The Larger Context of Grief

  Going through this journey in public - Facebook, and anyone who is actually reading all or some of this blog-  means I am opening myself to a wide range of responses - some empathic and lovely, some supportive-to-a point (hey, Cat, I know you loved him, but it's almost a MONTH now) and some, completely baffled as to how the loss of a mere DOG can elicit such depths of sorrow, as if I'd lost a human being.

There are a few people who totally and completely get this, the level of pain I am in, how lonely and guilty and disoriented I feel.  (My heart goes out to you walking a similar path of so much grief, often without the sympathy or understanding of those around you).

I will freely admit that my own level of shock and pain needs a lot of tending right now, and I am 100% doing that, as I have to be able to work fulltime soon, and even if I didn't, I'm not sure my physical body can take the impact of nonstop, heart rending misery like this. I know it is never "going away" and I am not at all trying to rush the process. I'm trying to broaden my toolkit so I can identify, and work with various aspects of  sorrow, before I slide into the depression I feel looming so close right now.

Journaling helps; going through the thousands of pictures I have from his baby pics in October 2006 to a few days before he died, helps. Talking through my distortions of reality (I could have saved him, I should have brought him home etc etc) helps. Crying and resting help....I do what I  can.   Something I wanted to share today, especially for those in grief too, something that helped yesterday and the momentum has carried into today, is the concept of the larger context of grief, and how a recent loss can open the gateways to previous pain, often from the deep past, complicating the whole process and making the anguish worse.

Yesterday I watched a video with Francis Weller talking about what he calls Five Gateways of Grief, and I suddenly realized something about my loss of Danny - it did not happen in a vacuum. As great as this grief is, as profound my shock and regret, there was already a huge background of grief in my life - unattended, and in many ways, pushed to the side as I focused relentlessly on saving Dan, on keeping the house running, on survival. When I first read this I thought  " yes, well, everyone has grief, we are all in distress about the state of the world, the Earth Herself, we all have older pains that are deep within us now and not front and centre - there is no pain I feel that can compare to what I am experiencing in this house, this life of mine, so abruptly deprived of the light and love that was my Dan."

And I sat with that a while. There is no need to rush anything while we are in the ashes, we just sit here and stay with the whole damn package.

Today, as I was doing prayer work to send compassion and blessing to myself and through me, to Dan, I felt my thoughts returning again and again to this concept. I had to stop the Work and go think about what I was being sent. And yes,I felt a loosening of the great contraction of soul that grief brings...an opening of sorts.  I felt and realized, in one flash, how much grief I carry all the time, aside from/along with Dan's loss. That I still carry the loss of my brother, the sudden and awful way Luke died,  many more beloved animals, also grief for the passing of time that seems to have come upon me so fast, for the suffering of the world, for the loss of my dreams that just since we moved from Rupert, I know will not come to fruition, or at least not  how I hoped they would. I felt the grief of my father dying and leaving me disinherited/always so harshly judged for never being what I was supposed to be, and the loss of my mother a few years ago, after 25 years estrangement. I felt the grief of living in a tired and painful body at only 62. It all tumbled open upon me and I saw how this dog, this one Being, so filled with sweetness and love for me and So.Much.Light, had shielded me and kept from dissolving into that wasteland of despair that coping with more grief than one can carry, can cause. That losing him was anguish enough in itself, but that his absence catapulted me into contact with so much that I would not have been able to bear, without him....who made all things ok, in my life.

 It was a revelation that these words do absolutely no justice to.

Danny was my strength, poor wee lamb, he never complained.  As long as I had his dinner to make, his walk to do, a bunch of research on his issues to do, as long as he slept beside me, needed me and filled my life with his sunniness and companionship, all this other stuff....was...manageable.

And I saw the avalanche of pain we all have to carry, and how blessed I was to have had Danny for as long as I did. Not just words, as I've said them so many times, but heart-knowledge. I felt uplifted and like some of the darkness lifted, just a little, for a while. 

I know - it always comes back, in the acute stage of the journey...not a believer in rigid "stages of grief" -  but there IS an early acute phase that tends to cause the same types of symptoms, for want of a better word. I am not expecting this, or any insight to make it go away, nor do I WANT it to go away, after all Danny was to me and how deeply I mourn his death. I need to be where I am, it is not yet a month. But a respite that comes, not from tv or sleep or a few hours work, that comes via a revelation, is welcome - very welcome. Loss of a loved one can open doorways into past loss and unattended sorrow, and rob us of more than the loved one we lost...we can slide into despair, at the very least the sheer magnitude of it all robs us of any joy in living and steal the vitality we need for life and work.  I am reaching into my soul to touch the raw pain of all I grieve for , and using my mind to contemplate how I can go forward honouring all Dan was/is to me.  I am leaving this video of a conversation with Francis Weller here for anyone who may need it/benefit from listening.

