Life after Death (of a Friend)

Hidden Presence

It is three weeks since I was feeding bunk his favorite beef-stick treats while he fell asleep for good.

I was an inconsolable snot-ridden mess the week leading up to his departure and for four days afterward.

I’m fine now, back to mostly normal, teaching classes.

This return to mostly normal bears a different kind of grief — the grief and guilt of not feeling more grief.

As though our fifteen years together — all the walks and swims and frisbee tosses and car rides and french-fry-feasts and belly rubs and face licks and hand-paw-shakes and romps through fresh snow and wheat fields— were worth a mere week of tears.

I should be crying until I die.

That sentiment might be overwrought but it’s directionally accurate.

And yet the wisdom of change protests.

How can new life enter the world if previous lives don’t make room for it?

The remnants of the grief I now feel is about my own loss and loneliness and emptiness and disruption of daily love habits —

— but bunk is no longer panting from pain and if all has gone well in his time in the Bardo, he’s found squirrels to woof at and is back to threatening sharp-toothed violence against skateboarders so they quit making such a diabolical ruckus, the heathens.

He’s no longer by my side because he’s now everywhere.

My transition from pain to what seems to be a slowly forming constellation of gratitude was inspired in part by this prayer:

May you know that absence is alive with hidden presence,
that nothing is ever lost or forgotten.
May the absences in your life grow full of eternal echo.
May you sense around you the secret Elsewhere,
where the presences that have left you dwell.
May you be generous in your embrace of loss.

John O’Donohue

I am blessed with many friends who called and wrote and prayed for bunk’s safe passage. I didn’t respond to most of you because I was in the middle of it and was unable. But your graciousness and kindness meant the world. It’s a bit overwhelming to think on it.

Know that I’m beyond grateful to each of you.

Life, Death, Love, Loss. The Great Matter.

Thank you for holding it with me.

With us.