today has been hard.

Yesterday I slept most of the day after sitting at the fire for a couple of hours, talking, processing, feeling, healing, receiving care and feathers and counsel.

Today I am worn.

I walked a mile. the world felt gray. I could not find my smile. I have been entangled in such a mesh of feelings. I wrote a memorial for Ursa and posted it. I've been trying to find the words for days. Writing it made it real. I feel scared and sick and panicked all over again. I poured through dozens of pictures and posted many. After posting all of it, I felt as if I'd been rolled through a grinder. I'm exhausted, scared, nauseous, and fully under the press of grief.

My belly is waving like an unsettled sea.

So many people are writing the kindest comments, sending such love and empathy. I reply, because it touches me. holds me. reminds me I'll live through this. But, in the midst of replies, I realize I am full. I want to vomit. It is all too real. She is gone. She is gone. She is gone. I cannot retreat to a corner of denial. I'm in the bright light of reality and I can't bear it. I'm panicking. I hope that I sleep tonight and find myself in balance again in the morning. That I can cope with the world without her.

I am so strangely afraid.

 I quit drinking alcohol when I was 26 years old. I went over my top. Those stories are for another time. It wasn't a long, titrated process to quit. I didn't go to AA meetings. I didn't have to avoid being around it. I just quit. I was lucky that my body let me do that. Grace. I get that.

I was, I came to realize, self medicating in a major way. Continuing therapy and monitored prescription medication were some of the ways I was able to move forward and still, barely, function in life.

Years later, countless hours of therapeutic support and process, crawling on my hands and knees through glass and grit, building community, facing my demons with courage, etc etc...I stand here today. Some days are rougher than others. Some things knock me flat on my face. Some things still defy any courage I can muster; they best me and I am still learning to be okay with that.

This week has grabbed my ankles and pulled me down hard and fast. I've been swallowing water at the floor of the sea. The sky seems so very far away. The light is difficult to perceive. The sounds above me are muffled and undecipherable. I'm reaching into my pockets, fumbling for stones, emptying what I can. Grasping a small pebble, feeling it's smooth and soft roundness, wrangling it from my tangled clothes, and letting it fall from my fingertips is a small victory. It is the realization that I am not at the bottom of gravity. I have made some progress on my way back up to the surface. Then a wall of water leans into me and I go limp again, submitting, hands up, surrendered. My heart feels crushed by the weight of grief. I bargain for a sip of breath; just enough to get me through the moment.

I craved a margarita on the rocks yesterday. Today the craving persisted. I managed myself out of the house today and went to the Nature Park. I walked as if the entirety of the ocean filled my clothes; wet and heavy and slow. I had to sit. I lay down on a bench. I stared at ants, caterpillars, wasps. I pressed my hand into the damp earth. I smelled the day after rain stream. The birds sang and talked to teach other. The squirrels chattered at each other. People walked by with their dogs. Most of the dogs wanted to investigate me; me, this dark swirl of sadness. Their people pulled at their leashes and they were distracted to other curiosities.

I read from Francis Weller's "the Wild Edge of Sorrow", said "yes, this", "yes, this", and "yes, this" while I dragged a line of pencil under his words. Rumi's "birdwings". Yes, this. The journey of sorrow is a constant movement between expanding and contracting. The bird's wings opening and closing. And here I am,  the hinges of my wings fixed in sadness. My wings are tethered to my spine, immovable, unbudgeable.....having had enough of the cost of loving. My muscles and sinew are roiling in pain. I cannot move my arm. My scalenes hold fast; not allowing breath to move through my neck, my shoulder, my lungs, my ribs. My heart gasps for air. 

I laughed with Linda on the phone. I told her I watched "I think you should leave" and it was medicine. The ridiculousness was a balm. 

