A season of life and loss
"Let me carry death in life that I may know life in death.” -Rabindranath Tagore
I was supposed to write about Thursday’s Autumn Equinox. I had plans to explore cyclical changes and the concept of equilibrium between dark and light.
I just didn’t know I’d be discussing it through the medium of death.
We have decided to put our senior husky down this Tuesday. Keonah aka Noni Head aka Kiki. Keonah is somewhere around 14 years of age, and we’ve known for some time that this was in our stars. Glimmers of the old devil hang in those icy blue eyes: the professional escape artist who regularly terrorized the neighborhood animals, the tone-deaf husky with zero-melodic ability, the fur ball that struck fear into even the most expensive of vacuums, and finally, the rebel who ran away from my niece, landed herself in a lagoon, and ended up surviving an alligator attack.
This Golden Girl has been through a lot. And now it is time to find out what’s next.
So I sit here, begging my fingers to do her some kind of justice, searching for the words between silent pauses and the delete key. She is lying next to me, her blue eyes sad, knowing. Her soul is tired. Sniffs no longer excite her. Roast chicken sits untouched in her bowl. It’s time. It’s our job to ease her pain and guide her toward relief. Her spirit is hovering, and tomorrow this creature before me will be nothing more than a meat suit of muscle and bone. Then she will be turned to dust and we will give her back to whence she came.
Memento Mori. Remember you will die. Remember you will die. Remember you will die.
But I was supposed to write about the shift of seasons. Welcoming Autumn. So let it be this instead:
Persephone, Greek goddess of the Underworld and Springtime, as you take your final steps on Earth, take our girl with you. Hecate, torchbearer and protector of dogs, guide them into the Underworld, and lead her to Cerberus, Hades’ three-headed dog, so that she may be wild, happy, and free.
We love you Keonah. Go live the life you’ve always imagined.