You may notice that the picture of the tea above was taking outside. It was taken on the top of Mount Sanitas in Boulder. We had a beautiful hike up (the Southeast Ridge, for those familiar) and a lovely hike down (by way of Lion’s Lair) and the weather was perfect and the sun was perfect and the tea was pretty good and it was very difficult, not for reasons of hiking.
Right now, we are doing a thing that is both hard and necessary.
Necessary, because immediately after Pele passed away last June, I was swept up with a need to get things done: to try to get
The Earl who Isn’t out, to do what I could for Romancing the Vote, to prepare to go to Japan and climb Mt. Fuji. In some ways, I was glad to be busy. It meant I didn’t have to think.
But the thinking didn’t go away just because I didn’t do it. I don’t know if I really mentioned how hard our last month with him was. As he lost pieces of ability to seizures and his brain tumor, he needed more and more help from us. It meant that there was an entire month where he was the first thing on my mind.
I was afraid to do work, for fear that I would go into hyperfocus and wouldn’t hear him if he needed me. My husband and I took turns leaving the house, scheduling everything from doctors appointments to grocery shopping with each other. We took turns sleeping. We were very lucky to be able to rearrange our lives to do this.
But basically, I got back from Japan and the absence in the house, no longer masked by a thousand separate tasks, hit me pretty hard. I spent the first few weeks trying to avoid it, and finally realized that wasn’t good or healthy.
So instead, I’ve been trying to honor that emptiness and honor his life: to recognize when I miss the jingle of dog tags, to open myself up to a silence that rings a little too loud, to let myself feel sadness and grief and happiness from Pele’s memory.
As part of that, my husband and I have been doing all the hikes we’ve done with Pele. This is a lot of hikes—we are going to be at this for some time. But we get to the top. We stop and remember that time when we got here with him and we rested under that rock and let him drink water, or that time he kept looking at me like “come on, why are you so slow?”
We laugh a little bit. We cry a little bit. We remember.
It’s not easy. I don’t think there is an easy way to lose someone who is a part of every day you live. I don’t like talking about it because then people ask me if I’m okay, and yes, I’m okay. I’m getting things done. I’m moving. I feel sadness sometimes and I feel happiness sometimes and I am trying to be open to the things I am feeling, because from personal experience, not feeling things doesn’t make anything better.
I am feeling right now that I miss my dog.
