Yes, I know all about drawing negativity to myself if I focus on the ‘bad' instead of the ‘good.' Buddhists say, "life is suffering." And then they tell us that it's all because of attachment, and if we are not attached then when we ‘lose' things we won't suffer. Well, no matter how hard I've tried not to attach, I attach...to people I love, to my dog, to my piano that has been the center of my creative life. Other material things, not very much. Because of my husband's diagnosis of dementia I had to give up a lot of material goods...the home we had built, the cars we had, a lifestyle that had been generous with perquisites. It all crashed and burned in the few minutes it took for the doctor to give us the diagnosis.
I had to put my beloved little Yorkie, Pooh, to sleep a few weeks ago and I am grieving and suffering the loss of him. I was attached in a big way to that little 6 pound smart, willful, and for the last 2 years extremely compromised dog... with diabetes, blindness, high blood pressure, a collapsing trachea and an enlarged heart and liver. I kept him alive and not suffering and he was as determined as I was to go on. Until I could no longer help him. I had hoped that he would just go to sleep when he'd had enough of his little life so that I would not have to make the decision and watch him leave my world, but it was not to be.
It's more than not having him sitting by the door when I come home, or making his way to the kitchen when the microwave bell goes off, or the years of pressing his little body into mine as we slept, or waking me at 3 in the morning to test and feed him, or licking my tears away when I cry for my husband and the unfairness of life. With Pooh's loss I have also lost my compass. I have been a caregiver for a very long time. I thought I was ‘alone' when my husband went into a dementia facility but I wasn't. I had Pooh. I didn't know how much he kept me from feeling that aloneness and loneliness until he was no longer here to touch or kiss or feed and care for.
Now I have no other one to care for but me. I can no longer be content with choosing an evening alone with my dog over something that would take some effort to do or people whose company was less satisfying than his. I have to figure out who I am without my caregiver's hat and where I go from here. My question is what, not who, will I care for and where will it take me that I have not gone before? I am into the unknown yet again.
I am sad. I am lonely... and yes, though I am resilient, I repeat: Life is hard.
Here's the ‘and' part. I also remain a positive and upward looking person. I wasn't born that way. I was not brought up to be that way. I learned from myself how to find joy amidst sorrow. How to find the sun on a gray day even if I have to paint one on my window. I will grieve for my sweet little Pooh and I will find the beauty that surrounds me in the love of family and friends; in the work I do; in the appreciation of my efforts to support agencies that rescue abused animals; in the grateful face of the homeless man who accepts the lunch I have made for him; in the unlikely sound of a twittering bird, here on the 26th floor of my NYC apartment house; in the budding trees in Central Park.
Spring always follows winter no matter how bleak.
Life is hard... and I will survive.