What Kind of Help Really Helps?

 This morning I woke at 5 with anxiety, which really is the norm right now. I wake reliving the last few minutes - it all happened so fast - and sweating, heart pounding, crying in my sleep. It takes me a good 20 minutes to get calmed down. I make coffee, I feed cats, I pace and do breathwork. But what really helps get the episode under control is, I look at the Internet - Facebook, mostly. There are two streams over there that distract me - one is the spiritual realm, my OBOD groups, some Timelines and Pages that share beautiful images (Shamantube, Old Moss Woman, Contemplative Monk, many more) - the other is work-related, which ranges from many herbal Pages and Groups to my own (dog related) groups, where I often need to post a little something in response to member questions or to some misinformation that's been shared.

Both of these take me away from the reality, the emptiness, the anxiety and the self reproach, if only for awhile.

Always, of course, it comes crashing back, and I can't use the same strategy as I did last time. Industry helps me; doing dishes, making a soup, things that don't require me to concentrate. I bought a shelf for the bathroom before  Dan died and I need to reorganize some stuff in there.  Alex is unwell and needs herbal preparations.   I've been trying to write here, but it feels empty even though I am very clear this isn't Facebook and I'm not expecting comments. It still feels like an echo chamber. And sometimes, coming here and seeing the images I've selected to share of him, of our former life, are horrendous triggers, not comforting at all.

So, distraction helps. I look at FB, I read herbal blogs, at night I watch tv series. I have to have that respite. But it doesn't go a long way to helping the healing process I don't think. That is where I am looking for help, reading about PTSD, and...struggling. Most of the sites I read on PTSD say, spend time with people/don't isolate! (HA! even without COVID, I'm not really sociable)...exercise (yeah right, in 3 feet of snow with a trashed back) .... eat well (I am actually trying) and seek help (not gonna happen, but I am buying books as my now very limited budget can stretch too).

I find I just have to stay on top of the waves of misery and identify them for what they are, as they come. So, a wave of pure heart-piercing missing him needs different handling from an anxiety laden flashback to his final moments.  This morning I thought I was going to collapse with self reproach, and I took a piece of paper and wrote down (under the heading Compassion for Catherine) a whole list of things that I was dealing with this past 3 1/2 years, since we moved, the losses, the depression, the profound stress and overwork and now my back.. and STILL, I did pretty well with Danny. I got that clear in my head and I felt better.    There is a potential backlog there, even if I feel better knowing I have been fighting so hard to keep us all ok since we moved, I remember that the 11 years prior in Dan's life I could have done better! but I try to be gentle and compassionate with that version of myself too...remember that she  also, had much to deal with and was in a place of profound growth and spiritual development.

I will have to do it over and over, but knowing that clarity really is power when I am drowning in confused emotions, that helps.

Nothing resolves this and won't for some time. But what actually helps?
For me, the short list is (reiterating)

1) Mental clarity about what really happened - not allowing myself to let reasonable regrets turn into an overblown and false version of reality. I do this by writing in a grief journal, talking it through with Alex,or talking out loud as if I am addressing Danny. All three give me some relief.

2) Some books help. I bought about 30 books on loss and survivor guilt when I lost my brother; really only a couple helped at all. I went back to those and they weren't all useful (17 years later). I am reading a  few I will link to at the bottom of this post as it's possible some of my fellow "Sisters in Sorrow" read these entries.  The right words, whether in a book or on a site, help me.  Some of the exercises I've described are from various books.

3) Various chores like cooking soups and organizing the bathroom - occupy my mind without requiring the level of concentration I need for work.

4) TV and movies, as long as they are trigger free (I am open to suggestions as we burn through our library and don't have Netflix).

5) Care and attention to the other animals here - my beloved cats who are all so concerned (and I am afraid Tatyana is actually sick - a separate post). Time with cats and Korky. Alex is taking care of Zeke round the clock but I spend time with him too. It's good to accept the love of others, let them participate in your process.

6) Work - as long as it's the right amount and not a crazed level like I usually do. (Yes I am consumed with guilt about that, irrational as it is - see #1 on this list).

7) Innerwork - prayer, meditation - I have been unable to do much at all so far as I've been in such acute pain, but it is so important and I am adding a little bit - in the right frame of mind - every day.

8) Creativity - I set up a makeshift memorial table for Dan, but I will b expanding it, adding artwork, poems, pictures and more, a place to always cherish him and visit the beauty and magic or our days together.  Art heals, and art is all kinds of things. One day, I hope to build a Unicorn garden in his memory, as he was a Unicorn to me in every way.  If you are suffering and creative, painting, writing, any sort of craft at all could help..or make a garden. I am in the planning stages, but it helps. 

One example of a memorial garden.

There are other things that help, but this is a start. For anyone going through the acute stages of grief, I send you my love and deep wishes that you can heal in your own time, without the complications of guilt, anger and disorientation that can  cause us all to suffer so much more than we need to. And Goddess knows, we suffer enough just losing them, don't we.

 

A few books helping right now

 

Bearing the Unbearable, Joanne Cacciatore

The Wild Edge of Sorrow, Francis Weller

Dog Years, Mark Doty

Eternal Echoes, John O'Donohue

For my Danny

Love Song


I shall see you again, if the world lasts, even though

you are gone from my sight. My breath creates

new life for you, now that we are apart and

the universe lies here in the ashes of my memory.

 

I shall see you again, if the world lasts, in the nighttime sky,

where even the separated stars move together

in the same direction. As moon follows sun, so shall I

follow you across our star-lined path, the one we created

 

Together. Do you remember? Come, my friends, and find me

crying on a mountaintop, where my tears

make new flowers bloom. Come run with me through

dreaming fields and catch rainbow colors for our eyes.

The way we used to.

 

Our holy place is holy still;

our love is not diminished by absence or by pain.

Death has but interrupted our loving, and I know

I shall see you again, if the world lasts.

 

Nancy Wood 

 

 

Holding on to Gratitude

 There are so many things I hold onto these days, in memory -  forefront is my deep remembrance of how much Danny loved me and how this suffering would hurt him. But then I can't really do anything else, can I... there is no way around grief, we just have to go through it. So, day by miserable day, hour by hour, that's what I do. Like the post on FB today, it's this process:

I take respite where I can; any break from the acute pain feels both weird as well as so, so needed. Many days I have cried for hours, until I feel weak and sick, then experienced a strange lifting of the heaviness, a sense of...not "okayness" but a few hours where I can breath normally, concentrate, be in the new reality without every second of every hour hurting like vinegar poured into an open wound. In those states I can see that yes, he is gone and the time just whipped by, all that strange magical beautiful time - gone - but also he was such a blessing and he had a long life for his breed ... that yes he is gone, but he was so so loved and while I wasn't perfect I was a damn good Mom - and other things that can ease the pain.

In the relatively ok states I take comfort from things that are still in my life, if only for a few moments/an hour, and I wanted to post today to honour those things, as I revisit this blog and see that I can be ok even in the midst of such not-okayness (just as I was writing this I had a flashback to Dan and me walking  in the back field, early April, ground still frozen, but him so so happy to be out and about after a long wretched winter. It filled me with anxiety, as these flashbacks often do.

Oh what I wouldn't give for one more April.  I was so sure we'd have it, this year - even without the wide open spaces and long walks of his youth and midlife years. There is a whole other entry coming in April and how sacred it was to Dan and me. I think the top picture really shows his joy in living and roaming the fields.

Before it overwhelms me - here are some things I am grateful for today in a deeply heartfelt way.

1) Korky. I was crying today when I brought him his breakfast, and despite the fact he loves breakfast more than life itself, he refused to get in his daycage to eat, but sat staring at me, reaching for my hand with an outstretched foot, and mimicking my sobs; I had to let him sit cooing on my shoulder a while before he'd go back in and eat, his very favorite thing in the world is breakfast, too, as it has almonds. I love this bird so so much.

2) Some tv that takes me away for a bit - Anne with an E,  I am loving, and The Expanse (although we are almost through all 4 seasons) and, strangely, His Dark Materials. I would have thought that one would be unbearable, as I feel exactly as if my own daemon had been cut away from me, but I got through that part surprisingly well. Always on the lookout for things to watch that work" and I'm never quite sure what will be ok and what will not.

3) Cats - but a whole entry on cats soon. Suffice to say they seem to take turns lying beside me purring, and sometimes, as many as 4 at a time (they do not all love each other) if I badly needed a furpile. These unassuming, quirky little beings are an absolute Godsend right now. There is no mistaking how deeply they feel my pain and Danny's absence.

4) Last but not least Alex. I sometimes have to go over all the reasons I let Danny go in the clinic like that, 3 times a day or more  I need help with this. I am having huge anxiety attacks when I revisit it, and I feel like I just killed my best friend. Alex talks me down, he makes food, he changes the disc if I can't take what we are watching, he sleeps in a chair beside me so I can rest and not have to be alone down here, he watches stuff on his laptop with headphones on while I work - so I don't have to be alone, in the echoing absence of my Dannydan. When all I can see is those last awful hours he brings me back to everything else, all 14 years of it. He is my saviour in this.  

5) A little cooking - when the urge comes over me, I make soup, date squares, cake. Just here and there but it seems to occupy me for a bit. I will never make his medicine cookies again, and somehow that thought almost breaks me in two. But I can feed  Alex and myself.

