I love trees. I know many trees personally, and I like most trees more than I like most people. My wish, when I die, would be to be buried with my family, with a tree planted near my grave. Hopefully, I could be buried in a cardboard box, or the flimsiest wooden coffin, so that in a few short years, the roots of the tree could infiltrate my grave and intertwine with my bones. Over decades or centuries, I could surrender my molecules to the tree and be incorporated in its greatness and beauty.
The family members I would most like to be buried near are my adopted children, my dogs. So far, I have buried three dogs on private property, in a woodsy corner where the topography makes it unlikely they would be disturbed by future development. The three dogs buried there, Porter, Tess, and Kelsy, were the best children, the best friends I could ever have hoped for. They changed my life, and I buried a part of myself with each of them. They have two hemlock trees planted close to them, along with trilliums and strawberries, and over the years, my dogs will become those trees. I talk to their trees on a regular basis. I probably can’t be buried near them, as I would wish, due to short-sighted ordinances, so I may have to settle for being cremated and having my ashes scattered near their hemlock trees.
Death is an important part of life. It even helps define life. The iron in my blood would not exist if not for the life and violent death of a distant, ancient star that cast its elements out into the galaxy where they could be accreted into our solar system. Life would not be possible without death. While I am not in a hurry to die, I am perfectly happy to join my dogs someday, in the earth. It would be nice if someone planted a tree for me, but either way, I know that most of my body will be incorporated into a forest one way or another, over time.
As comfortable as I am with death in the abstract, I have not been able to remain philosophical when I have lost my closest family members, human, feline, and canine. Having lost grandparents, friends, cats, and dogs, I thought I knew what grief was, and that I could deal with it in a natural and normal way. Sure, I was sad, but it is the way of the world, and life goes on. Then I lost Kelsy. Before she died, I just assumed that I would be the usual sort of sad. I didn’t know that the grief I felt for her would be an order of magnitude larger than anything I had experienced before. Did I love Kelsy more than Porter or Tess? I can’t really be a good judge of that, but Porter and Tess were equally great, loving, friendly, happy dogs. The difference with Kelsy was probably that she was my working partner, my search dog. When we were working a scent trail, we became one, more than just a team, more than partners. I saw the world through her eyes. We worked together, she was there at every meal, of course, she slept beside me every night, and we played and hiked and went on adventures together. Also, I wrote two books that featured her prominently, one fiction and one nonfiction. Kelsy wove through my life, and my entire identity was tangled up with her. She has been gone fifteen months, and some days I am okay, and some days I find it hard to perform basic functions because I feel a deep sense of injustice, rational or not, that she was taken from me.
The family members I would most like to be buried near are my adopted children, my dogs. So far, I have buried three dogs on private property, in a woodsy corner where the topography makes it unlikely they would be disturbed by future development. The three dogs buried there, Porter, Tess, and Kelsy, were the best children, the best friends I could ever have hoped for. They changed my life, and I buried a part of myself with each of them. They have two hemlock trees planted close to them, along with trilliums and strawberries, and over the years, my dogs will become those trees. I talk to their trees on a regular basis. I probably can’t be buried near them, as I would wish, due to short-sighted ordinances, so I may have to settle for being cremated and having my ashes scattered near their hemlock trees.
Death is an important part of life. It even helps define life. The iron in my blood would not exist if not for the life and violent death of a distant, ancient star that cast its elements out into the galaxy where they could be accreted into our solar system. Life would not be possible without death. While I am not in a hurry to die, I am perfectly happy to join my dogs someday, in the earth. It would be nice if someone planted a tree for me, but either way, I know that most of my body will be incorporated into a forest one way or another, over time.
As comfortable as I am with death in the abstract, I have not been able to remain philosophical when I have lost my closest family members, human, feline, and canine. Having lost grandparents, friends, cats, and dogs, I thought I knew what grief was, and that I could deal with it in a natural and normal way. Sure, I was sad, but it is the way of the world, and life goes on. Then I lost Kelsy. Before she died, I just assumed that I would be the usual sort of sad. I didn’t know that the grief I felt for her would be an order of magnitude larger than anything I had experienced before. Did I love Kelsy more than Porter or Tess? I can’t really be a good judge of that, but Porter and Tess were equally great, loving, friendly, happy dogs. The difference with Kelsy was probably that she was my working partner, my search dog. When we were working a scent trail, we became one, more than just a team, more than partners. I saw the world through her eyes. We worked together, she was there at every meal, of course, she slept beside me every night, and we played and hiked and went on adventures together. Also, I wrote two books that featured her prominently, one fiction and one nonfiction. Kelsy wove through my life, and my entire identity was tangled up with her. She has been gone fifteen months, and some days I am okay, and some days I find it hard to perform basic functions because I feel a deep sense of injustice, rational or not, that she was taken from me.
