I carry so much grief, it doesn’t feel like I could carry anymore.
My dog Bella passed peacefully in the grass behind our house yesterday morning. It has been a little over a year since our daughter June died from neuroblastoma. I carry so much grief, it doesn’t feel like I can carry anymore.
I sat beside Bella after she let out her last breath, petting her still, warm body. Stroking her ears one last time that were just as soft as the day I took her home as an eight week old puppy.
“I’d like to snip one of these ears off and keep it,” I told the vet as he palpated Bella’s stomach in search of an answer to her recent suffering. His eyes grew wide and I realized I was probably the first bereaved dog mom that has ever said that. I assured him I was only joking. But was I? People keep rabbit feet for good luck, so perhaps an ear wouldn’t be too much of a death token. I imagined drying it like a pigs ear in the warmth of the sun. I’d take it out when I was desperate for comfort on my darkest days.
The truth is, I can’t imagine never petting Bella’s perfect ear’s again. For the rest of my life. That’s it. I’m going to have to live without Bella and her utterly perfect, satiny, black ears because they were being taken by death too. Ears that I had examined so many times for ticks or lumps. Ears that reflexively shuddered when I reached out to touch them. Ears that perked up when someone walked through the door.
Since Bella died I’ve found myself walking through the house muttering “I can’t believe she’s gone.” Every turn of a corner reminds me of her. When I come home and the house is quiet, I’m reminded she’s no longer with me.
To carry on with my life, I have to find some good in Bella being gone. The only good I can think of is that she’s no longer in pain. That’s something that is positive and good. It also hurts because it reminds me that before she died, she was in a lot of pain. She was on medication, but it wasn’t a perfect concoction.
It’s a reminder that for many months, Bella lived while actively dying. It reminds me of June. The memories of June dying are now closer to me than they have been since she died a little over a year ago. Today time does not exist. It doesn’t seem fair or right or just. June is gone. Now, Bella is gone too. Twelve, almost thirteen, glorious years spent together. The two of us kept one-another company when there was no one else around.
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Bella has seen so much. She lived with me through years of milestones. Bella was two when I met my husband, she was five when we got married and bought a house. Bella was seven when our eldest daughter was born. She was almost nine when June was born. She was almost twelve when June died. She was almost twelve when our son was born.
Bella was the only constant when we brought each of our children home from the hospital. She was there to greet them first. She met all three of our children before anyone else did. She was gentle, loving, caring and protective of our family.
Now, here I am on the same stained navy blue couch I sat on for months after June died. I have a cabinet filled with medications for Bella. They sit in the same cabinet where I kept June’s medications.
Bella’s food sits in a Chewy box next to the front door. It arrived the day before she died. I haven’t unpacked it. Damn autoshipment. I’m wondering if they’ll take it back. I don’t care about a refund, I just want someone to come take it out of my house, like the nurse did with all of June’s medications after she died. These aching reminders physically won’t go away until they are removed. I can’t remove them, and it hurts so much for them to stay.
I‘ll no longer hear Bella’s nails on the wood floors when I walk to a different room in the house. Bella won’t be laying on the bath mat outside of my shower door. She won’t be the first one I talk to when I wake up in the morning. She won’t be the last face I give a squeeze and a kiss at the end of the night. I no longer need to rush home from whatever I am doing to feed Bella or to let her out. I won’t need to make plans for her when we go on vacation.
Bella is no longer part of my physical life, yet her bed which she laid on for years, is still on the floor at my feet. Every so often, I bend down and lift the corner of it to my face. I breathe in Bella as I press the bed into my nose, just as I pressed June’s blanket to my face and breathed in June after she died. Scent eventually wears off. I’ve already learned this once. It wasn’t easy. I keep Bella’s bed close by.
Death is the final part of life. It is something I’ve spent hours and days of my life since June died trying to understand, but it’s elusive. I’ve learned some things about death in this last year, but only in relation to death, not really about death itself at all. Is death the culmination of everything we have experienced in life? The grand finale? A final montage presenting to us all the good and the bad we have endured or inflicted upon others? Is death the beginning of something wonderful for those who have passed on?
I’ve learned that there is a gaping hole left behind when someone in our life dies. The hole is symbolic of a place that someone once inhabited. Sometimes, there is more than one hole. A hole in the brain where continual memories, feelings, and emotions can be drained into. It’s more of a sinkhole. One that constantly begs for more. So you feed it more memories and flashbacks, but it’s never satisfied and keeps you stuck.
Death leaves a hole in the heart that will always exist and never be filled by anything else. I imagine my brain and my heart by the time I am old. Holey. The rewiring of veins or neurons has occurred throughout my life, so I could keep on living, very holey, sometimes lonely, grief-filled days.
I often wonder why my elders don’t talk more about death. Perhaps they do amongst themselves. Or perhaps they don’t. I don’t know. I’d like to hear what others have to say about the losses they have suffered. Perhaps because I would feel less alone in my own losses.
When a person shares with me that they have lost someone they love, they bestow me with a great knowing that I did not have. It creates a warm connection that before did not exist. When someone shares with me they lost something they love, I can see the holes in them and for a moment it feels like they’re shining a light into mine. When they share how much that person meant to them and I watch them smile as they reflect on that person, I too can feel the love they had for that person. It is in that moment that I realize what it means when someone says love is never lost.
I’ll instinctively call to Bella at the end of dinner when my son’s high chair is surrounded by a million little bits of steak, carrots, and potato. I’ll say “Bella! Come clean up the mess!” and then look over at my daughter sitting at the table eating her dinner, now staring at me wide eyed like she’s seen a ghost.
I can imagine her little voice saying, “Mama, are you coo-coo? Bella went to heaven.” I’ll smile because her smile is infectious and because I know I can always get away with calling Bella to clean up the mess as a coo-coo Mama. This is the beginning of creating new memories with Bella. Just as we have done with Junie.
Now that Bella is gone, I have to carry her with me in a way that feels just as physically backbreaking as lifting her seventy-five pound body into my car to take her and the kids on one last trip to her favorite place on earth: the beach.
I feel the weight of both my girls lives on top of me. The weight of Bella’s life draws the experience of losing June closer to me. I know this weight will shift and become more evenly distributed as the time wanes on. I want it to, but I don’t.
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