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.
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