What happened to 2020? We were about to live into our 2020 vision and then, holy smokes. So many little catastrophes came my way, our way. It must feel like a rough start to the year for you too, I’m sure. For me, it all started with my dog, Spidey. Just a few days into the new year, I had to put him down.
He was very old, tired and sick. The time had been coming for a while; I knew for a year that his tumor would only grow and that we should give him a good life for as long as possible. It was a fun year of parks and beaches and walks that reminded him and me of his puppyhood. He affectionately became Grandpa Pups. The more I saw him slow down and age, the more I was reminded of my dad.
A dog and a dad
See, I got Spidey months after losing my dad, and he was the sweetest place to put my love. A love that was unresolved, still trying to forgive and get along, but so daddy-daughter tender. My Spidey was wild. He ran away every chance he got. He had terrible accidents because of his wild nature, much like my father in his lifetime. Run wild and figure it out as you go. Daring, reckless even.
Putting Spidey down opened a world of grief that was for him and so much more. I began to grieve many male relationships: the ones that were unsafe, unhappy, unrequited, the ones that looked in some way like my dad’s and mine. The beauty was that in my grief I found so much safety. It felt good to cry for my dog, as it did to cry over untended memories.
Paradise, just in time
Months earlier, I had planned a trip to my father’s home in Costa Rica. An honest-to-the-Universe paradise: every plant, every fruit, every vegetable, every animal, every landscape, every breathtaking view alive and well in this place. The timing was so perfect and complete that I could replenish my energy and nourish my aching heart before another spirit-rattling challenge hit us all. Every moment in Costa Rica was preparing me for the hard times that were to come.
Moments of intense uncertainty, devastation and fear can be buffered by the medicine of warm oceans and cool rivers. The big bright skies and songbirds of that trip serve me now in times of need and worry, because in those memories lie portals to the love my father felt for me. An opening. A realization of a truth long ignored: I am loved. Proof of that was in every ripe papaya I ate, the late-night skinny dipping, the long days in a shady hammock. It was in Spidey greeting me at the door, lying on my feet and showing me, slowly and patiently, that it was his time to die. All the lessons of life and death, tangled up in a dog and a dad, serving me so graciously now.
A reservoir of love
Life will hurt in a variety of ways, but it is also so sweet, all of it made full by the growing pains we are brave enough to face with an open heart. In hard times, remember how loved you are, even in the hurt. Beneath it is a reservoir of love.
Moments of grief are portals to all the unhealed parts of ourselves. As we bring them to the surface with full awareness and love, they too can be healed.
