jibjab.com/view/make/iwaly-whitney-houston-love-starring-you-ecard/55ae0347-9ede-429a-8a07-43f44474d237)
“Each day, we wake slightly altered, and the person we were yesterday is dead. So why, one could say, be afraid of death, when death comes all the time?” – John Updike
A site called “The Marginalian” is a wonderful resource of poetry and philosophy. I admit her work tempered my saddened rages and moments of despair.
- Cry, Heart, But Never Break: A Remarkable Illustrated Meditation on Loss and Life “Who would enjoy the sun if it never rained? Who would yearn for the day if there were no night?” https://www.themarginalian.org/2016/03/08/cry-heart-but-never-break/
- Immortality in Passing: Poet Lisel Mueller, Who Lived to 96, on What Gives Meaning to Our Ephemeral Lives “What exists, exists so that it can be lost and become precious.” https://www.themarginalian.org/2020/02/24/immortality-in-passing-lisel-mueller/
Then, remembering Alan Watts from college, and realizing he has so much to give you in the way of understanding and stability in loss and grieving.
“If when I am I dead, I am as if I had never had been. Then, that’s the way I was before I was born.”
He was also rumored to be a vegetarian because “cows scream louder than carrots”. Perfect.
Some more marginalian. I actually left out some of the more esoteric stuff, but I think some people may like to sit and think on this one:
A Zen Master Explains Life and Death to a Child and Outlines the Three Essential Principles of Zen Mind “Zen practice … requires great faith, great courage, and great questioning.” https://www.themarginalian.org/2015/07/27/dropping-ashes-on-the-buddha-death/
You will need to read the entire exchange, but essentially birth, life, death are all one. It’s a wonderful anecdote. Hitting the floor was the answer to any question, meaning all is one and all is the same.
“Very good! This is what all things in the world are made of. You and Buddha and God and your mother and the whole world are the same.”
Gita smiled.
Soen-sa said, “Do you have any more questions?”
“You still haven’t told me where Katz went.”
Soen-sa leaned over, looked into her eyes, and said, “You already understand.”
Gita said, “Oh!” and hit the floor very hard. Then she laughed.
With these sweet souls, there are no boundaries. If you can open yourself to a pure love, you have infinite and limitless depths to explore.
The Light of the World: Elizabeth Alexander on Love, Loss, and the Boundaries of the Soul “Perhaps tragedies are only tragedies in the presence of love, which confers meaning to loss.” https://www.themarginalian.org/2015/06/01/the-light-of-the-world-elizabeth-alexander-memoir/
“Death is our friend precisely because it brings us into absolute and passionate presence with all that is here, that is natural, that is love.” https://www.themarginalian.org/2014/12/10/joanna-macy-a-year-with-rilke-death-mortality/
Fare warning, this story from a 6 year old will just move your heart to be near breaking with sweet naivety and kindness. It’s a purely childlike understanding of an animal as sweet as a dog, and a buddhist like comprehension of this bond.
https://www.vetwest.com.au/pet-library/a-dogs-purpose-from-a-6-year-old
‘People are born so that they can learn how to live a good Life – – like loving everybody all the time and being nice, right?’ The Six-year-old continued, ‘Well, dogs already know how to do that, so they don’t have to stay as long.’
The great secret of death, and perhaps its deepest connection with us, is this: that, in taking from us a being we have loved and venerated, death does not wound us without, at the same time, lifting us toward a more perfect understanding of this being and of ourselves. – Rainer Maria Rilke
In the face of impermanence and death, it takes courage to love the things of this world and to believe that praising them is our noblest calling. Rilke’s is not a conditional courage, dependent on an afterlife. Nor is it a stoic courage, keeping a stiff upper lip when shattered by loss. It is courage born of the ever-unexpected discovery that acceptance of mortality yields an expansion of being. In naming what is doomed to disappear, naming the way it keeps streaming through our hands, we can hear the song that streaming makes.
Rilke invites us to experience what mortality makes possible. It links us with life and all time. Ours is the suffering and ours is the harvest.
“Let everything happen to you: beauty and terror.”
So, part of taking a year is that I thought I needed to lock my heart away for awhile, but that’s denial, and it won’t help. Maybe it’s compartmentalization, because I am facing it… but I was too weak and let it sit stagnantly. It’s not fair to the love we had for her.
The Heart and the Bottle: A Tender Illustrated Fable of What Happens When We Deny Our Difficult Emotions A gentle reminder of what we stand to lose when we lock away loss. https://www.themarginalian.org/2015/05/14/oliver-jeffers-the-heart-and-the-bottle/
@unclefishbits This little sleepy terrier fuzzball has the cutest snore ever. #fuzzball #cairnterrier #sleepypuppy
@unclefishbits first post world!
I don’t have much else. This journey is a process, and process it I will. A tragedy is that it seems you can only grieve the loss of a special dog like this by rescuing another soul, and after a year, it seems I’ve found my next steps.
