loss

a year ago today i said goodbye to someone very important to me. some of you know that story - some don't - no matter - now it's a year later. i am a numbers girl - i remember numbers and dates forever - and anniversaries are in my subconscious, in my bones and blood, and they bubble up and burst. often, i am confused by a wash of inexplicable emotion until i recall that it's an anniversary - sometimes of something i haven't thought of in a long time.

the first time i noticed that was on the anniversary of the death of a dear friend - those of you who knew me in college will remember that in the spring of my/our junior year, a dear friend and my grandmother both died almost within a month of each other. it kicked off a very confusing time for me, because i'd always been able to control my emotions prior to that, and suddenly, my emotions were out of control and i couldn't even parse, couldn't even understand the experience. i think at the time i formed some new counter-productive habits for reacting to feelings and for dealing with my reactions (as opposed to the old counter-productive habit of not dealing with my feelings at all), but i didn't know any better, and my one counseling session that i went to at the time was helpful but definitely insufficient.

anyway, exactly a year later i was hit with floods of grief and tears before i recalled that Jessie had died on April 13. I still remember the date though the echoes have faded with time.

9/11 was another anniversary that hit me - that first year later, i felt nameless terror as though something else horrifying was going to happen the next year on that date (most of you know that i did have close personal connections to the events of that day).

and tonight i felt a knot of things that i unraveled to find an anniversary again.

.... so much loss last year...

last spring, our dear white husky died, sometime around this time (oddly, that's a date i've forgotten). not too long afterward i took our remaining dog, the sweet collie, for a long walk along the lakeshore, admiring the beauty of the willows that were just budding out in their long golden-green swaying strands. two months later that dog had died too. bittersweet. bittersweet. good memories remain precious, no matter what, but tinged with loss, they do become bittersweet.

last weekend we took our new dog for that same walk, to enjoy the willows budding out, and the next morning he woke up lame. he is a little better today because we went back to the vet yesterday and amped up the painkillers quite a bit. but he has been disabled and whimpering all week, and until yesterday he seemed to be continually degenerating. we have been terrified of what might happen next.

so much loss. so much loss. yet my life has been blessed with so much abundance, too, for which i am grateful. and you can't have one without the other, i guess....