On the harder days, what keeps me going is the five dogs I have now. I certainly am capable of enjoying life, and maybe, no, definitely I appreciate my dogs more, knowing how much I miss Kelsy. I see Kelsy in them, and Kelsy is kept alive, in many ways, in the daily nonsense of my crazy dogs. In a recent picture, my three working dogs, Fozzie, Komu, and Tino, had their snouts at the crack of the window, snuffling for treats. In this picture, Tino is mostly in shadow, just a nose, teeth, and the glint of an eye. When I look at the picture, I see Kelsy there on the right, and I have to tell myself that it’s really Tino. As different as Tino is from Kelsy, he really embodies so much of her.
I realize, of course, that my deeper love of my current family, my dogs, is setting me up for a mountain of grief in the future, perhaps a shadow that I won’t be able to get out from under. I am not going to let that stop me from loving them like crazy. Knowing that my children will live such short lives, and that I will have to bury each and every one of them some day, it’s a burden that’s always there. I don’t know what the purpose of grief is, and I would not tell you how to deal with yours. For me, since the death of my Kelsy, grief is a part of me, coloring everything I do, but I would not let go of it. I could not forget about Kelsy if I tried, and I wouldn’t try if it were possible. Her life enriches me, like a distant supernova. Everything I learned with her makes my current life, and my work, possible. I think of her every day, and mostly I am happy about her, and I know that every day I will feel the pain of her loss. Probably, people who know me get tired of me mentioning her or sharing her pictures, because it makes them sad, too, but I hope the reminders of Kelsy also bring them joy.
In my work, searching for lost family members, I am confronted with grief every day. Sometimes it is for a cat or dog that is still missing, and the grief is hard to sort out because they don’t know if they will ever see their loved one again. Although I certainly sympathize with them, I can’t dwell on their grief when I need to focus on the actions we can take to find that dog or cat. Too often, the search for the lost ends with finding remains, or evidence of their death. Again, I completely sympathize with those who have lost an adopted family member, and I hope I don’t appear unfeeling if I try to acknowledge the loss while avoiding becoming too emotional. This is a job I need to do every day, and I don’t know if I could do it if had to spend a significant portion of every day in tears. It is hard enough to bear the loss of Kelsy without having to carry the full weight of each lost son or daughter. If I could advise them on how to deal with grief, I would, but I don’t think there is a right way. Certainly, there are books and support groups and different philosophies for dealing with grief, and I encourage anyone to explore those options if they think it will help. In my own grief, I haven’t yet found a source of advice or solace that would bring it to an end. It just is. I know it will come upon me in waves, and I will get through it and keep on going.
When Kelsy died, some people mentioned the rainbow bridge. They were trying to be kind to me, and I couldn’t really tell them that I find the rainbow bridge idea offensive. It shunts animals off to some secondary purgatory, where they have to wait until a human dies and escorts them to heaven. Besides being somewhat absurd, it doesn’t fit with my experience of cats and dogs as being equal, fully deserving of the highest respect. Apparently, though, many people are comforted by the idea of the rainbow bridge, so who am I to take that away. I don’t know that I can help people deal with their grief, or even say that I understand their version of grief. All I can say is that I have experienced my own, and that I certainly sympathize, even if I can’t always show it.
