How my North Star Taught Me Love.
I met Ahnung in October 2008 at Red Lake Reservation in northern Minnesota.
She had recently given birth to eight puppies. She was haggard and worn down and carried the unmistakable marks of a difficult life. She had no front teeth. Later I would learn she had survived a gunshot wound. Whatever had happened before we met had left scars across her body.
And yet… there was something about her eyes. Soulful. Wise. Something I couldn’t name. Something I just felt. She was in an outside kennel at the shelter where she was being cared for by a Red Lake elder, Karen. Karen led me to Ahnung’s kennel and said, “there is something special about this one.” Karen was right. I could not take my eyes off this haggard black and white pitbull mix dog. It was as if she could like through my eyes and into my soul.
I remember thinking, she has a story. I didn’t yet realize she had come to help me remember my own. One month later, she came home with me.
I named her Ahnung, the Ojibwemowin word for star, because I wanted to honor where she came from.
I had no idea she would become my North Star.
North Stars do not keep us from walking through the darkness.
They simply help us find our way through it.
Or that she would gently teach me what I had never learned after losing my Papa at four years old.
How to stay.
At the time, I thought I was rescuing her. Years later I understood she had been finding me all along.
In July of 2011, just two and a half years after she came into my life, Ahnung was diagnosed with mammary cancer. Eight months later, another diagnosis followed. A rare and aggressive cancer. The prognosis was poor. What I didn’t know then was that those final two years would become some of the most transformative of my life.
There was nowhere left to run. Cancer has a way of changing our relationship with time. Tomorrow suddenly feels uncertain. Ordinary moments begin to glow. Fear and joy arrive holding hands. Grief sits beside love. And each sunrise quietly asks, will you be there?
Every early morning walk to the water became more precious.
Every sunrise.
Every sunset.
A gift of another ordinary day.
And before Ahnung left this world,
Grief found me.
I thought she had arrived too early. I would later understand …
she was simply introducing herself.
Grief Knocks
Grief walks up to your front door. It’s not time yet, you say. Yet she keeps on walking. She walks past the rose bushes in your front yard. She walks past the boulders you’ve carefully laid in her path. She walks past the detours you’ve planted to steer her around you and away from you. This time She is focused. And the rain is pouring and thunder is booming as the earth shakes and vibrates.
“Please,” She says, “I need shelter. I need to come in — if only for a moment. “
Reluctantly, I let Grief in. I offer her a cup of warm tea. We sit by the fireplace.
“Why have you come?” I ask. “It’s not yet time.”
“It’s time. I am by myself tonight. Tomorrow I may not be alone. I may bring thousands of Me and there will be nothing you can do. We will break down your door. We will drown you. “
She pauses for a moment.
She strokes my dog Ahnung.
“Sit with Me now.”
We share stories. We cry. We laugh. Ahnung lays between us. A calm breeze permeates the room.
“It’s time for me to go,” Grief says.
“But we have so much more to share,” I say.
She smiles. She rises, and Ahnung walks alongside her. Ahnung stops at the front door as Grief turns around to face me.
“I will return. I may come alone, or I may bring a friend. Now, go be with Ahnung.”
We melt into the breeze coming through the open door.
Grief Returns
I thought that first visit was enough. I was wrong.
You came to visit me again last night.
Most days I see the clear blue skies, I catch my breath when I look up into the night skies, and I walk with my feet planted solidly on our earth.
Is it too much to ask for the World? For the Universe? For eternity …. For strings of days to never end with my sweet Ahnung? Is it too much to ask for Cancer to step to the back of the line? Is it too much to ask for the Love, the Wisdom, the Resilience, the brightness of Ahnung to shine on forever?
Dear Grief, I respect you. I honor you. I know you have a place in this world and in this universe. I know it’s not my place to negotiate with you. Yet when the earth shakes below my feet and when the ground moves and the tremors knock me off center, I desperately grab onto Ahnung. Last night, it was just an earth tremor. How many more tremors will I walk through with Ahnung? How many more tremors can the ground beneath us withstand until the inevitable quake on the horizon arrives? How many more tremors will I be blessed to endure before the ground beneath us splits open and swallows Ahnung? And will I be swallowed too? Will I be swallowed by the pain of You, dear Grief, as I desperately hold onto my soul, my Ahnung, as she slips away from me?
How? How do I accept, with grace, this Final Walk?
Grief looks me in the eye.
“When the earth shakes,
and the ground beneath you falters
look up into the skies.
Look into Ahnung’s eyes.
Look up at the North Star.
I gift you with the tremors.”
“Ahnung is in your heart. You are One. She is in your blood. She is in your bones. She is in the Earth. She is in the Air you breath. She is the Fire inside of you. She is in the oceans, the rivers and lakes, the rocks. When she is gone, she will live on in you.”
