Few words truly capture how emptiness arrives with loss.
We said a long and tearful goodbye to old dog a few short weeks ago, though it feels like yesterday. Her departure, like the sun moving behind clouds on a stormy day, marks tremendous change in our whole universe. My most loyal companion, fellow adventurer and wanderer, is now elsewhere, while I remain here, feeling lost in an uncharted place barely recognizable.
The land transforms while the dam remains broken. Our pond drains, day after day, leaving mud, rocks, debris and inevitable pollution stemmed from road runoff and careless people.
We recognize how these two events, the loss of Sunny and our pond’s transformation, symbolize the inevitable cycle of life, a tender balance of love and loss. Neither consciously chosen necessarily, but rather demanded by nature in its amazingly powerful ways humans cannot fully understand nor control.
As Sunny grew weaker, she fought each and every gesture of help, with the exception of a gentle nudge here and there. Inevitably, required help appeared more often, leaving old dog angry, frustrated, and perceptibly, a burden on those she loved more than life itself.
Naturally, we question why humans allow suffering to linger, why holding on to what we know somehow becomes more important than the integrity, the decency, of a meaningful existence.
Struggling with the idea of abandoning old dog in her pain, night after night while she paced the floor and gave in with a mournful collapse, hearing her breath slow as she ate, and lifting her from stair to stair, I wondered why she held on.
And I realized, it was for me.
When our beavers abandoned the pond back in the late summer once the dam breached, they did not leave because they no longer cared for their home, they left because they knew that as the pond roars out, there is simply nothing they can do. It’s a helpless situation, a futile effort, and stands beyond repair.
For now.
Before me stood the chance to accept old dog’s fleeting quality of life as the dam’s situation mirrored her own. Life poured out of her and found itself suspended between our world and the next.
The only thing left to do was let go, and it took a hurricane of grief to do it, with a little nudge from Sunny herself.
Sunny leaving us began a shift, an evolution. Just as the storm broke our dam and drained the water, the eruption of heartache over loss opened the door for introspection and stillness.
While the beavers wait for the opportunity to return to a place they love, they do not end their work. Winter arrives in a matter of days, and much like the absolute need for me to continue moving in this life without old dog, they work to survive, discovering meaning and purpose today, tomorrow, and the days to come.
Moments alone, staring at the sunset, breathing purposefully after a long day, and in wonderous dreams of a rejuvenated spirit bounding through grass and forest, I welcome Sunny home.
