Tag Archives: death

Goodbye And Farewell, Fritz

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When we adopt a pet, we know we will likely outlive them. We know that adorable kitten or rambunctious puppy will someday grow old but it’s best to just enjoy the fun of watching them grow up.

My parents were forced to have their dog put down yesterday. I affectionately called Fritz my brother, a joke that wasn’t so far off since my parents treated him like a child and he was certain he was a person too.  Fritz was a good boy who lived a fabulous, pampered and somewhat spoiled life. We all should be so lucky to have a life like his. 

He learned at a young age how to milk extra treats out of my folks and how to get laughs at a party by “singing” along with my mother playing the piano. He followed my mother around the house and loved nothing more than sitting next to my dad with his paw touching dad’s arm. He wanted to always know where they were and he was happiest when they all were in the same room. Life was perfect if he had me there with them too. 

He looked at both my parents with unbridled joy and admiration.

Fritz was a tiny guy when we brought him home. He was a birthday gift for my dad and a surprise at that. My mother and I found a woman advertising German Shepherd pups back in 2011. He was the runt with an injured tail who was the first to greet us out of a large litter running around the yard. I still liken the owner to Cruella de Vil because she was kind of mean to this poor little pup and I felt he needed rescuing. 

On that night, we never envisioned the day that his poor, arthritic body could no longer hold itself up. But that day came and his condition was so dire there was no doubt that the time had come. Anything less than mercy would be cruel.

I’ll never understand people who say a pet is just an animal. They clearly have never opened their home or their heart to an animal to the degree that a pet can become family. 

And I pity those people. 

I also pity my parents right now. Their house is quiet and still strewn with reminders of their best big boy. Despite all the love and affection, the treats and his favorite iced oatmeal cookies, all the toys and the ear scratches, there was no way to save him. 

And let me tell you something. If love could have saved him, our Fritz would have lived forever. 

I hate goodbyes so I’ll just say see ya later to my little brother from another mother. He will be missed more than he could ever know.

Remembering Dawn

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Life is full of unexpected moments. The way a soft breeze rustles through the trees is one of my favorites. Encountering a flower you don’t recall planting is another.

Take this yellow day lily for example. I vaguely remember planting something there but was surprised and delighted to find this bright, showy flower reaching toward the sky last night.

These are the good things that come to us when they’re least expected. Then there are the tragedies, the astonishing shocks that change a life forever.

A good friend from work lost his wife unexpectedly this week. She was a vibrant human being, colorful, kind and fun to be around. She made people smile and made them feel good.

Her name was Dawn, an appropriate name for her personality. Dawn, that moment of daybreak when light first appears and the world awakens, is a perfect name for someone like her.

I rarely saw Dawn but every interaction was pleasant and it’s hard to imagine the world without her in it. I hate to think about how hard this must be for my friend.

Like most humans, I seek logic and understanding in situations where there is no logic to be found. Humans aren’t meant to live forever but it’s hard to believe dying so unexpectedly and reasonably young is the way it should be.

In times of trouble, I often look to nature for calm and for guidance. The day lily pictured above couldn’t have bloomed at a better time. It reminded me of Dawn – vibrant and colorful but not here forever.

We all should be so lucky to have such beauty – whether it be a person or a flower- in our lives.

Flowers For A Friend

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The blogging community is an interesting place. We make friends with people we have never met in real life, sharing stories that sometimes make us feel like we’re old friends. Many of them are people we would never cross paths with in real life.

That’s certainly the case with Jinjer. Honestly, I don’t recall how or when we met but I have followed along as she has spent recent years working remotely from Arkansas where she cared for her elderly mother.

I never knew her mom’s name but was terribly sad when she died earlier this year. Jinjer shared with her blogging pals that she wouldn’t be able to visit her mom’s grave in Indiana before heading back to the life that was waiting for her in California. Her plate was full closing up this chapter, packing, donating and selling things. She needed to orchestrate the cross country move with an elderly cat and there was no way to justify going that far out of her way.

So when she mentioned that her mom was buried in Marion, Indiana, I knew I could help. That’s because I had been thinking about a trip to that area and this provided a wonderful purpose for going. While I couldn’t help Jinjer get there, I could at least go and take pictures of the grave. It’s a small gesture but I thought it might help.