This is only 3 weeks in and I am struggling greatly, but remind myself, it was so huge a shock to lose him and it is..only 3 weeks in.

Off to work for a bit, a good distraction but I can't put in 14 hour days right now. Off to work, then to whatever I need to do to make it through one more day without my  heart.

 

 

 

What is Helping Today

 "How do we bear that which is unbearable? How do we suffer that which is insufferable? How do we endure that which is unendurable? Early grief feels wild, primitive, nonlinear, crazed. It commands our assent and our attention; it uses up all the oxygen in the room; it erupts unpredictably. Our minds replay grief-related content in habitual cycles. It feels inescapable and lasts much longer than other people, the non-bereaved, think it should. Like an open, bleeding wound, it begs our tending.

'I am here' grief says 'Be careful with me. Stop. Pause. Stay with me".

Three Weeks Ago Today

 I'm not sure why "anniversaries" are important or meaningful for humans - moreso for some than others - but this morning I awoke after what was probably the first real sleep since Danny died, and realized that three weeks ago today would be the last normal morning  - normal as it could be with the rising worry about his bleeding - of our long, beautiful, in-spirited life together. The last day he'd push the chairs around, ram his head in the fridge, trot over (yes he still trotted) to get his medicine cookie, the last day I'd stand at the back door and watch him go pee (blood, all f###ng blood) the last day I'd dole out the chicken gizzards, liver and then coax some roast chicken into him for his breakfast. The last day ever he would retire to his kitchen bed to snooze after his meal while I stood here working.

The last (quasi) normal day of our shared years, our heart-joined, love infused 14 1/2 years.

In a million years I never expected it would be the last day.

This is the sweet little face I hold so close, cherished so deeply. His little foot there just wrenches my heart.

 I miss you my darling, with every breath, every tear, every beat of my heart.

Holding on to the gifts

  Yesterday morning at this time I started an entry that was all pain, all anguish, recounted my sense of disorientation without Danny, after 14 years of basically not going to the ladies room without him. His things are everywhere, I see him around every corner, I'm not coping. It was anguish incarnate and I decided not to publish it right away - the pain I live with isn't going away soon so that can wait. Today I woke up to the same sense of shock - Oh no, it's true-  he's gone - and pain, emptiness and grief - but I keep having this other, beautiful thought course through my veins and I wanted to write it down lest I lose it as the day wears on. 

The gifts he gave me need to be honoured, too.

To back up a bit; the Danny years were amazing in so many ways, but I did a number of things wrong that I began to recognize after we moved here, in 2017. Astrologers talk about the Saturn Return (a major spiritual event at about ages 30 and then 60) as a difficult passage, a time of reckoning, and the second one, around one's 60th birthday, can be brutal...my 60th year and 2nd Saturn Return definitely was. Between Alex's illness and my sudden, life changing need to be the sole income provider, to my health decline, to Danny's ageing (most visible after he turned 13) this has been a very tough few years. I didn't save money back when I could have, I didn't take care of my health. The amount of work I need to do now to keep us afloat has pushed all my career and personal goals to the backburner, and I sometimes despair I will ever get to any of them.  It's easy to fall into depression, that I could have made this better ( hindsight is 20:20 indeed) and I often do. My animals, my time in nature, my spiritual path are all major sources of strength for me, and I try to keep perspective. If this Soul of mine is going on to a new life once this body is worn out, it will be a Soul that has travelled a long way and done a lot of Work. And that is what I focus on when I think of Danny and our years together - the good things, the positivity, the continued hope...the immense personal growth despite my mistakes in the material world....not the loss, fear, self reproach.

Well, some of the time I do anyway.

Danny burst into my life at such a dark time, I was definitely in the throes of PTSD, after losing both my brother and then Luke (who I was clinging to for dear life after John)  so tragically. I wasn't ready for a puppy, I have told this story before, but there he was...all sweetfaced curiosity, love, and a considerable dose of timidity, which translated to really, really needing his Mom. He could be bold and insistent - always on the edge of hyperactive ('busy' was my tolerant euphemism) but always connected to me.  One memory I have of him, when he was very young, maybe a year and a bit? I held a nutrition seminar at the Rupert Community Centre and he was there for a while, frantically socializing with everyone, he always enjoyed people and gatherings but didn't always read the individual well, often focusing on pestering the person who least wanted his attentions. That day, he was running around visiting everyone and suddenly realized he wasn't sure where I was - I was right across the room, he looked up and saw me - and the look on his face I will never forget..never. He literally burst into a smile and ran over to me, with that characteristic head tilt he did right until the very end. No matter how exciting a day was, Mom was always the most important thing.   A few days before his death, he was at the back of the garden sniffing around, saw me and trotted over, head tilting, eyes full of love, just the same but old and slow.  He'd see me through the window, and his eyes would just radiate love, even when he was so old and frail.

