Reacquainted with Grief, Pulled Toward Life

This journal is a bit more personal in nature. As a therapist, this can be a bit sticky… but I believe that pain and loss is one of the most significant connecting and growing points of our human experience, so here goes.

Toward the end of January, we had to make the seemingly impossible decision to put our dog down. His name was Six and he was a rather unusual character. As I say, he was wired for survival…. easily, the toughest, most resilient animal I have ever known. He was a difficult dog and known by many of my clients and patients over the years for his stories and examples or lessons learned. Six made it to 18 years old (our best guess because he was a stray/rescue) and lived life every moment of every day. He liked to have a job to do (among his favorites: barking at mail trucks, UPS, Fed Ex, school busses and golf carts as well as policing hugs and any form of fun).

He was rigid and fearful, with a lot of rules. Yet, when you managed to earn his trust, there was nothing quite like his love and faithfulness. He was uncontrollable and forever did his own thing. He became more dependent as he aged, fighting arthritis and eventually cancer in his mouth. He graciously let me take care of him, picking him up to carry him up stairs, helping him up after he would fall and couldn’t regain the traction needed to get himself up, all the way to bathing him after an accident or spoon feeding him in his last days. His loss devastated me. It still does.

I am no stranger to loss, but I am fortunate that I have not experienced significant loss through death since my early 20’s. Through our loss of Six, I became reacquainted with grief. It is terribly painful and draining. The sadness and pain are messengers that tell me just how much Six meant to me, how unique and special he was. What a gift it is to care about something or someone so much that life is forever changed for the better as a result. Yet, the pain left me a bit quiet and lifeless. At first, the only thing that seemed to help was taking my other two dogs on long walks… so we did a lot of that. Another thing that helped was the love, care, kind words and understanding of friends. As a result, my own capacity for empathy and compassion increased. I generally find I am more able to be present with people through their pain and I am reminded that our pain and suffering can be uniting and beautiful.

Now, life has returned to “normal” and I find myself incredibly drawn to life. Because what else is there? Death points us back to life. It highlights how precious it is and that abundant life is available to us as long as we are living. None of us are strangers to grief, loss and pain. It’s an unfortunate reality of our humanness. Yet life and death are intertwined. An end leads to a new beginning. Life goes on. I used to think that phrase “life goes on” was invalidating and cliché… but I found great comfort in it through my own grief this time around. It is the end of some things, but not the end of everything. It has propelled me to focus more on the beauty of life and to stay connected with the people, activities and places that give life.

I hope you’ll do the same.