It’s Thursday in Australia, and since this blog is supposed to have an international flavor, I’ve decided to quit defering to the Western Hemisphere “dateism.” 😉
I’m dedicating this thread to puppies (and other species) past. Especially the one’s whose passing broke our hearts – as was the case with Ursula, pictured as a pup below.
What I wrote at her passing:
Requiem for a Bitch
At 3:45pm, February 19, 2001, Ursula — dog, friend and companion extraordinaire passed into the great mystery, surrounded by those who loved and cared or her. Hers was a conscientiously humane crossing–a time chosen. One that hopefully took her to the end of her ability to enjoy life, but not beyond.
As she sat stoically in the back of our Suburban, trusting — as always — that we would do what was needful for her, with her tenuous hold on life falling rapidly and blissfully away from her, the sky let loose the rain it had harbored all day — heavenly tears, to echo our own. And if we are, any of us, more than mere flesh, it was then that her spirit rose, running full out with her tail high and her face wearing the laughing grin that she did in better and younger days.
When everything divine was female — suckling, nurturing, harsh but loving, then the great Goddess sometimes took the form of a bitch. Like the she-wolf who founded Rome, millennium before the patriarchal pretenders Romulus and Remus stole her mantel and turned the world upside down.
Ursula was a Bitch, a Goddess triumphant. Supremely arrogant, and loving, and unquestionably right. She protected our animals, and us, with a fierceness that never wavered, even when we mistakenly asked her to do otherwise. She tolerated and loved us, and all humans for the imperfect beings we are, and yet she loved us perfectly.
As only a dog could, she loved to work. That we were a registered therapy dog team was a fiction; she did all of the work, bearing with equanimity the ear pulls and hair tugs of small or age-worn hands. Children in crisis shelters, whose lives had been torn asunder, sank blissfully, primal, into her unwavering confidence, love, and ability to abide. With the elderly bed-ridden, she was gentle to a degree that utterly belied her size and strength. When she stood up to place her front feet on a hospital bed, she balanced her immense frame with acrobatic grace, as she placed her feet–one at a time–to avoid fragile arms and IV tubes. Those who witnessed this feat had never seen the like of it, and may never yet again.
I love her as I have loved no other animal. That her life was cut short by a brain tumor, is a cruelty that I can only abide by honoring all she tried to teach me. I owe her that — to take into myself her spirit, and carry on her life of unconditional love and acceptance, and to guard fearlessly, as she did, all who are entrusted to my care.
Eulogy for the Living
I wanted to thank everyone who expressed her kind concern for us in the wake of Ursula’s death.
We buried her Tuesday, on a south facing hill, in the center of a natural stone circle. Several ancient Oaks edge the site, a beautiful blood red Manzanita — a survivor of the fire two years ago — holds the slope above her. In this, the rainy season, water in a nearby cataract cleft plashes and races, making it’s way to the pond, joining its timeless voice to that of the reverberating frog chorus.
The spot is isolated and serene, but not so far from the road that she can’t bark at the cars if she’s so inclined.
We dug her grave with surprising ease through layers rock and clay, and the rich red soil that made California the Promised Land for my agrarian grandparents and so many others like them. The sky was drizzly, but a clear band of light gave relief along the horizon.
After about an hour of digging, we got her from the yard and brought her as close as possible in the truck, carried her the last 50 feet, and finally lowered her into ground — still wearing the harness (with her name tag) that she had worn since her surgery in July, which we had used to give her a steadying hand these last few month. Roses from the Valentine’s bouquet went with her. The loose dirt resisted shoveling, so we scrabbled, dog-like, with our hands to replace the ground above her. The grassy loam that I had carefully peeled up and set aside went back on top.
When I visited her today, I had a hard time picking out the spot, so thoroughly had we, and the rains, erased our trespass beneath the mantel of our Mother.
Einstein said, “time exists so that everything doesn’t happen all at once.” But he was wrong, everything does happen all at once. Yesterday, today and tomorrow all hit me at once. My grief for my dog is my grief for my father is my grief for ultimate loss of my one true love that will shatter time and life itself. This awareness is too much, too boundless, and I flee from it, knowing that if I run fast enough, eventually I will be able to re-erect my boundaries — as I always do. But now, in this eternal moment, I touch the endless with a hesitant hand — one no longer made of flesh, but of stars.