What did I ever do to deserve that?

I have many pictures of the smile, but this is my favorite.   He was not yet one here, and everything, everyday, was SUCH a joy, he was so alive and happy and filled with Spirit.

I have to remember this: all through our years together, whatever mistakes I made, I tended to him with utmost love and care, and in my personal life, I accomplished a few things too...many, thanks to him.

People criticized me for building my life around Danny - his separation anxiety, which was pretty severe, meant I simply stopped going out to any event I couldn't bring him with me - which meant, a lot. The first year I remember I HAD to see a particular ballet at the NRC and Alex actually sat in the van with Danny the whole 3 hours, taking him out for a walk, then napping - I felt so awful that w as literally the last time I went to theatre or ballet. But here's the thing, I did not mind nor miss it. Every day for me was bliss - we had a routine, we had the garden, the Hills, our walks, we had our cuddles at night, me with a stack of books and my herbal tea, Dan curled up against my legs under the covers, till it got too warm and he'd burst out, flopping himself on the duvet, legs everywhere, asleep in a moment until it got too cold and back under the covers he went.. And through all this simplicity, this daily celebration of life, I started to change and grow. I discovered the work of herbalists like Paul Bergner and Kiva Rose the second year I had Danny and their approach revolutionized how I see my own work. My study of the ancient Celtic paths brought me in such intimate contact with nature, not in some flouncy, romanticized way, but the beauty and wonder and hardship of it. Dan and I drove around looking for crampbark, for elder, for red osier dogwood for conifer resin. We spent many a long day in various parts of the Hills, me with a magnifying glass and ID manual in hand, him always circling around but never straying far at all. He slept at my feet while I worked on my online studies. I ordered seeds from allover and he sat in his chair watching me tend them as they sprouted. Life was so sweet, simple and ...connected. Every single walk every single day was bliss and magic. 

 

And through it all, with his companionship and devotion and happiness beside me, I grew. I deepened, I spiralled into my true centre and I became..myself. Danny was the impetus for this change and the daily comfort for every part that was difficult. Through loss after loss - family, friends, betrayals and death, and eventually losing the house itself, he never wavered. Although I made mistakes (not getting bone density tests, for one) I can say from the bottom of my heart that I left Rupert a better, deeper, more centered person than when I moved in. And without hesitation, that Danny left his beloved Mom a much better human being, because of his love and devotion.

 
Danny Dan, my sweetheart and my love, thank you so much. All this pain is just a reflection of how much you meant, mean now and will always mean to me.  Would that we could have had another 15 years!  I'd take five!  I miss you so so much, my Rabbit. Your absence engulfs my life, but your presence in my heart, my being, is indestructible.

Thank you for loving me so much I became more worthy of it, by the end. I will carry on this work, I promise.
I promise.

Day Seventeen

 This morning it has been 17 days since that terrible morning that was to be the last few hours I spent with my darling, darling Daniel.

Just like every other morning, including the one he died, I am standing at my laptop in the kitchen drinking coffee, looking through emails (nope not answering diet questions today, sorry) and drinking half decaf from a huge clay mug I adore,  one with oak,  poplar and ginkgo biloba leaves encircling it, and that holds 16 ounces of liquid. I bought this behemoth a few years ago when I was still consuming vat after vat of strong coffee all day, and had grown tired of refilling my normal, 8 ounce cup over and over. This is the mug and Julia Dean is the creator, if anyone is interested.  On etsy, of course. My home away from home.



In the mornings, I have a rule - nobody gets much of anything out of me until I get that coffee down the hatch. I think this is fair; it's usually 5 am and the cats have dry food out at night; much as I don't like it, the anxiety that empty food bowls produces is much, much worse. Anxiety? well,  two of my cats were rescued from a very bad situation and one, Franklin, was a kitten at the time, he was maybe 7 months when we got him out of there. The woman who kept them believed in fasting one (or two or I suspect maybe 3) days a week, and she fed the cheapest dog food when she did feed them, augmented with white rice, which, she informed me, is "very good for cats". The older cat, Mithrandir, is a purebred and somebody along the line had his front and back claws removed, and then given him to this woman in the trailer who fed rice to kittens. He was completely terrified of everything, as was Franklin, when we got them out; I've told the story before of how Frank lived in the wall for close to 3 months, back at Rupert.  These two are now among the happiest cats I've ever known, but vestiges of their former life remain; for example, they are both really panicked if there is no food available. Even if they don't eat any, there has to be food in the bowls, so I put some dry out at night. Even if it is all still there in the morning, they can rest easy...Frank sleeping in a variety of places, and Mithrandir often vacillating between Danny's large, comfy kitchen bed, and beside me.   But by the time I am up and making coffee, they want breakfast - REAL food, thank you very much. I've made a deal with them; I will never miss a meal unless I am sick or unable to walk, BUT, I get to have this coffee first. Both sit patiently in the window ledges watching me type, read emails, and these days, cry and cry, over that Julia Dean mug of half decaf.
Then I feed them.

