For my very much loved brown and white great big long haired beauty, missed until we meet again. Just the best most beautiful kindest pet. Wish we had more time. Loved every moment of the past 8 years or so, hope you did too.
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“White Owl Flies Into and Out of the Field”
-- Mary Oliver, House of Light
Coming down
out of the freezing sky
with its depths of light,
like an angel,
or a buddha with wings,
it was beautiful
and accurate,
striking the snow and whatever was there
with a force that left the imprint
of the tips of its wings –
five feet apart – and the grabbing
thrust of its feet,
and the indentation of what had been running
through the white valleys of the snow –
and then it rose, gracefully,
and flew back to the frozen marshes,
to lurk there,
like a little lighthouse,
in the blue shadows –
so I thought:
maybe death
isn’t darkness, after all,
but so much light
wrapping itself around us –
as soft as feathers –
that we are instantly weary
of looking, and looking, and shut our eyes,
not without amazement,
and let ourselves be carried,
as through the translucence of mica,
to the river
that is without the least dapple or shadow –
that is nothing but light – scalding, aortal light –
in which we are washed and washed
out of our bones
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“The Rainbow Bridge”
-- Anonymous
Just this side of heaven is a place called Rainbow Bridge.
When an animal dies that has been especially close to someone here, that pet goes to Rainbow Bridge.
There are meadows and hills for all of our special friends so they can run and play together.
There is plenty of food, water, and sunshine, and our friends are warm and comfortable.
All animals who had been ill and old are restored to health and vigor; those who were hurt or maimed are made whole and strong again, just as we remember them in our dreams of days and times gone by.
The animals are happy and content, except for one small thing: they each miss someone very special to them, who had to be left behind.
They all run and play together, but the day comes when one suddenly stops and looks into the distance. His bright eyes are intent; his eager body quivers.
Suddenly he begins to run from the group, flying over the green grass, his legs carrying him faster and faster.
You have been spotted, and when you and your special friend finally meet, you cling together in joyous reunion, never to be parted again.
The happy kisses rain upon your face; your hands again caress the beloved head, and you look once more into the trusting eyes of your pet, so long gone from your life but never absent from your heart.
Then you will cross the Rainbow Bridge together…
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“Milkweed”
-- James Wright
While I stood here, in the open, lost in myself,
I must have looked a long time
Down the corn rows, beyond the grass,
The small house,
White walls, animals lumbering toward the barn.
I look down now. It is all changed.
Whatever it was I lost, whatever I wept for
Was a wild, gentle thing, the small dark eyes
Loving me in secret.
It is here. At a touch of my hand,
The air fills with delicate creatures
From the other world.
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“A Poem for Cats”
-- Author Unknown
And God asked the feline spirit
Are you ready to come home?
Oh, yes, quite so, replied the precious soul
And, as a cat, you know I am most able
To decide anything for myself.
Are you coming then? asked God.
Soon, replied the whiskered angel
But I must come slowly
For my human friends are troubled
For you see, they need me, quite certainly.
But don’t they understand? asked God
That you’ll never leave them?
That your souls are intertwined. For all eternity?
That nothing is created or destroyed?
It just is…forever and ever and ever.
Eventually they will understand,
Replied the glorious cat
For I will whisper into their hearts
That I am always with them
I just am…forever and ever and ever.
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“Digging In: Places to go after your heart stops”
-- Hank Lentfer, “Orion” magazine, Jan / Feb 2010
The first time I asked, both Mom and Dad said they wanted their ashes spread beneath the old birch in front of our family’s funky log cabin. Grandma’s ashes are there. Our friend Jody is there, too, along with several decades’ worth of dogs. I said I would chip a hole in the bedrock and cover them with dirt if they wanted their bodies buried rather than cremated. Hell, I told them, I chipped through rock for the outhouse hole; reckon I’ll be able to do it again.
Our neighbor Melanie wants her ashes divided between a blueberry-rippled stretch of tundra beneath the mass of Denali and a tide-ripped cove in Glacier Bay. I asked her husband, Kim, and the next thing I knew we were both laughing at some joke only the two of us found funny; I never did get an answer.
My friend Kathy wants to donate any useful organs and then have her ashes tossed someplace where they will quickly enter something alive – a salmon stream, meadow, or old forest. Her wishes, along with her husband Frank’s, are typed and stored in a file marked, “If We Die” – as if they might not.
Libby says she’d like her body dipped in chocolate and rolled in those little rainbow-colored sprinkles, with fresh berries of all kinds stuffed into all orifices, a wild rose tucked behind one ear, then launched to sea (by several strong and handsome young men) on one of the remaining ice floes. Oh, and a band playing “I’m Too Sexy for My Shoes” in the background. Nothing special.
