Tag Archives: death

Telling My Son His Dog’s Death Story While Driving

He was home from college and rode with me
to pick up his younger brother
from soccer practice.

I explained what we thought was a seizure,
what happened to her body,
how she couldn’t move.

I told him how when she was able,
she walked slowly to all of her
favorite places in the house.

She even climbed the stairs somehow,
stepped onto his platform bed,
and lay curled up on his mattress for a loooong time.

I told him how his sister and I sat with her on the couch, lay with her on the floor,
how restless she was, and after hours and hours the way she struggled,
how she ran flopping and twisting toward the back door

how her legs slid out behind her and she lay down on the cold oak floor
how I brought the blankets
how I lay there praying for all of us and sending her reiki

the way dad helped me at the end
when I was scared
when I couldn’t touch her

when her breath was going
and then when it was gone
and the way his sister sobbed.

When we stopped at the sign I looked over at him
and saw his tears. I saw the boy he was
and the man he is and he said,

“‘…but when his parrot died,
he cried and cried…'” and I told him
how those same lines had echoed in my mind.**

We finished the drive and I told him
the way dad had wrapped her in a blanket,
how the suffering was over.

And then we sat feeling it all,
his younger brother coming to the car,
the two of them wrapping up together crying

making it real
making life true
finding death and together finding ways through.

** The lines my son and I remembered as we grieved – independently of each other – are from a children’s picture book by Mem Fox titled Tough Boris. We read this book so many times together when he was small. The narrator describes how all pirates are tough, among many other things, and, that all pirates cry. It was a gorgeous moment – in the book and in our lived experience – to realize that these lines came to us in our grief, bubbled to our surfaces, and resonated deep in our heart spaces. Thank you for reading this, and for sharing in our grief.

Poems & Ashes

It’s so cold today that we gather inside, light her candle, and read Thich Nhat Hanh’s teaching A Cloud Never Dies. 

I can’t read my poem out loud, so each person reads it on their own. 

Then we all go out in the yard and take turns spreading our dog’s ashes together, wherever we feel called.

I spread them beneath my magnolia tree under the branch that extends far out over the grass.   The branch that holds her windchimes now. 

My daughters do the same.

My eldest son chooses the open space where they play, and my youngest goes all around the sliding board.

I am spreading the last of her ashes beneath the wild bushes where the cardinal flew – just behind our firewood, because it feels right for her to be with what transforms.

This is my morning, writing and releasing, preparing a ceremony for our beloved.

We do not keep any of her ashes

except the ones on the wind,

the ones we breathed in.  

I didn’t know I had a dog

Who’s dog is it?
It’s the family’s dog, I laughed.
Oh? Oh, okay. Well, that’s good.

Nine years later my heart heaved.

A few hours later the cardinal came,
and I stood staring out the kitchen window
broom and dustpan in my hands collecting all your hair.

and my heart heaved.

We lay on the floor with you
on the couch
on the floor
on the couch
on the floor with you all the hours of the end of your life

and I didn’t know
and I knew
and I didn’t know
and I knew it was the end
and my heart heaved
and I was scared.

And we all loved you in our own way
in your life and in your death
we all loved you and you were our family’s dog
for sure. But when it was your time and you breathed heavy and hard at the end

something changed in me.

Riding in the passenger seat, my stomach tight and my eyes swollen,
and my chest heaving, I spoke:
I guess she was my dog – and I didn’t know
and she was my dog and I didn’t know
and I didn’t know and
I
didn’t
know.

I was always yours.
And you knew.