 

 

I've been doing this since we rescued them in 2012. Early morning music, often plainchant, Native American flute, or Celtic harp....what Alex calls "that lugubrious hooting you envelope yourself in"...and Korky gets uncovered and his bowls taken out to be washed in preparation for HIS breakfast.

Until 17 days ago, Daniel would be let out to pee first off, before I plug the kettle in- he was always up with me, right till the end. And when he came in,  his medicine cookie (they're not bad, actually I make a version for Alex with more sweetener) and then he too, would lie down and wait for the first vat of coffee to be consumed.
At the end of his life, I'd administer meds to Dan with the cookie, in chunks of butter he really enjoyed.

And then after my coffee, cats got fed, Dan got his breakfast. In years past, that would be followed by another outside trip to sniff once more and pass any residual pee... and then a rest before the first walk - always worried about bloat, his whole life. If breakfast was 6 am, walk one would be around 8. But since he's been in decline, and since my back injury, we couldn't do the walk anymore. So the morning would be a series of outdoor "toodles"...the last 3 weeks an  increasing need on his part to go pee (pass blood).

The face that greeted me every morning for the last few weeks..alert, still wanting to live, despite it all.

...and me thinking, "well UTI makes you feel like you need to go. Plus his prostate is huge! The blood settles down in the afternoon. It's bacterial prostatitis..it's an MRSI.  We'll kick this. I need to research Staphylococcus pseudintermedius some more. I know it can cause clotting - yes, let's go do that".

Always needing to fix, fight, DO, research, make, administer...hope.

It's a form of denial I think, and while I have long perceived this tendency in me as a "love language" - a manifestation of my warrior Moon/Mars in Aries, and overall, a good thing - like all good things it must be tempered, it can't be allowed to run wild, there needs to be a balancing element of - acceptance, BE-ing, all things I have worked with spiritually over so many years (I believe we all need to cultivate that which is weak in us as well as that which is strong) but at the end of Danny's life, it failed me.  Or did it?

What I have to believe in now is, that  I did not fail him. Because this denial of how close to death he was, of how great the obstacles were, this crazed belief that there was a medication or an herb (or many herbs) that could ease his discomfort and extend his life - well that is the core of me, it's my central strength and it was the most naturally, and fiercely loving, way I could approach his end of life.  I want to share a bit of an example, because this haunts me and writing it out helps - also, for any of my Sisters in Sorrow (and brothers, I know you are out there) who may read this blog.

I had been both anticipating the end of dan's life as well as fighting as hard as I could, to extend it, for many months. I saw him older and slower and heat intolerant last summer, but he still perked up for walks and despite a few bouts of unwellness, he was himself, just old. Then the paw stumbling...his long nails?  and occasional coughing (which I thought was his heart condition progressing, but it was dry and hacking) and finally, the GOLPP diagnosis.
November.
And then the bloody urine, and clots. 

Every step of the way - and I reality check by going back to older posts on Facebook, and here, I was trying to stay in  contact with the reality that death was coming at the same time I was fighting it. Isn't that just love? Even after he had blocked twice in January, I was ordering herbs and upping his Yunnan Baiyao and doing whatever I could. The drug to open/relax his urethra made him sick - what about kava kava? And so on. 

The night he blocked for the last time, I contacted our vet right away. It was 8 ish and he emailed the ultrasound vet to see if she could come in early and do the procedure. I said yes to it as I could not allow this awful thing to go on. Mark felt Danny would be ok overnight, and we needed a full bladder for the ultrasound anyway; but by 2:30 he was up, asking to go out repeatedly, straining. I was beside myself but nothing I could do. So, I put on "lugubrious hooting", made coffee, and stood here at my computer. I DID AN ACTUAL DOG DIET in the hours between 2:30 and 6:30 when I got the go ahead to bring Danny in. Dan lay near me, in increasing discomfort about which I could do absolutely nothing. I checked my email every ten minutes to see when my vet was up and we could leave.  Just as I as getting ready to go, Dan began to show respiratory distress. I was not sure he would make it to the clinic, but he did,  and you know the rest of the story.

What haunts me is, those hours between 2:30 and 7. I was insane with worry, but I stood here and did a client recipe I hadn't been able to finish the day before. Alex keeps asking me, what on earth do I think I should have done? He thinks the fact I was as normal as possible was the very best thing for Dan - and he's right that if I paced around and cried and hovered over him of course that would have escalated his anxiety. But part of me wishes I could have just sat with him...not that my back allows for very much sitting anymore - and just been present. Again I go back to - but I believed with all my heart we still had a fixable condition, series of conditions. That we would find the treatment for his bloody urine, that we would manage his GOLPP. That death was coming, but "not today".