She’s buried at Marion National Cemetery and I went there late Saturday afternoon, not realizing how enormous it would be. Turns out, I went to the wrong section – I needed section CS and was in section C. The wind picked up, the temperature dropped and rain set in so I surrendered and went into town for Mexican.

Luckily, Jinjer had emailed me a map that day so I figured out my error and returned at sunrise on Sunday morning. It was a piece of cake to find my way around with the map but I would have spent the entire day looking if necessary. It was important to me because I know how hard it is to lose someone important and what it means to visit their grave.

So I knelt on the ground, introduced myself to Jinjer’s parents and told them why I had come. Sadly, you can’t leave flowers this time of year so I just placed the flowers for a few minutes and snapped some pictures for Jinjer.

Jinjer laughed when I said that I apologized to her mom for being unable to leave the flowers. Haha! “After all, I don’t make the rules,” I said.

It’s a tiny gesture but hopefully one that helped my friend. I’m so grateful that I found her mom and the weather cooperated so she could have pretty pictures.

Jinjer’s parents have a beautiful resting place. It’s awe inspiring to be surrounded by these elegant marble headstones as far as the eye can see and to think of all the people they represent.

We all deserve to be remembered after we are gone and the living we leave behind deserve to find peace.

Here are some immortal words from one of the world’s great thinkers, Winnie the Pooh……

If there ever comes a day when we can’t be together, keep me in your heart. I’ll stay there forever.

Reflections In Lights And Death

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A man I know passed away last week after bravely battling a terrible illness. I met Tom in 2020 when I joined the local Educational Service Center board and we became colleagues.

He was always quick with a joke, eager to put a newcomer at ease, and a smart man who was respectful of others. He liked to travel and learn. His wife Fannie also attends our meetings and is a kind soul. The two seemed perfectly matched.

But that’s the end of what I knew about Tom till I read his obituary and learned things that made me wish I had asked more questions while he was living.

Tom was a fan of lifelong learning, a Scout leader and a Sunday school teacher. He was a longtime Civil War reenactor and lifelong history buff. He enjoyed the outdoors, gardening and yard sales. Tom was an inventor who made an ice cream machine that operated by pedaling a bicycle. He even built a 1965 Plymouth from the frame up.

I always liked Tom but had no idea he was such a character. Old photos in a slideshow projected on the wall played while we waited in line. If I didn’t know it by then, it was clear that Tom packed as much living into his life as he possibly could.

I had a newfound appreciation for Tom’s zest for life.

It made me a little sad to think of all the great learning I missed out on because I knew none of this. Of course, when getting to know someone, you don’t know what you don’t know and have to rely on them to give you some clues. I suppose that’s why we often learn so much about people from their obituaries.

As I looked at Tom’s wife and son, their family and so many friends lined up to say farewell, I started thinking about how Tom left a mark on us all. Every person there knew Tom for a different reason and everyone had different stories to share. Every one of us is richer for knowing him.

Later in the evening I strolled through the holiday lights at the Gallipolis City Park and stopped to visit the war memorial. I’m typically so taken with the statue above me that I fail to notice much else.

But on this night I saw the face of the soldier reflected in the marble wall of names below. It made me pause.

It occurred to me that something of Tom is reflected in everyone fortunate to know him. It’s nice to think that humans can live on through the influences we have on others. I won’t soon forget Tom or the lessons learned during the brief time we knew each other.

One of those lessons is to do a better job listening and paying attention so I can learn something I never knew I wanted to know.

Grief

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It’s a funny thing about grief. It sneaks up on you when you least expect it. Sometimes it shows itself in unusual ways and in ways that are tempting to ignore.

It doesn’t always look like the sadness or depression you might expect. Sometimes it manifests itself through anger or listlessness.

It can be brought on by a song on the radio or a funny story. You can be having a great day and suddenly can’t breathe because the horror of your loss is so all consuming.

No matter what it looks like, it won’t go away on its own. You can’t just decide that you’re done grieving. There really are no rules. How you’re feeling can change without warning, can worsen at the drop of a hat and can ruin a good day like ants at a picnic.

