Desi dog of Hamilton Heights

Desi dog of Hamilton Heights

I am so relieved that I was able to download this shot of Desi dog.  It's been my profile pic for Hamilton House on Foursquare since I took it.  I don't know what happened to the original.

There are so many things I want to say about Desi and our time together over the past 14 years.  I don't know where to start.

I was inspired to start keeping this blog after reading Jon Katz's 10,000th blog post on Bedlamfarm.com today:

Day Of Rest: Boundaries Of Grief. When The Soul Is Seared

Desi died the day before Thanksgiving, Wednesday, November 23, 2011.  It was the worst day of my adult life.  Everything since then has been life after Desi.

Grieving is not something I'm comfortable with because of the depth of my own personal sensitivity.  I am far more sensitive than anyone I've ever met with the exception of my sisters.

I have never felt the kind of grief I am feeling right now over Desi's death.  The loss is completely overwhelming.  It comes in waves and it often feels as if all the wind has been sucked out of me and I've been knocked off my feet. 

All the expressions I've ever heard about grief are absolutely applicable. The feeling of "puking my guts out" is probably the one I identify with most.

In the weeks leading up to his death I was experiencing the strangest feeling of physical nausea and dizziness.  This visceral feeling continues to this day.  I have never experienced this type of complete and total disorientation before in my life and frightens me beyond words.  It's a feeling of vertigo combined with a sense that I am going to puke my guts out.  Sometimes my vision becomes so blurred that I start to think it's just a part of the aging process.  But I honestly think it's much more profound than that.  I think it's a reaction to extreme stress and anxiety.  I have been in this state of distress for many, many months now.  SO has Desi.  It was as if his emotional and mental distress combined with the loss of his physical abilities felt as if they were my own emotional, mental and physical distress.

In part, this loss taps into all the feelings of abandonment I have from childhood.  But truthfully, my relationship with Desi has been the longest and most intensely close relationship I have experienced in my life.

There are feelings of shame and embarrassment in that admission because Desi was just a dog.  Just a little Boston Terrier.  Not a person.  But that's why I was able to let myself get so close.  My relationships with many people have been such a huge disappointment to me in general.  For the most part I have closed myself off from human relationships and shut myself off by retreating within.

It's not that I believe I will never have a human relationship that is close.  It's just that there are so many limitations that we as human beings have in relationships.  It's the deception.  It's the agenda.  It's the betrayal.  Perhaps I have just been unfortunate in my relationships with human beings.  Perhaps I am the one that is limited.  Or, perhaps I just have to accept that the human/human bond is not and can never be the same or as strong as the human/animal bond.

Again, I feel a bit embarrassed and ashamed to admit that to myself - let alone write it in a blog online.  But the truth is that Desi has always been here for me.  He knew everything about me.  I could be my complete and true self with him which is something I am never able to be with most people.  There are a few people I can be myself with but again, I feel like there is a price to pay for being exactly who you are around people.  They hold it against you.  They will throw things back in your face when they are angry.  Or they will become trite and jokingly say something publicly which you have shared with them in confidence because THEY don't think it's such a big deal.

Desi NEVER betrayed my confidences, he was always there, he was always my friend on my worst days and on my best days.  He taught me how to be responsible, how to grow up, how to be brave, how to be regimented and stay on schedule, how to enjoy taking a walk, how to be social with other people and animals, how to see beyond my own small-world and self-obsessed thinking, how to give without conditions, how to receive without the expectation that I have to give something back, I could go on and and and on about the lessons Desi taught me.  But for now I will stop here.

I can only handle so much of the grief and then have to shut it off, lock it down, hide it from myself so that it won't kill me.  Because the truth is - if I really allowed myself to fully go there I wouldn't want to be here anymore.  I would want to be wherever Desi is just not on this planet without him.