On Christmas Day I find myself missing my boy Mister. He arrived in my life as a puppy. I was supposed to just foster him and place him up for adoption. I ‘failed’. In the animal welfare world the term you hear is ‘foster failure’, a term of endearment – when you end up adopting your foster dog. Mister was one of several foster failures (yes, Ahnung was another!) I am proud of! :). I am grateful for the gift Ahnung had given me – the gift of learning to embrace Grief and preparing me for the loss of Mister. Mister was a one of a kind dog! He taught me patience and so much about living life fully and with unabashed JOY! Shortly after I got him I remember coming home to find my work blackberry (yes, this was prior to the days of smartphones) that I had left on a counter to be charged – remnants of my blackberry was in pieces all over the living room floor. And Mister was sleeping like an angel snuggled on the couch with his sister Missy. I had just started a new position at work and I thought how the heck am I going to explain this to my boss? Well, the next day I made that phone call and my boss was such a good sport and so understanding and said to me, ‘maybe you should feed your dog a little more?’ I have so many stories of Mister that make me smile and laugh, and stories that at the time they happened made me want to scream in exasperation, and then I look at him and his ‘what mom?’ eyes and I immediately soften. He taught me to loosen up, to laugh more and so much more. I remember so many stories … for today, I simply want to share a poem I wrote a couple months after my sweet boy transitioned to the spirit world …
Mister, I feel your spirit today. I feel your joy. And in the joy I also feel sadness as I miss you deeply. Thank you dear boy for all the lessons you taught me.
Grief’s invitation
Grief unravels you
Creates new wounds
He rips the scabs off of old wounds
Grief is a shape shifter.
He is everywhere.
He becomes the first snowfall
The sound of lapping water.
The dog bowl, left on the counter, waiting to be filled.
He becomes the one lonely pair of shoes that finds its way into the backyard.
He becomes all of everything and everyone you have lost – longed for.
He becomes the 4 year old aching for her Papa; the teenager reaching for alcohol to numb the pain; the emerging adult looking, desperately. to fill the void she does not even know exists.
Grief becomes memories that make you smile, and rip your heart, in the exact same moment.
He becomes all that is, was and is yet to become.
Grief unravels you.
Grief exposes you.
Grief challenges you – pushes you to the edge of all that you know, and into the space of who you are yet to become.
He invites you.
He swallows you.
He asks of you what you think you do not have.
Grief creates a hole in your heart
The size of a crater.
You stand at the edge of what was ‘normal’; of what is now trembling ground; at the edge of unknowing, questions, uncertainty.
Grief reaches his hand out.
“Dance with me”, he says.
There is a glow that surrounds him.
There is a glow from deep inside him.
There is a glow extending out and into me.
“Swirl
… Surrender
…. Unravel”
And so I stand at the edge …
I stand, an observer of the intersection of life’s complexities, multiplicities, mysteries.
One hand over my heart. One hand extended.
I look Grief in the eye.
“I accept”
I jump.
I surrender.
I fall into my wounds, old and new.
I unravel.
Ahnung Way 