When we talk about losing a person, we think about just that. The loss of that individual and what they meant to your life. You’ll miss their laugh, their brutal honesty, their pumpkin pie. You’ll miss the routine of having them in your life and the way they stopped by just to say hi or because they were lonely. You’ll miss having that contemporary, the person who has known you all your life and with whom you have a shared history.

But no one talks about the other sense of loss. When someone is part of a unit, say a group of friends or part of your family, you will experience a completely different kind of loss when they die. You will suddenly recall every lost member of that group and each tragedy as vividly as if it just happened yesterday.

For example, when my Aunt Mary Ann died this summer, her passing summoned memories of the deaths of my grandparents, aunts, uncles and cousin. All these people left empty seats at our table and each of their deaths represented a shift in the family dynamic. When my grandparents died, we lost our core, those people who bonded everyone together. When Mary Ann lost her husband and daughter, we got closer. When Mary Ann died my dad lost his contemporary, the only person left in this world who knew him from birth and who shared the stories of his formative years.

We grieve and change each time someone dies and we often look backward, embracing the bitter with the sweet. I suppose we do this because it seems easier than looking ahead to that ever shrinking table that awaits us at the next holiday.

Depressing, I know. And yet, it’s a part of our journey. All of us will lose someone important and all of us will have to navigate the trials of coping with our troubles. Time stands still for no one and every day we can wake up and get out of bed seems like a good opportunity to work through those problems and to find healthy ways to cope and to move forward as our loved ones would want us to do.

When Mary Ann lost her husband and later her daughter, you could see her struggling but she did her best to live well and to keep going. She spent time with friends, turned to her Bible, cooked and baked and devoted hours to her family. It was hard but she showed us that it’s possible to forge a new path forward.

We each have to find our own path when we experience loss. It could be spending time with family and embracing the new dynamic. The peace we need to move forward could be found on walks in the woods, in quiet meditation or in reminiscing about the good times. Maybe it’s found in journaling or in talking to someone.

I’m not a professional or an expert but I do have vast experience in this area. If you’re going through something difficult, I hope you will remember this. There can be brighter days ahead. There is nothing wrong with admitting that life has been hard. There’s nothing wrong with seeking counseling or guidance of some kind from a professional.

It doesn’t make you weak to need help and it doesn’t make you crazy. It makes you human.

Musings on Christmas Memories In A Time Of Sorrow

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Santa at Dogwood Pass in 2017.

On Saturday, I spent much of the day baking cookies at my parents’ house. Afterward, we watched Christmas movies while a kitty cat purred in my lap.

Their house is always warm and it was cold outside when I left. The shock of cold and the starry sky reminded me of a Christmas Eve long ago when we spent an evening with my grandparents. I was small and all the adults kept talking about how a certain little girl needed to go home to bed so Santa Claus could come.

The colorfully lit tree was decorated with an assortment of ornaments accumulated over time and I sat under that tree to open a gift from my grandparents. I don’t recall the gift but I do remember the little candy dish filled with old fashioned hard candy that you buy at the store. I remember the laughter among adults and the warmth of that old house.

The memories made me smile as I hummed Bing Crosby’s White Christmas on the way to the porch.

This year is much different. Most of the people who provided the laughter and warmth of that home are gone now. Many who are left are too young to remember those people and that place.

This year has been haunted by hardship and loss for so many. This will be our first Christmas without my aunt Maryann. Another family member recently received a terrible diagnosis. My great aunt Marcella died over the weekend. She was the last of her generation in my grandma’s family. A college friend lost three immediate family members just days apart during this season of cheer. We have lost longtime family friends including one who just passed on Sunday. My mother is coping with injuries from her fall at Walmart over the weekend but is probably lucky to be alive.

Things aren’t going well and it’s a far cry from the picture perfect Bing Crosby moments of my childhood. It gets harder to be joyful at Christmas as you age because you’re more aware of all the troubles of the world around you.

However, as I write this I keep glancing at something written on a post-it note that I stuck to my desk months ago. Little did I know it would come in handy today. It simply says “Gratitude turns what you have into enough.”

It isn’t always easy but I’m choosing to be grateful for the memories and grateful for the time we had with all those who have left empty seats at our table. I’m grateful for the people and all the good in my life today. And when you look at it that way, it still hurts but maybe it hurts a little less.