I hold onto Ahnung as the earth beneath us stops shaking. I bury my face in her thick neck. I hold her. I hold her as tightly as I can. I hold her again.
Grief Arrives Carrying Bags
Grief knocks on my door again.
Ahnung greets Her at the door.
This time she arrives with bags in hand.
“It is time.”
She opens the door, takes my hand and leads me outside.
We get down on our knees. She places one hand over Ahnung’s heart and one hand over my heart.
And she repeats to me what she said months earlier:
“Ahnung is in your heart. You are One. She is in your blood. She is in your bones. She is in the Earth. She is in the Air you breath. She is the Fire inside of you. She is in the oceans, the rivers and lakes, the rocks. When she is gone, she will live on in you.”
I look into Ahnung’s eyes.
Grief takes my hand, “It is time. We must begin the walk.”
In the dark, we are guided by the north star and the beat of our hearts.
My New House Guest
On August 25, 2013, as the sun was setting, I held my Ahnung in my arms, surrounded by friends, as her heart stopped beating. The weight of her body fell into my arms. She was gone. Physically gone. My heart wanted to stop breathing with her.
Grief, you took her place.
I have floundered in the darkness.
You again remind me of what you said to me in your many visits:
“Ahnung is in your heart. You are One. She is in your blood. She is in your bones. She is in the Earth. She is in the Air you breath. She is the Fire inside of you. She is in the oceans, the rivers and lakes, the rocks. When she is gone, she will live on in you.”
Grief holds my hand.
Walk with me.
Close your eyes.
“When I visit you in waves know that I come with your Ahnung. Ride the waves with us. Open your heart … in the cracks and shattered pieces of your heart, let the light in, let the water in … you must also let the sharp edges cut you. Sink into the waves. Hold onto me, hold onto Ahnung. One day I promise you, you will ride the waves with us and I will leave you. You will learn a new dance and a new way to Be with Ahnung.”
I invite Grief into my house. I set up a guest room for her.
“How long will you stay?” I ask.
“You will let me know. Listen. Listen to your heart, to Ahnung’s heart. There is a beat, a strong heart beat in the silence and in the spaces.”
We sit by the fireplace and I offer her a cup of tea.
Into the night …. We tell each other stories. We sit in silence.
“Ahnung is with you.”
I look at my new friend, “Teach me. Teach me to listen in a new way.”
Two Hearts.
Two Souls.
One Love.
Years have passed since those conversations. Grief no longer arrives carrying suitcases.
Sometimes she simply sits quietly beside me while I drink my morning tea.
Sometimes she says nothing at all.
Sometimes she arrives in the wag of my pup Ishkode’s tail.
The smell of autumn leaves.
The rhythm of a taiko drum.
The stillness beneath the surface of water.
The beat of my own heart.
She kept her promise.
She did not stay forever.
But neither did she completely leave.
She became part of the landscape of love.
Only now do I understand what Ahnung was teaching me all along.
I thought she was preparing me for her death.
She was showing me another way to live.
For years after losing my Papa, I believed love required protecting myself from loss. So I kept moving. Achieving. Leaving before I could be left. Running from grief long before it ever had the chance to find me.
Ahnung never asked me to stop loving because goodbye was coming. She asked something much more difficult. She simply kept loving.
One more walk.
One more sunrise.
One more ordinary Tuesday.
Nothing extraordinary.
Everything sacred.
Little by little, I realized she wasn’t asking me to stay. She was showing me how. She lived neither in yesterday nor tomorrow, but completely inside this moment. Her body carried the scars of her past. Her spirit never stopped choosing the present.
And, little by little, she invited me to join her.
I thought she was teaching me how to lose her. She was teaching me how to love. How to keep my heart open, even when she knew it would one day break. How grief and love do not stand opposite one another. They walk together.
When we make room for grief,
We make room for love.
We pour them both a cup of tea.
We listen.
Only now do I understand that Grief was never trying to teach me.
She was introducing me to the one who could.
Again and again she pointed me back to Ahnung.
My North Star.
To her eyes.
To her heartbeat.
To her quiet way of being.
The first day we met, I thought I was looking into the eyes of a dog who had survived.
Years later, I realized she had been looking into mine.
She had never promised to spare me from darkness.
Only to help me find my way through it.
And somewhere between her heartbeat and mine…
the four-year-old sitting in the corner of a hospital room finally stopped running.
She sat down beside Grief.
She poured her a cup of tea.
She cried the tears she had carried for decades.
Not alone.
Together.
My mother spent that December afternoon pleading with my Papa,
“There is no light.”
She wanted him to stay.
It would take me another forty years to discover that love had been quietly leading me toward a different kind of light all along.
Not one that asked me to leave.
One that invited me to stay.
Her name was Ahnung.
