Getting Your Grief On

The Female Rogue

Benny, our beloved Shih Tzu, died on May 1^st. Let me correct that: we had him killed. That sounds harsh but it was us who took him to the vet on May Day morning when his legs would not hold him up, his brain wobbled him in circles and bumped him into walls. He fell into his water dish when he tried to drink. My husband then held the dish right below his mouth, and he lapped his last water. His last meal, it turned out, was organic hamburger I sautéed just for him.

A stroke, they told us.

Mr. Benny was at least 14 years old. A rescue who brightened our lives, and taught our hearts, every single day, what love is all about. We had him and he had us for 11 ½ years. I called him a zillion names: Benny the Thug (not prissy at all). Benny Biscuit (no idea why), and Buddha Belly because I loved to hold him in the crook of my left arm, his body leaning against my heart, and his tummy facing out, all soft and furry. I would place my right hand on his tummy, pat it gently and coo: My Buddha Belly.

He was a smart as a whip but not at all arrogant. A mellow dude who loved other dogs and people but hated cats. He did not come home with us from the veterinarian office.

The next day, May 2, the house is eerily quiet. White-furred and weighing in at 18-pounds, he was the soul and heartbeat of our home.

Benny’s dead.

Our culture concocts a host of euphemisms to express our collective denial of death. We strip death of its searing finality with phrases like put down and passed away. We prefer anesthetized grief – There, there now; get on with life; get over it – as if culture holds a stopwatch at our back that ticks off an appropriate duration of grief.

Time’s up.

It was a dog, I imagine culture’s deep-bass voice telling me. A dog. The stopwatch grants only a few weeks for pet-death grief. It condones mere months for depression and, maybe, a year for big deaths: a partner, spouse, mother, father or sibling. But when culture hits the stop-button, it is game as over. The admonishments echo through your body: Get over it. Get busy. Enough. Tsk. Tsk. So unseemly.

Culture also likes us grieving silently. Dressed in black. Sitting on a hard pew, knees close together and hands clasped, demurely, at the heart. That is not doing it for me. I dig back through history and find stunning examples in other cultures, like Celtic keening, where grief is not swallowed down but is instead expressed through movement and breath, dance and howl.

The only true way to process, and ultimately digest, the brutal tooth and fang of grief that bites bloody and deep into the heart: Refuse to go silently into the night.

I choose to honor Benny through my own version of the Zoomies, the bursts of energy Benny had mastered. Too excited to sit still, he on occasion tore around the house, jumped up on our legs. He was joy, full-bodied and alive, panting and running it out. He always got the Zoomies when Peggy came to visit. He adored her and the yummy chicken salads she brought for us to share in our patio shade. After his Zoomie greeting, Benny would sit patiently at Peggy’s feet, his head tilted up and eyes locked on her. If I am patient I know I will get some chicken. Of course, he got plenty from us both.

My grief for Benny is sensual and visceral. His scent. His fur. The small grunts that were his way of saying thanks. The breath and warmth of him in my arms. Grief that must be felt and moved. Stuff it down, tuck it away, deny its existence and it readily takes root in the body and morphs to anxiety, fat and disease.

Acknowledging grief is coming face-to-face with our vulnerability. The terrifying truth of the many forces in life over which we have no control. Move, breathe, moan and keen. Every brutal and beatific ounce of it. Let rip a Zoomie or two. The non-verbal animal of you feels, moves, releases. Go rogue. No stopwatch allowed.