When Kelsy died, I buried her next to Porter and Tess. As I smoothed the sandy soil over her, and gave her to the earth, I picked up a small, unremarkable stone. Every day since then, I have kept that stone in my pocket, and it is now smooth and dark from being turned in my hand like a rosary. Everywhere I go, every search we do, every adventure I take with my dogs, I stop and kneel at some point, and I collect a small stone that I will bring home and add to the collection, to build a cairn for Kelsy, made up of 4,007 stones, one for each day I had her in my life. Each day, I see pictures of Kelsy, I remember our adventures in life and in fiction, I talk to her tree, I gather a stone, I feel grateful for the life she gave me, and I feel grief for what we lost. Some days the grief is a twinge of pain, and some days it is an open wound. I am not expecting I will ever be on the other side of this grief until I join her. Kelsy is a part of me, intertwined in so many ways. Eventually, one way or another, I hope to be buried beside her, and the hemlock roots winding through her bones will find me and take me too. There’s nothing I would rather be. I imagine two giant hemlocks on the edge of a forest, centuries from now, and all I ever was, all I ever loved, was taken up into those trees, sighing and whispering in the wind.
I realize, of course, that my deeper love of my current family, my dogs, is setting me up for a mountain of grief in the future, perhaps a shadow that I won’t be able to get out from under. I am not going to let that stop me from loving them like crazy. Knowing that my children will live such short lives, and that I will have to bury each and every one of them some day, it’s a burden that’s always there. I don’t know what the purpose of grief is, and I would not tell you how to deal with yours. For me, since the death of my Kelsy, grief is a part of me, coloring everything I do, but I would not let go of it. I could not forget about Kelsy if I tried, and I wouldn’t try if it were possible. Her life enriches me, like a distant supernova. Everything I learned with her makes my current life, and my work, possible. I think of her every day, and mostly I am happy about her, and I know that every day I will feel the pain of her loss. Probably, people who know me get tired of me mentioning her or sharing her pictures, because it makes them sad, too, but I hope the reminders of Kelsy also bring them joy.
In my work, searching for lost family members, I am confronted with grief every day. Sometimes it is for a cat or dog that is still missing, and the grief is hard to sort out because they don’t know if they will ever see their loved one again. Although I certainly sympathize with them, I can’t dwell on their grief when I need to focus on the actions we can take to find that dog or cat. Too often, the search for the lost ends with finding remains, or evidence of their death. Again, I completely sympathize with those who have lost an adopted family member, and I hope I don’t appear unfeeling if I try to acknowledge the loss while avoiding becoming too emotional. This is a job I need to do every day, and I don’t know if I could do it if had to spend a significant portion of every day in tears. It is hard enough to bear the loss of Kelsy without having to carry the full weight of each lost son or daughter. If I could advise them on how to deal with grief, I would, but I don’t think there is a right way. Certainly, there are books and support groups and different philosophies for dealing with grief, and I encourage anyone to explore those options if they think it will help. In my own grief, I haven’t yet found a source of advice or solace that would bring it to an end. It just is. I know it will come upon me in waves, and I will get through it and keep on going.
When Kelsy died, some people mentioned the rainbow bridge. They were trying to be kind to me, and I couldn’t really tell them that I find the rainbow bridge idea offensive. It shunts animals off to some secondary purgatory, where they have to wait until a human dies and escorts them to heaven. Besides being somewhat absurd, it doesn’t fit with my experience of cats and dogs as being equal, fully deserving of the highest respect. Apparently, though, many people are comforted by the idea of the rainbow bridge, so who am I to take that away. I don’t know that I can help people deal with their grief, or even say that I understand their version of grief. All I can say is that I have experienced my own, and that I certainly sympathize, even if I can’t always show it.
When Kelsy died, I buried her next to Porter and Tess. As I smoothed the sandy soil over her, and gave her to the earth, I picked up a small, unremarkable stone. Every day since then, I have kept that stone in my pocket, and it is now smooth and dark from being turned in my hand like a rosary. Everywhere I go, every search we do, every adventure I take with my dogs, I stop and kneel at some point, and I collect a small stone that I will bring home and add to the collection, to build a cairn for Kelsy, made up of 4,007 stones, one for each day I had her in my life. Each day, I see pictures of Kelsy, I remember our adventures in life and in fiction, I talk to her tree, I gather a stone, I feel grateful for the life she gave me, and I feel grief for what we lost. Some days the grief is a twinge of pain, and some days it is an open wound. I am not expecting I will ever be on the other side of this grief until I join her. Kelsy is a part of me, intertwined in so many ways. Eventually, one way or another, I hope to be buried beside her, and the hemlock roots winding through her bones will find me and take me too. There’s nothing I would rather be. I imagine two giant hemlocks on the edge of a forest, centuries from now, and all I ever was, all I ever loved, was taken up into those trees, sighing and whispering in the wind.