I craved a margarita on the rocks. "But, I don't drink," I thought. Then I thought, but I can drink. There's nothing that says I can't. So, instead of being a sad sap and sitting alone at the bar of a Mexican restaurant at three in the afternoon sipping on a margarita, (Though, footnote: as a "middle aged woman" it's a true story to say that it wouldn't matter if I did. A middle aged woman drowning her sorrow in a margarita at a bar of a mexican restaurant in a shopping plaza next to IHOP is not something that anyone would notice, let alone judge. Middle aged women, in this society, have the super hero power of invisibility and, if registered, we are generally regarded with a casual indifference at best. I could wear bunny slippers, cheeto stained sweat pants, and go braless in an oversized T shirt with my oily hair pulled into a top knot and I promise you, no one would bat an eye)....I called my mom and asked her to be my DD so I could have a margarita on the rocks in the middle of the afternoon at the shopping plaza Mexican restaurant next to IHOP and Urgent Care. I mean, what's pathetic about that?

It's anticlimactic. I got a little buzz, but mostly I got tired. After eating a portion of my Veracruz platter, some chips and salsa, and some churros....I came home and crawled into bed.

But, it's good to have a little veneer of numbness for now. To not be so water logged. To not be so aware that my wings are pinned to my side. To not, for a half a second, be so consumed with the emptiness of life without my Ursa.

 I'll try a little every day. A little at a time.

Yesterday, Dr. Cook called me. I'd asked my mom to call the office and let him know; I didn't want any calls from them for routine shit like "it's time for Ursa's 6 month checkup" or anything like that. She told him what happened. I saw the call coming in from All Pets Animal Hospital and I almost didn't have the courage to answer. I'd forgotten I'd asked my mom to place that call. I answered.

"Shari, this is Joshua Cook. I heard about what happened with Ursa and I wanted to reach out and tell you how sorry I am..."

I am sobbing. Hearing bits and pieces. thoughtfulness. kindness. empathy. he said "I know she was your daughter..." your heart dog. your whole heart. You loved her so completely. She was so loved and happy with you. you did everything you could do. you did the right thing.

even as he asked for permission to talk with Dr. Lee at Upstate and try to piece the pieces together.

What happened? Did something get missed?

I tell him I cannot bear if he discovers something was missed; something we could have done. At the place we are now, the place of no return, I cannot bear it. 

I cried for a while after I got off the call. 

I am missing her so much.

Today I had to go the chiropractor and Physical therapy. Since the moment of her death, my right shoulder, arm, neck...all of it...folded like a pocket telescope, tucked itself into itself. I am in great physical pain and immobility. My heart is trying to buffet itself from the force of the storms of loss and love. But, I am locked inside with the pain.

This journey will transform me. there is no doubt. I am already not who I used to be.

 I am avoiding sitting down to write. Unusual and usual for me. I see I have not been here, at this blog, since last October. It is now August. 

The words that normally spill off my tongue, especially in times of great pain, are backing up, crouching, and shimmying down the drainpipe of my throat. Laying low in the caverns of my gut. Contorting their fat bodies into the smallest places of my bones. My muscles wrench me into myself; they pull into a centrifugal storm and bid me to stay still. Speak no more. I am bartered into compliance: to accept the shrinking is to have the closeness of dissolve. And numbness is something to savor. The pain of love is so unimaginable.

I don't know what happened. Please don't ask me how she died. I can't even utter the syllables of her sweet name without a deluge of grief. I cannot retell the loss.

I look for her everywhere. she is in the grass and wind, the mile of road we walked daily, up and back, past the gauntlet of rushing dogs. all tails wagging but still a jolt of adrenalin and pull and gentling every time we did it. She loved it. And, when the dogs (and their people) moved out a week or so ago, she would still whine for them, plant her feet into the ground and look at me: "mama, I want to go see." so, with the house and yard empty, we would go see. She finally got to smell the yard, walk the edges of the fence, have a look around, open the mystery box. It made her happy.