For posterity, this was the rescue league’s intake of her. “Colonel Potter Cairn Terrier Rescue” are angels, and they shepherded her from a horrible situation to our loving and caring arms, and I’ll always be grateful for their work. Cairns are SO WONDERFUL. Consider fostering, adopting, or helping them: https://www.cairnrescue.com
NOVEMBER 2014
Two days ago, Col. Potter rescued a group of thirty frightened Cairns, eleven males and nineteen females, caught in horrible fate of isolation and despair. Annie and Sassy and many other wonderful Volunteers will welcome these terrified Cairns into their homes and help them see a bright future, filled with sweet love and wonderful new experiences. Please look into their eyes and see the Sweet Cairns longing to emerge, and welcome them all to Sweet Freedom and Hope!
CP’s World Tour
For any of you that regularly follow Col. Potter, you know that we have been talking about having an opportunity to help THIRTY (30) Cairns!! We have had the privilege to help other large groups in the past, but I believe that this group is our LARGEST EVER, outnumbering the former large group by 1 or 2 furkids!!
This has already taken a village of very dedicated and committed people to make this happen, and will continue to expand that village as these THIRTY Cairns continue their journey through Col. Potter and on to a happily ever after. Undertaking a group of this size also comes at a price – there are vetting costs, supply costs (collars, harnesses, crates, etc.) and then there will be some substantial transportation costs to get all 30 of these Cairns to foster homes. Please consider making a donation to Col. Potter Cairn Rescue Network to help support these THIRTY Cairns. You can send your checks to:
Col. Potter Cairn Rescue Network
c/o Danielle Rackstraw, Donations
PO Box 1354
Menifee, CA 92585-1354
I’m not going to tell you any stories like I usually do with introductions, because the shear number of THIRTY Cairns tells their very own story. And so, it is my great honor and privilege to introduce you to CP’s World Tour 30:
#5593 Peru: M, 8 years old, wheaton
#5594 Denmark: M, 8 years old, wheaton
#5596 Germany: M, 8 years old, gray brindle
#5597 Finland: M, 7 years old, gray brindle
#5598 Israel: M, 8 years old, wheaton
#5599 Monaco: M, 7 years old, wheaton
#5600 Kenya: M, 7 years old, wheaton
#5601 Nepal: M, 4 years old, black brindle
#5602 Spain: M, 5 years old, black brindle
#5603 Scotland: M, 8 years old, wheaton
#5604 Thailand: M, 5 years old, wheaton
#5605 Argentina: F, 6 years old, wheaton
#5606 Australia: F, 8 years old, wheaton
#5607 Belgium: F, 8 years old, wheaton
#5608 Bolivia: F, 5 years old, wheaton
#5609 Brazil: F, 8 years old, wheaton
#5610 China: F, 8 years old, wheaton
#5611 Egypt: F, 5 years old, red brindle
#5612 England: F, 6 years old, wheaton
#5613 France: F, 8 years old, wheaton
#5614 India: F, 8 years old, red brindle
#5615 Ireland: F, 8 years old, black brindle
#5616 Italy: F, 8 years old, wheaton
#5617 Japan: F, 8 years old, wheaton
#5618 Mexico: F, 8 years old, wheaton
#4380 Norway: F, 5 years old, red brindle
#4381 Portugal: F, 6 years old, wheaton
#4382 Sweden: F, 8 years old, gray brindle
#4383 Switzerland: F, 8 years old, wheaton
#4384 Taiwan: F, 6 years old, wheaton
This introduction wouldn’t be complete without thanking some very important people in the village who without their help already, this introduction would not be possible: The BoD of CP for approving bringing these THIRTY in, the entire staff at Sullivan Veterinary Hospital who are going above and beyond to board and vet these THIRTY Cairns, the CP foster homes who have stepped up and those that have applied to become a CP foster home for these THIRTY and last, but certainly not least, Kathy and Barney H. who were there to greet them upon arrival at the vet, organized, tagged and took pictures of them and who will be our “wheels” on the ground getting each and every one of the THIRTY started on their transport to their foster home. These THIRTY are a lot of work, a lot of time, a lot of effort, and a lot less sleep for the next few weeks for me, but the joy and satisfaction of helping THIRTY Cairns find a happily ever after is PRICELESS!!!
The Glance
Contemplating the Magic in Your Dog’s Eyes
Serious, amused, contemplative, blissful, focused, worried, grieving, delighted, mischievous, hopeful, disappointed, reluctant, proud, searching, confused, pleased, angry, annoyed, loving, sympathetic, tender, joyful, flirtatious and ecstatic — all this and more can be found in the eyes of a dog. As Emerson notes, “the revelations are sometimes terrific.”
When a dog honors me with his gaze, when I look into the eyes of these splendid others, it never fails to move me. The wonder of what can be found in a dog’s eyes is so readily available to us, we sometimes may fail to fully appreciate this “natural magic.”
I wonder what the dogs – and other animals – find in my eyes. I hope it is what I intend.
