Goodbye Parker

We buried my little dog Parker in the backyard yesterday. He was 19 years old, deaf and blind and no longer able to stand up on his own. Though it was clearly time, still, it felt wrong to parts of me. He was my baby and I had to make the decision, watch him go and decide what to do with his body. It was raining yesterday, and lowering his little box into the wet ground felt fucking awful. I've spent the better part of the last two decades trying to keep him dry, healthy, warm and safe. And now I'm leaving him in a cold, wet hole in the backyard. And then walking away.

My Mom Parts ache. Pausing to listen to them, I hear "you didn't save him." And I allow that truth to blossom. I wasn't able to save this little life I loved so much.

(Tears.) I love him. I was committed to mothering him. I did my best. (Self-compassion.)

I've been getting up in the night these past months, sometimes multiple times to help Parker find his water or make his way outside to pee. When his toenails would hit the hardwood, I'd be instantly awake. This morning at 4am I heard the sound of solitary notes, dissonant and a little haunting. The muted, hollow tones from our neighbor's wind-chime, suspended just a stone's throw from Parker's new grave, sounding, resonating into my wakeful, empty mom ears. Parker's out there.

It hurts. I still love him. He's wet. No toenails.

Though parts of me want to get away from it, I know better now. The grief tugs at my feet and I let it pull me fully into its current where I can feel the undertow of more, other, older griefs surrounding and pulling at me now. I take a breath and go under. I hurt so much, but there's curiosity here. Courage too. Hurt feels heavy and sharp and everywhere. But I want to know how this hurt feels. It's precious to me. So much hurt. So many ways I couldn't change things. A kind of aloneness that sears into my center.

Parker was the glue when things fell apart, traveling between houses after my divorce, companioning my little daughter. And before that he knew my parents, who are gone now. His little 12 pound body stored the love and the pats from their hands and hearts, long gone now. He traveled alongside me in my evolution from young LA person through pregnancy and birth and into motherhood. He came to all my therapy offices, made so many houses into home for us and bridged multiple families together. He was always here in my daughter's life. Today will be the first day she's ever known without him.

With any death comes an opportunity to open up and tend to parts of us who hold grief. Those poor grief-stricken parts are usually pretty locked up in our bodies, pushed out of the way so that we can manage and function in this world of ours that doesn't really do death or loss or grief. Sometimes tears flow easier for pets than for people. What a gift to let it flow. Grief is so human, a way in which we all understand each other very intimately.

"Grief and love are sisters, woven together from the beginning," Francis Weller

In our fresh hurt, we are leveled, real, stripped of all agendas. Trustworthy. Vulnerable.

We need to be held by each other. We need to feel the fabric of our oneness as something we can rest against, in times of fear and loss. I feel held by the care of the kind people around me and by the majesty of nature - and it makes a difference. I've endured many losses in the absence of feeling held and safe. There's no comparison. My wish for all of you is that you feel held as you grieve. We are all so closely connected.