So how can I beat myself up so much for this?

I think as I write this, it's because when we love so much, when we have such a profound bond and connection, we want everything to be perfect. Maybe souls more advanced than I are past this, but I wanted every moment of every day to be perfect for Dan, and if they couldn't be perfect, at least they be very, very good. I desperately wanted the end to be soft and loving and easy, so badly I wanted that. When he was in the back of that abomination Alex calls a truck, I was unable to twist around and comfort him. I kept checking and he was flat out sleeping, but that feels wrong to me too. With the money I spent on decor and stuff for this house - a compensatory gesture on my part after losing Rupert, which was basically un-decoratable  - I could have bought us a half decent car.

And the fault finding goes on, and on and on.

What messages can I take away, how do I reconcile myself to my human failings in the face of such a loss and such a love? I think that is part of the Big Work ahead, I'm not going to try to find answers in a blog entry or a day or a few weeks of grieving. It's part of the process I need to pore over every detail,  reality check, write - that's one part. I also need to cry, talk to Dan, build his memorial table, and try to switch all of this off for a couple of hours a day. There is immediate work and there is Big Work - isn't there always? - and the Big Work is addressing my patterns of denial, frenzied sometimes, and how I avoid pain (or so I think) in many ways both reasonable and unbalanced. The immediate work is still, not 3 weeks into this, making myself eat and sleep, crying, writing/creating, talking this through with Alex....feed cats... and then, when I am able to accept them, the hidden spiritual gifts Dan has left me with, aside from the many obvious ones I already celebrate,will become clearer, more comforting, a balm on the raw pain that makes up my life right now, and a beacon for the years I will walk ahead, without him.

 Although I do not feel like writing this, nor, really, doing anything aside from sleeping and crying, I will write it because I need to get it out, and because I need to stay ok as much as humanly possible for many reasons and beings.

I am drowning in grief and sorrow for the loss of my sweetheart, but there are several "complications" as the jargon has it, that are making the experience worse, more terrible, unbearable. I have a long standing pattern of finding such extreme fault with myself that even when I have done a thing well, I see only the parts that weren't perfect. I now full well where this comes from in my past, and most of the time i have a handle on it, but right now it is running rampant. Alex is beyond exasperated trying to get this "insanity" under control. But it's not his to deal with, it's mine and me alone. So I will list off some of this right here and hope along with the daily griefwork I'm doing, will help.

These are either Big Lies, as in totally crazy and  need to be dispelled, or they have some kernel of truth but are still not worthy of me beating myself half to death over.

Big Lies include, he wasn't happy enough, I didn't do enough, I am a truly evil person for canceling his Barkbox (after he totally lost interest in it and didn't even try to tear the squeaky thing out of the squeaky toys)....that sort of thing.

Sometimes I look at things I bought for myself or the house, over the last 2 years and I just loathe myself - as in "oh great, yeah, you bought a greenman necklace when you NEVER ACTUALLY GO OUT, and Danny was dying from cancer but you didn't know, did you? So you bought jewelry. Some 'great Mom" you were." etc etc

Sigh. It's as if everything I did that wasn't geared to Dan was evil, proof positive how fake I am, not really a  good mom at all, I mean look at the hours on etsy WHILE DAN WAS DYING.

This is truly awful and idiotic and I need to find a way to make it stop. (Writing this helps). There are so many layers of falsehood here I need to unpack them and get on with the real business of loss; grieving.

The less idiotic but still pointless things I torment myself with include, focus on, his cancer diagnosis. It's evident that he probably had TCC for some time - looking through older posts I see the bloody urine started a year ago. A year ago! My Facebook memories showed me a post from  yesterday where we took him for Xrays - I was worried about a stone after his urinalysis didn't show evidence of infection - but no stone. He was so traumatized y the Xray I had him on Metacam for days - and we assumed the enlarged prostate was at last worth treating, before putting him through an ultrasound. It was, after all, a finding! So I started him on a prostate blend with pygeum, saw palmetto and pumpkin seed oil with the idea that if it helped, we were on the right track. And it did! (I also increased zinc, beta siterols and lycopene). We were marveling at how  powerful herbal medicine can be. He cleared up, so I believed we were doing ok - that was before we knew he had GOLPP, but I did know he had heart disease, and with the prostate now I felt we were managing old age stuff, but I did not think we had cancer, despite his brother and father dying of it (maybe more from tat litter, but those two I know) his herbicide exposure in Rupert - I believed we had dodged that bullet and would just have his bloodwork checked and use the prostate support, at that time.

And I think he had a pretty good couple of months, too, last spring, for an old guy.

