Little byes

I am stronger than I thought. I underestimated myself.

For as long as I can remember I have worried about the death and departure of the creatures near and dear to me. I’m doing it less than I used to, but I’ve logged countless cumulative weeks of life or more, calling up the emotions and imagined grief of what it would feel like to experience a loss – before it has ever transpired. Dark huh? The Spanish word is better, it seems to summon the mood more… oscuro. Muy Oscuro.

Today I will live the loss I imagined for so long, for real this time, when my beloved little terrier Murray is put to sleep. What a strange euphemism that is- it’s a wonder any of us are willing to go to bed at night being raised in a culture where we use that expression to mean death.

Right now, in this very moment he lay next to me, an animate, breathing child of Mother Nature with countless reasons why it makes sense for him to go on to the next world. Only just the other day did I agree that the compassionate thing to do was to release him. My mother thinks he’s been bravely holding on to life out of a devotion to me, having lost another best friend named Dad, exactly a month ago today. Oops there I go again, oscuro.

I used to hear of heartbreaking tragedy, and though I might quietly contribute comfort to folks from afar, I kept mental and physical distance from their grief. Maybe if I got too close it would somehow be contagious – its nearness could trigger a loss in me that I couldn’t fathom. Yet meanwhile, I’d spent my life micro-dosing myself with deep sadness- wondering if the summoned feelings would closely resemble the real ones when the time came. Twenty years ago, to gaze at a photo of my Dad would bring tears to my eyes, because I’d swell with love and simultaneously know there was a loss looming off in the distance. Sobs even, might come, fearing the separation that would surely manifest.

What a waste. But this is the cloth I’m cut from. I don’t know why I’ve done this, but my business mind would like to either monetize it or at least make it useful. It’s like a mutant form of empathy, that no one benefits from and is also weird.

I don’t dwell on it, and I don’t do it as much- maybe because I’m a little bit busier living. Out of my recent pain I can say that I’m surprised by my ability to function – I always thought I’d be a pile on the floor for a long time. That makes me hopeful. I’m also totally grateful, because the clear separation between us and the departed is that we still get to live. We’ll find out, or won’t, how they’re faring when we’re dead – but in the meantime, let’s do all the things they can’t. For us and for them.

Someday I may understand why I was made with the gift of imagining grief – so real my body can’t tell the difference. My inoculation didn’t make the void any better, in fact,  it’s just as I imagined. Twisting, deep and guttural pain that closes your throat when you don’t let the waves out.

You’ve got to let the waves out, no matter how oscuro.

-e