 To dog or not to dog?
That was the question. Just now I looked back at the dates and saw that our dogless existence – after thirty-nine years of dogfulness – began almost exactly a year ago. Doglessness is a seductive condition. We slipped into its hypnosis for a long time, but then… This August Jonathan and I will celebrate forty years of marriage. Forty years ago, on our way home from an 8-day honeymoon in New Brunswick, we found a starving puppy on the side of the road. After an hour or so of sleuthing in the neighborhood, we learned he was abandoned. In an exuberance of love and protectiveness, we impulsively decided to smuggle him over the border (I hope the statute of limitations on penalties has passed). Brunswick lived to be sixteen. By the time he died, we’d long since adopted Ella, who was joined by Meg, then Guster, Kate, and Clara. When Clara died last June, our last dog, we had four new grandbabies on the horizon. “Let’s just wait a little bit,” we thought. In a dogless life, you can be spontaneous. You don’t have to get up on Saturday morning to walk anybody. No tumbleweeds of dog hair under the couch. No noisy interruptions. No one pestering you to pay attention, get up, go out, rub my belly. You are free to remain lost in thought, in moodiness, in yourself. Hmm. We began to see the problem. Daisy hasn’t been with us for a week yet, and we are tired, and we are happy. She is comic relief, a torrent of wriggly, twirly affection, demanding. Oh yes, she demands – that we not sink into a fog of brooding, that we pay attention, that we laugh and play and celebrate. We celebrate wonders like moths and tennis balls, tall grass and windows, sunbasking and dinnertime. We didn’t know what a hole we’d slipped into until she arrived and dragged us out on a leash. Welcome, Daisy. And thank you.
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  One of the gifts of small children is a reminder that we each house a full array of emotions in the crowded space of our brain, and that’s okay. Honor your emotions. Children give free rein to them all – elation, grief, frustration, fear, anger, determination, silliness, hysteria, serenity. They might get bogged down by emotional overloads (a three-year-old’s ferocity in the throes of perceived injustice is legion), but their ability to recover is wondrous. Many of us lose that ability as we grow. Maybe that’s because we try so hard to shut the door on negative emotions, a strategy that commonly backfires.
I recently returned from a beautiful, heart wrenching, hopeful weekend. Two years after the tragic accidental death of Brigit Feeney, a friend’s 33-year-old daughter, her family gathered to dedicate a memorial garden. The serene, circular plot in Manchester, New Hampshire’s Livingston Park celebrates the good work of Brigit’s life. The garden honors her memory and provides a public space of beauty, solace, and healing to the entire community. Brigit worked as a victim and witness advocate, an underappreciated job that provides support for victims of violent crime at their most fragile. She was an exquisitely compassionate advocate, and a fierce ally to those in need. Brigit’s life calling was to provide hope and healing, and the foundation created in her name will work towards that goal. I marvel at this family’s response to devastating grief – to look outside of themselves, to provide comfort to others as a way of softening the pain. Laughter and tears came both in full measure in the garden that day. Adults can do this thing too, this fluid movement between emotions, this embracing of love and hope, even in the midst of anguish. Suffering in life is inevitable, but denying it, smothering it, shaming it, is counterproductive. If we open our hearts to the pain it can wash through us and leave us cleansed. I cannot help turning to my grandchildren - those dazzling, emerging beings – when I need instruction. The world of emotions is their playground, their schoolground. Little Martin, our fifth grandchild, was born in April, and already he displays tantalizing facial mobility, as though he’s experimenting with the emotional spectrum – a smile, a smirk, a frown, a brow knitted in sadness or consternation – all in his sleep. Good job, Martin. Keep practicing. To all of you, young and old, I wish you good fortune, but I also wish you the essential skill of navigating the bad when it arrives. Let the raggedy feelings come, let them move on, then bring your goodness back into the light. The Brigit A. Feeney Foundation for Hope and Healing will continue Brigit’s legacy by supporting the advocate community she cared so much about. The garden is open to the public. For more information about Brigit and the Foundation named for her, visit: https://www.brigitsfoundation.org/ |
AuthorRobin Clifford Wood is an award-winning author, poet, and writing teacher. She lives in central Maine with her husband, loves to be outdoors, and enjoys ever-expanding horizons through her children, grandchildren, and granddogs. Archives
October 2024
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