 

                                                            February

May, overseeing my seedlings

July - last month I was able to walk, I had 3 lumbar fractures at the end of the month and that was the end of our long, beautiful life together of walking, exploring. I remember how proud I was that after my disc injury I was able to get up and out sometimes twice a day, if only for 15 minutes...I was also careful not to let him overdo it with his heart issue. He LOVED those walks so much, even the short ones.

Danny looks glum here, but I remember that he was dragging me so hard on walks I think that's how I hurt myself. He was also throwing clots at this point, and it was alarming, but I increased his prostate herbs and he stopped. Again leading me to believe we had hypertophy/infection and not cancer.

I wish we had done the ultrasound there, although to be fair, I didn't know he had GOLPP, and with TCC, it would not have changed the outcome much. He could not have tolerated chemo I am fairly sure, and while I would have shifted a few things in his diet and herbs, not a lot. So there may be a hidden grace there.... 

I have to remind myself, every step of the way I was present for him, he had his three meals a day, home made food, he had many supplements for old age/cancer, he was the center of my world.If he had discomfort which I am sure he must have, he would hide it well - although in older pictures of last year I see the hunched back walk, I always thought it was prostate. We went weeks and weeks with n bloody urine at all, before it came back with a vengeance after Christmas.  If indeed he had TCC since last February, then he lived a full year without meds, which is 3 times the average. I have to remind myself that no matter when we found the cancer or what we did, the outcome would be the same, as always going to be the same.

This dreaded silence, this unbearable emptiness, the absence of starshine from my days and night.

But I need to remember that it was ok for me to engage in some frivolity, to buy things for my house, at the same time he was here and forefront in my heart always. I don't know why I need to indulge in this extreme self hatred, but I hope it passes soon. Danny was my heart, and while I could have been more *perfect* (more enrichment at the end?) I think overall, as his Mom, guardian, protector, and best friend -  I was pretty good.

 And now, the love of my life is gone, and here I stand, sobbing, bereft, broken hearted.

Alex says, I need to write, it is balm for my soul, I need to tell his story, I need to use the written word to touch others. But right now I just cannot. I think I am still in shock, I was doing well yesterday, but then fell apart mid afternoon and have barely been able to sleep.I keep returning over and over to Daniel's last moments. I can't sleep well, I can barely eat. Right now, I am not ok.  Although I promised him I would be, I am seriously not.

Later I will write about how his illness unfolded, how he died, how we missed the cancer, why finding it likely would not have extended his life by much,  but would have spared him some pain, and so on. Right now I am too numb to do that...numb, sick with loss, lonely....longing for him.

 

Lioncastle's Daniel of Sarjo
August 8 2006 - February 4 2021

My heart, my love, my anam cara

I love you forever.

 

 

Runnin' Up That Hill

 "...if I only could, I'd make a deal with God/and I'd get Him to swap our places"

so goes the famous chorus of one of Kate Bush's most commercially successful songs. It's been stuck in my head for days - well, that line anyway - even though it doesn't apply to dogs. I'd do anything to give Dan more time, to at least rid him of the  GOLPP that is slowly weakening his body and paralyzing his larynx, but then if I died instead of him, who'd be here to look after him (and everybody else?)

The sentiment is real, that I'd take his condition if I could give him years of life and health, but it doesn't make sense,other than in the imaginal realm, where I just want to reach out with all my heart and soul and say "I'll do whatever I have to, for you to be ok".

He's not ok. He's not... awful, he's still here, but I see the effects of the disease, every few days or so, a bit more...and I just walk with him, hold him in my heart, feed him as he pleases, tell him our stories at night. Tell him, over and over, how loved he is, and how grateful I am. How I wouldn't be who I am without him. How I miss, and treasure our wild and free days, forever. As John O'Donohue said


"Memory is the place where our vanished days secretly gather. Memory rescues experience from total disappearance. The kingdom of memory is full of the ruins of presence. It is astonishing how faithful experience actually is; how it never vanishes completely. Experience leaves deep traces in us. It is surprising that years after something has happened to you the needle of thought can hit some groove in the mind, and music of a long vanished event can rise in your soul as fresh and vital as the evening it happened. Memory provides such shelter and continuity of identity. 

Memory is also fascinating because it is an indirect and latent presence in one's mind. The past seems to be gone and absent. Yet the grooves in the mind hold the traces and vestiga of everything that has ever happened to us. Nothing is ever lost or forgotten. In a culture addicted to the instant, there is a great amnesia. Yet it is only through the act of remembrance, literally re-membering, that we can come to poise, integrity, and courage. Amnesia clogs the inner compass and makes the mind homeless. Amnesia makes the sense of absence intense and haunted. We need to retrieve the activity of remembering, for it is here that we are rooted and gathered. "

John O'Donohue, Eternal Echoes 

I walk the haunted trails of our vanished blissful days, forever, with "You and you and only you..."