Luna cries. no, more accurately said: Luna is wailing with grief. I comfort her as I can. We are all so deep in this pain. We took her on a walk today. Put a leash on her and then I nestled her in a large handbag. She settled in, poked her head out, took in the wind, smelled the neighborhood. When she curled down into the bottom of the bag, I headed back home. That was enough. We didn't walk the usual route. I can't yet. I just can't.

I sit at my altar, morning and night, as I have done for many, many years, without fail. In the last few days, I've lost my prayers. I am mute. So I sit with a lighted candle and I flood with tears. I wail with grief. She usually sat next to me. She never missed it. I could be doing prayers very late at night, after she'd tucked herself into sleep (she'd get sleepy by around 11pm or 12 am), and she'd still rouse herself to join me. She'd curl up to my left, let me rest a hand on her back or bum bum and I'd pray. Luna would join at times, too, tucked onto the crease of my right hip. Nothing made me happier than these settled moments of presence. Now, it is impossible to settle with gaping vacancy surrounding me. I consider that my tears are prayer enough right now. It is all I can muster.

I am grateful. I had 13 years with the most amazing dog in the world. There is never enough time. There would never be a time when I would be ready to say goodbye. It was the most painful moment of my life. I spooned her, she laying on a blanket on the floor, me on the floor itself, my face pressed deep into the thick of her neck, smelling her, taking her and trying to breathe her spirit into me. There was never going to be a time when I would be ready. She was growing weaker. It was the choice point of doing a huge intervention that would likely only forestall another huge intervention that would statistically only lead to losing her on the surgical table, without me holding her, without me whispering love, without her mama and papa loving her through. It is an impossible choice to make. It is an impossible choice to make when my heart has already been torn to pieces, I am afraid, I am desparate, I am in pain. How on earth do I trust my instinct? How do I trust the small place that knows the right answer, the answer that holds wisdom, not fear or agenda? It is all faith at some point. And when faith is thin, my body is wrestling with fight, flight, freeze, collapse....bargaining, denial, anger, confusion, pain, anxiety, fear....my God, it feels like a stab in the dark. This most important life or death decision; the one that will take my precious Beloved from this world or leave her here with a hope for a miracle or a terrible gamble that will prolong and inflict more pain and suffering and terror...how does one make that decision?

There was not enough time. 

Three weeks before she went to the vet and it was determined that she had gas. Even xrays were taken. nothing remarkable was found. Gas.

Two weeks ago she had a major dental surgery. I panicked throughout the entire day. Twelve hours (four in surgery). but, she made it through. She had a good recovery. She seemed bright and vitalized as the days unfolded. 

The day before we rushed her to the emergency vet again, she had a follow up check with the vet. She was bright and vitalized. Dr. Paul was hopeful. She was doing great. Nothing to worry about. 

The next day, Saturday, she was bright in the morning. We went on our morning walk, she ate her breakfast heartily. By noon, she was off. By the afternoon, she wouldn't eat. By midnight, we were at the emergency vet in Flat Rock. I thought it was gas. The vet was grim when she came back with the xrays. A mass had been found. A big one. And it had ruptured. I reeled. I fell to the floor, nearly passing out. I flooded with panic. I couldn't breathe. Because of COVID precautions, Robert could not come in. I wanted to die right there. I don't know the details of what followed but, at some point, Robert was allowed in the room and we had a choice: euthanize or go to Greenville's Upstate Emergency Vet where the specialists are. We drove the hour to Greenville and were seen right away. The outlook didn't improve. She had to have an ultrasound in the morning. We attempted to sleep in our car. It was 4 am. There was an hour or so of trying to get a hotel, which we did, we went to the room, opened the door, someone was clearly in it, the tv on, bed pulled down, food on the nightstand. We went back to our car. the hotel was full. it was the twilight zone. It was like we were being fucked with on every possible level. Grace seemed to abandon us. I did not feel held. I felt ripped apart. Robert was ripped apart. I threw up out the car door on the wild ride from the hotel back to the vet. Robert hit the median. We were all over the place. I couldn't sleep.

I have to take a break. Writing this is killing me all over again.