My friend Jon did not say where he wanted to be buried before he slipped from the roof of his boat shed. His ashes live on a bookshelf in his fiancee’s house. Mary talks to him now and then and brushes off the cobwebs when she remembers.
Had Jon been born a seagoing Viking instead of a landlocked American, we’d have buried him with his armor and a hefty new spear in case he met with battle on the other side. Had he been born in Tibet instead of Boulder, the village rogyapa, or “body breaker”, would have dismembered his body and hauled the bits and parts to a rock pile for the birds to feed on. In Mongolia, Jon’s body would be kept in the yurt for a week, while the family prepared food for all the visiting spirits. They’d then slip Jon through a hole cut in the wall (to keep evil spirits from coming in the door) and take him to the outskirts of town before releasing the village dogs (intentionally starved for a few days) to gobble him up, bones and all.
But Jon had no atavistic tendencies; he was an adventurous, forward-looking kind of guy. Had he thought about it, he’d have probably been drawn to more modern options, like having a capsule of ashes launched into space to permanently orbit the Earth. Or maybe Jon would have contracted with the Eternal Ascent Society to have a helium balloon lift his remains to wherever the winds wanted them to go, though I’m guessing Jon would have gone for the cheaper, more fun option of having his powdered bones mixed with magnesium and packed into a rocket of fireworks. He could even choose the colors, go out with a bang.
Of all the crazy options, none seems more bizarre than what happened to my grandfather. By the time I got to the mortuary, Granddad was suited up, combed, rouged, pumped full of poison, and nestled into a satin-lined, waterproof casket. I helped carry the box of polished steel across the wind-swept graveyard. The spot alongside Grandma was covered with a strip of Astro-Turf. The pile of dirt had been hauled out of sight, and the grass around the grave actually swept clean. I peeked under a corner of the fake grass to make sure there really was a hole. After a few mumbled prayers, we left my grandfather’s casket on a stand suspended above the Astro-Turf-covered earth.
I had visited Granddad a few months before he died. I wrote his name on the waistband of his underwear and on the collar of his t-shirts before moving him into the nursing home. A few days later, while he chewed through some cafeteria toast, I asked him if he thought he would see Grandma when he died. “Of course!” he snapped, angered by the question. He put the bread down, stared at his plate, stayed silent long enough for the first tear to reach his chin before whispering, “I hope so.”
All these endless options seem like a desperate antidote to the optionless end. We want to believe that, in death, we can get to heaven or back to our spouse; that we can fulfill the dream of that perfect union with nature. Still, no matter how much mythology, religion, or ritual we toss off the cliff, the void remains. Perhaps all the primping, chanting, incense burning, bone crunching, and poison pumping are mere distraction; something to keep the living from having to sit quietly on the dark edge of uncertainty.
The rituals do help; they provide shreds of comfort in the lonesome space of grief. I watched my wife toss her father’s ashes from a mountain ridge. A gust of wind blew bits of bone back into Anya’s long black hair. We return to that mountain every year. Each climb breathes a hint of presence into the decades of her dad’s absence.
Anya wants her ashes to join her father’s on the mountaintop. How about if I cremate you myself, I ask? How about we skip the morgue thing and I just build a huge bonfire out of driftwood and toss you in? Whatever you want, sweetie, says Anya.
I’ve thought about asking our four-year-old daughter. She is probably old enough to answer, but I don’t have the strength to imagine her death.
Apologies in advance to those left to lug my two-hundred-pound carcass around, for I want to be buried on an island in a particular muskeg that happens to be a few miles from the nearest beach. Last month I hiked to the spot with my friend Bob so he’d know. I told him I wanted the grave shallow, so the roots of plants can wrap around my bones and return the borrowed molecules of my flesh to the hungry deer. Bob asked it if would be all right if he strapped a steel cone to my head and dropped me from a helicopter. He figures a free-fall from five hundred feet ought to auger me in all the way to my ankles.
My buddy Richard does not want to trouble his friends by asking to be hauled to some remote place. He figures chances are pretty good he’ll croak in a hospital, a long way from the wild lands he loves. Besides, says Richard, is that legal? He’s probably right. There are probably laws about stuffing dead people into holes wherever you want.
I recently asked my parents again. Mom has always strived to help others, so I am not surprised that she is thinking about donating her body to science. Sounds like I have Dad talked into letting me dig through bedrock at the old cabin. It’s not extra work, I told him. Letting go of our parents, or anyone we love, is the hardest thing we do. Paying a professional to handle the dead doesn’t make the goodbyes any easier.
I told Dad I’d be happy for the sore muscles, happy to trade a pickax and blisters for the sterility of a mortuary office. I want to fill the hole of where he used to be with the weight, smell, and texture of where he is going. Maybe my sister will be there to help. Maybe we’ll mix a few bottles of those rainbow sprinkles in with the dirt.
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