We are strange animals. We can imagine things that we are unable to actually comprehend. Until life shows us what death is, absence is, we can imagine it, but we cannot comprehend it.
Macheath died at 4:25 PM on August 28th, 2012.
Until then, I did not know I was alone. Until then, I had not been alone. She and I were living one life together, and so her disappearance is the ripping out of part of my self, my ongoing life. I look for her at my feet, and she is gone forever.
I will never be as blindly lucky as I was when I found her. I cannot hope for it.
6 comments:
I am sorry for your loss.
Thank you. Grief is a bitter experience, and I don't do it well. I'll be back to writing about cranky things soon.
Deepest condolences, d0de. There's no pain quite like it; not even a human loss is quite as bad on some level. Very very sorry for you.
You know this:
Near this spot
Are deposited the Remains of one
Who possessed Beauty
Without Vanity,
Strength without Insolence,
Courage without Ferocity,
And all the Virtues of Man
Without his Vices.
This Praise, which would be unmeaning flattery
If inscribed over Human Ashes,
Is but a just tribute to the Memory of
"Boatswain," a Dog
Who was born at Newfoundland, May, 1803,
And died at Newstead Abbey Nov. 18, 1808.
The pain is great because our dogs are living our lives, not their own. They donate their days to us. We donate our half selves to them. We together become one creature, one completed thing, and when they die, as they must, then a portion of what we have been and currently are is violently torn, and we miss them not like a person, but like a phantom limb.
All day, I have seen and heard and felt her.
I know that providence is known only in past tense. When I got her, I thought it was a mistake, that it was an unlovable dog, and I felt like one of those bad mothers who did not love her child. I was wrong. The comfortable years, the soul to soul wedding of dog and person, cannot be spoken of hyperbolically.
I just miss her now, and there are acute moments that I must not remember and yet will always come across of her last seconds that can snap any day into shards.
Very sorry to hear that your buddie has passed. For anybody who truly has pets as family, it's a terrible loss. And I think you're absolutely right to be planning to get a new puppy right away. Your old friend can never be replaced, obviously, but new happy memories can be made.
Best wishes,
Keith
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