Grief in the past had always taken on a macular degeneration quality—fuzzy in the middle, peripheral—never dead-center, never in my house. My dog’s death was more a baseball bat to the knees.
My father and sister died within the last two years. They were sick, it was expected, it hurt; but it felt natural. My connected-at-the-hip furry companion died so suddenly, that I hung my head low and I averted my eyes as though a precarious god had assembled his snipers in trees and on rooftops waiting: be it an errant lightning bolt, a behind-the-wheel drunk, or a traveling blood clot. Just like the horrible grief I had carried when my friend died in a car crash when we were seventeen.
I spoke to the vet on Jack’s third day of hospitalization and what would be his final moments of life. He had diagnosed IMHA (an auto-immune disorder in which his body attacks his red blood cells). Still, the vet felt that after receiving a blood transfusion, my dog would “turn the corner,” would eat again. I joked at the time that it must be hard to be the vet’s dog—giving up his blood involuntarily. By the time I googled IMHA, my cheerful, five-year-old black lab mutt’s heart had stopped beating. At the same time as Ted Kennedy’s. Now my grief was shared.
That afternoon I sat on my patio under a canopy of hot shifting winds and sobbed. I asked for some sort of sign, some confirmation, and at that moment from above my peaked roof, a Mylar balloon sped by—its shiny silver side blinking some sort of Morse code. Furious at this cheesy display, I lifted the middle finger of both hands and offered it up to the heavens. Then, using only one hand this time, directed it to the window of the old lady next door who may or may not have been watching my lawn-chair emotional hemorrhage.
I, my husband, and my two teenagers grieved in our own self-contained way. Cards, flowers, and emails arrived which helped a little. And as a writer, I walked around with a marble notebook which I filled with my gruesome ramblings and called it my Book of Grief.
I watched no television, read no newspapers, and just melted into tears. Constant tears. Acute, overwhelming, unsustainable tears. Nobody was more surprised by this than me. When I finally caught up with the Kennedy’s collective grief, it was on TV, at the long funeral procession in the cemetery at dusk. I sobbed as I watched them on the slippery slope with the casket. I made a point to listen to the priest’s eulogy—thinking in some Joan Didion way that maybe he would speak to me also. I wanted soothing, hopeful words that would carry peace to me on a tray and I’ve got to say—I got nothing.
Then it hit me—Ted loved dogs and had always lived with their companionship. With that, I could grasp a visual. Never fully onboard with the whole bright light, staircase theme, still, I could see Ted whistling to my ninety-two pound, helicopter-tail-waving doggie (a stray again, he would be waiting for someone I thought), patting his knees and saying, “C’mon, come with me!”
As I write this it is three weeks later and I’m finding a balance between anger, acceptance, and the unannounced tears that still occasionally flood me. His ashes are home (our eerily quiet home) in a white cardboard box, marked Jack. I’ve read that the actual energy of love can never leave. And it is to that hope I cling—as the snipers temporarily withdraw their weapons.
