Making room for grief and healing

Last week's post had a reference to worrying about my dog.

At the time of that writing session we had a vet appointment. We ended up going to the emergency vet earlier and finding that her lungs were full of cancer. It was while writing that I decided we couldn't wait, and began to know what would happen.

Preparing for this post had another long journal session. Not everything that I needed to write for myself will matter for everyone, but I hope that what I write here can be practical for some.

Even with my belief in the afterlife, and that these separations are not permanent, they hurt. It's reasonable that they hurt. It's easy to try and skip to the comfort part, but that really only makes things worse. This is all part of being human.

As humans, we sometimes struggle with seeming contradictions, like the opposing needs to mourn and to be comforted. That can lead to the attempt to skip over mourning to get straight to healing, but it might also result is resisting the healing because of guilt. 

We have to accept that uneasy balance.

Actually, I am leading to a point of healing about something parental; we should get there next week. For now, there are three things about Adele from which I want to try and pull some lessons.

The first relates to the disruption in what you are used to.

I can feel very sad hearing about the death of someone that I care for but haven't seen for a while; we all have. With someone who has been playing a larger role in your life, there are more frequent reminders.

I first noticed this with our first greyhound, Jake. He was always at the door when you came in or out, and he did that for eleven years. Going in or out after he was gone left a sharp pain for a while.

Adele was my roommate for eight years. Every time I see her bed, or when it is time for her pill but I don't need to give it to her, or when we don't need to put the stick back in the door because she didn't go out into the back yard, I feel her absence. It has been less than two weeks; this is still pretty fresh. 

It probably makes sense to let the bed go, but that empty space will still be noticed. That just takes time. In other instances, there may be more changes to make. 

One of the great practical things about human healing is that you still need to eat and drink and go to the bathroom. That pulls you along -- maybe even forward -- whether you like it or not. For things that we can avoid, we may need to make changes but keep putting it off.

If you have lost someone who always did the cooking or the vacuuming, what are the new ways of taking care of that? Did you always used to sit with them? Are Tuesday nights suddenly free?

One of the books I have been thinking about is Crying in H-Mart by Michelle Zauner. After her mother's death, her father would call about the loss and his devastation, and then eventually he moved to Thailand. That seemed extreme, but sometimes things need shaking up. Truthfully, some shaking up already happened; now you're trying to regain equilibrium. 

It makes sense to look at not just the relationship, but the patterns that were built around it. Ideally, examining that can be a part of honoring the relationship. It also is accepting the right to heal. You will feel pain, but it shouldn't always hurt that much

One thing making Adele's loss a little harder is a certain sense of finality. This house has not been without a dog since 1978. At times, there have been as many as five dogs, but there was only one cat then. Now we have six cats, which could make introducing a new dog tricky.

Most of those cats and dogs were not exactly premeditated. I suspect at some point there will be at least one more dog who needs us, and we will take that dog in, because that's who we are. We are not in a position to seek out a new dog though, and there is some pain with that.

There are relationships you don't get back, at least not on this side, but there are roles that are still there. You can find other people who will care about you, listen to you, give you good advice, be glad to see you, need your help with things... not as replacements, but as an expansion of your connections. 

That is not easy, but it's beautiful.

It does require being willing to love more, which also means being willing to lose again. That takes courage, and effort, but it's worthwhile.

Speaking of that dog and six cats... I would worry sometimes about the cats getting more attention, because they can get in your laps or sit next to you and purr. Actually, when Jake first came to us, he got more attention than Laddie (collie) and RK (sheltie) because he asked for it more. With that worry I made sure to remember to talk to Adele and pet her and to not neglect her.

That's the thing that helps most with the guilt: we don't ever know how long we will have an animal, but while they are with us we can make their life good, and that's what we do.

That part of healing works better if you think of it before the separation.

Again, this is hard. I keep thinking of needing to reach out to people, and then finding other things I need to do. Then I will text three friends in one night, perhaps an over-correction, but that led to one long phone call with one friend, and getting together with another. Even if we can't spend as much time as we would like, we can keep the interactions that we do have kind.

Finally, just in case anyone is offended at comparisons between humans and dogs and cats, you're right, it is very different. My pets can never mess me up like a family member can, and I cannot choose to have any family members put down (which is probably for the best). 

Nonetheless, some of the emotions are the same.