Today I opened this blog for the first time in a long while. At the very top, I saw three consecutive attempts to post - my first Christmas without Dan, a reflection on not waiting till someone you love is gone, to do things that celebrate their life,and another, just outpouring of sadness, after I found a line about how "Gabriel was sent by Daniel"...three attempts to write something, all ended with tears and depression. I carry my grief with me every day, I guess I've felt like I don't really need to open up this blog and pour more fuel on the fire of sadness and regret.
But today I am posting this, and maybe will even go back and add the others. Nobody, save for a loving inner circle ever reads this blog, so it's more for my own memories and processing, but that counts too. I'm not writing here about how the loss of one funny little sweetheart of a dog haunts and hurts me, to gain some kind of wide audience. It's for me - and for him - and anyone who happens upon it that may relate. I totally get that my writing may make others very sad as well. But I need to post this - for Danny, for my own soul, for everyone who has lost a living being they loved beyond words.
I have been washing one of Danny's harnesses today - an old one, ill-fitting, but that I cannot part with for many reasons. He wore it for many years, and while I made attempts to buy him a new one, I was uneasy buying online back then, I had almost no money, and what if the one I bought wasn't a good fit? Better to stick with the ill-fitting one he has (and doesn't seem to mind). He really only needed a new one to go into town with, and we rarely did that. His harnesses were always referred to as his "littles" - everything about Danny was little - so it's weird to even write about his "harness". He had his littles, and for many years, he wore this grey one. All through his mature years - from maybe ...3? to when we left Rupert just before he turned 11, he wore this thing. I didn't even put it on him correctly. But, it was his Little and the sight of it hanging on his empty chair, fills me with pain and longing.
And then, last week, I recently realized, it smells bloody awful.
I did wash that thing - I mean, dozens of times in the years when he was wearing it.But honestly, I didn't often wash HIM - a point that brings me much pain when I think about it these days. Washing him was like so many things I didn't do - or to be more accurate, gave up trying to do - because he hated it so much. I recall a few adventures in Dan-washing back at the house - I'd bring multiple large basins of warm water out back, and soap and towels, and tether Monk to the fence - 2 hours later, covered in water and usually with some kind of injury (me) he'd be clean but I'd be exhausted, and I hated stressing him so much. This was the period where I was washing Jasmine almost daily as she was totally incontinent - urine and feces - and would often have diarrhea in the night, the diaper didn't hold it, and then - since she had advanced CCD and paced all night) the whole downstairs had to be mopped as well. I'd be washing HER and the bedding and the floor half the day (Alex was in Saskatchewan). So yes, I didn't wash my Rabbit enough, and he got a little stinky, and seeing as I'm his Mom and all, I really didn't mind.
But the Little - well it does smell. And not smell of HIM - his sweet, warm, puppydog aroma I loved so much - but of stale fur oil and country- dog -who-walks- an-hour -every-day (at least) offleash and may just get into stuff when Mom is bent over some strange little woodland plant or other. I have to wash it - there is no choice - if it is to hang on the back of his chair in my office - I simply have to wash his Little.
The problem is - this. It is covered in his fur - one of the last items I have that is (his winter coat notwithstanding) and washing it, crazy as this sounds, feels like washing away more of him - as if he hasn't already been gone almost 14 months, as if every single day his absence is not palpable, heart rending, omnipresent. But I just have to do it, and let go of the stink and the bit of fur and the desperate hanging on that I do. So today, this is it - a day "off" (such as I ever actually get one) and I am filling my rabbit bowl with scented soap and well water, soaking and rinsing and adding rose oil until the damn ill-fitting stinky old Little smells as sweet and sacred as my memories of my boy. As my love for him that death cannot touch...as the lilacs in May at our home in the country. And for some reason this act just breaks me in pieces, and brings everything about the end back in such acute detail, I cannot wait to get it done.
Danny's fur lined Little, soaking in a rabbit bowl with cedar and a crystal from our Holy Place.
I wrote this poem today and it says it all, for me. The pain, the love, the memories that burn and sear more than they comfort and uplift.
So far, anyway.
