Grief, every day

 My dad died 4 years ago (4 years next week, actually), and losing him was much worse than losing Beatrix. I liked my dad a lot, though, and I have raised a passel of kids along with our sweet dog. She was very clearly my dog and not my child (although who knows how I will feel about a future empty nest dog). Still, there are a couple of ways my Beatrix grief and my dad grief are alike.

First of all, it’s the quotidian reminders that level me— especially when I am not expecting them. When I am making a sandwich with deli meat, no one is there to catch an extra slice of turkey, for example. We had steak on Jack’s birthday, and I had no furry shadow hoping for scraps when I cleaned the table. The living room is silent in the morning when I sneak out to grab a coffee cup. No one is excited to see Minnie and me midday when we come home from the grocery store. When I open the front door in the morning to get fresh air and extra sunlight through the storm door or the screen, no one clicks her way across the hall to see what our neighbors are doing. No one barked at the recycling truck this morning.

To this day, the thing I miss the most about my dad (besides, of course, having another person on the planet who loves me all the time no matter what— which I also miss about Beatrix— and is no small thing as you get old and lose your parents and grandparents, etc) is calling him to shoot the breeze whenever the urge strikes me— in traffic, because I am bored at work, during nap, etc, and also answering the phone when he called to talk about nothing.

The second way this grief is familiar is its awful finality. Never again. Her soft fur. Her goofy smile with her underbite and pirate teeth. Her terrible smell. I miss all of these things every day, and unlike most other things I miss—people who live in other cities, places I love to visit, those really good bagel sandwiches I ate when I got my MA— this absence is permanent, and that’s just too awful to contemplate all at once. Instead, it’s an organizing principal for my everyday EVERY DAY, which is also terrible, but more of a bite—size terrible.

One other way my dog grief is bound up with my dad grief: my dad knew Beatrix, and losing her is another way we are farther away from a time when he was alive and part of our everyday as well. I know it is sappy and maudlin, but as I sobbed with her head in my lap after she collapsed last week, I reminded her about my dad and assured her he would be there waiting for her— wherever there is. 

All of this is to say, I really miss Beatrix, but it is not even close to the worse grief I have experienced, so I am doing OK, all things considered.

SPRING IN MADISON: