Remembering Omi's Exit

We have done several things here at home, to mark the place where our little red tornado held us aloft and made us better humans.  At least, I hope to be.  Roses on her bed outside and her collar and leash on her bed next to Jade.  There is a great emptiness and that will last for a long time.  She exited a week ago and yet, I lose track of time and feel myself hugging my heart to stop the pain.  It continues.

A book I picked up again is a remarkable story about an amazing author and her journey though darkness.  I have picked it up through my parent's deaths, a divorce and too many dog friends.  I find it in my hands again, as I walk through these days leading into Fall, knowing that I may never understand what has happened to my life until something changes radically.  Omi's death has set me on my haunches wondering where that blow originated and how her dogness softened the edges.

"We cannot walk out of the darkness unless we are first willing to immerse ourselves fully in it. It demands a leap of faith, for there are no signposts along the way that will guarantee our safe return. There is only a dark tunnel, leading to who-knows-where...We know, intuitively, that we may never come out of the blackness.  But there is no choice, for to be fully alive, we must die with our losses. This is the moment in time when we succumb to death, so that we may live."
-Companion Through the Darkness, Inner Dialogues on Grief by Stephanie Ericsson

The Other Side Of Night

The silence surrounds Jade and I, as I sit on the couch, early AM before dawn, reading, searching the “spiritual” books for an answer after a night of restlessness and bad dreams. Omi is gone and with her, the light and the energy of her complaining and her joy.  Jade watches me with his black eyes in that white, Greyhound face, to see how I am, and I watch him, watch me and wonder, how long do we have together?

 

The silence enters uninvited as we reach Monday, all over this world, the working stiffs of our neighborhood, so full of SUVs and trucks and people plunging off to their important work lives while we sit here, at the corner, mourning Omi, sharp and true and painful , getting ready for our solo walk down to the creek.