12/08/2023
Today I’m finding a little more of my voice and control of the pain. Death visited my household a few days ago now and I was not ready to let my beautiful friend of almost thirteen years go. I laid on the ground with her begging and wishing for a different outcome but somehow knowing that it was her time and she would be called to rest. Thirteen years is a long time and honestly the longest relationship l have had human or otherwise over the latter part of my life. Luna was my constant and I loved her apart from all of the animals that fill my life. She was my laughter and she was there for my tears. She saw me through a near death experience when out in the wild she covered me in her coat and kept me warm and kept hypothermia at bay. To say she loved me and showed it in a host of different ways would be an understatement. She played mom to cats, kittens, possums, raccoons, otters, deer, pigs, goats, and whatever else I asked of her. We had an unspoken language that you share only in exceptional relationships and she could love in silence or in rowdy affection. For thirteen years I would caress her face and sometimes just let her rest it gently in my hands. In her final days I picked her up and carried her to the yard so she could feel the cold ground and relieve herself. She had so much personal pride and remained a reserved and dignified lady to the end. Her voice was one that only I heard. Dying is not the hard part. It’s the living after your better half is gone and Luna was the better part of me. She shed grace on me that I never deserved or warranted and she taught me that love is action and often silent.
When she was younger we would hike back into the woods and she never needed a leash to return to me plodding behind her. As she aged I slowed my pace for her and in turn I was the one that waited. Luna loved my children those of my blood and those that were gifted to me for a season. She would light up inwardly when Riley or Ethan would come to visit and there was many the occasion when Jasper was alone with me that I would find him asleep on the couch with Luna wrapped around him. Camden would bury his face in her rough and she would lick him clean after his feasting in his high chair. She was all love. My cats would seek her out during the winter and would lay curled in her body even kneading her belly at times and she stoic and reserved as ever would lick their fur and rest her head near them. She was all love. Baby goats were her jam and she would prance and bark with them as they paraded in front of her. When Teddy pig was a baby she would circle him and bark and let him share her food. She shared with the cats as well sometimes even picking up morsels and letting Tate share with her. Foster after foster walked through the door and she learned they were temporary and hers to guide teach and care for. As she got older she got less tolerant of puppy exuberance but once she calmed them with soft snarls and chastisements she settled and taught them once more. She was all love. As I write I cry for me because the memories flood and pour out down my cheeks. I try to tell myself I’m okay but the hole she left isn’t fillable and so it just sits there black and empty and the vacuum of it drains my thoughts. Yesterday my Shelby expressed to me that even with the house still full of five dogs that the house felt empty and alone. Luna had no crate privileges even though she loves crate time and she would rest in proximity to Shelby sharing their time together but still a little aloof until Dad came home. In the later years as arthritis twisted her feet and spine she couldn’t walk as far but she would always rise and greet me at the door when I came home. First was the silent greeting rubbing her face and then the spin for butt scratches and then massage up the spine and then walk away and back to her cushion until bed. She had a way of scraping through our vertical blinds at the end of the evening to let us know she needed to go out and also in the morning if I wasn’t up to take her out. She knew how to speak with me. In her last days I felt regret that perhaps I hadn’t heard her as her right lung filled with pneumonia and she succumbed rapidly to the infection despite my best efforts to thwart it. I loved her and love her still.
After she had passed I sat alone with her in the vets office again and again apologizing to her for not having that final moment with her but knowing she knew we had said our goodbyes through the evening and into the night before. As usual I had caressed her face and told her audibly and silently that I loved her. Few people will ever understand experience or relate to this love and I am grateful to the universe for it. I think imagine and create the idea that dogs are so short lived because the love they give is relentless and exhausting and ages them much faster than we humans. My Luna was all love. I called Marie her breeder my friend and also my confidant and we wept again on the phone together. Marie stays close to all her dogs that she can and outside of me no one else shared the unspoken communication that she and Marie also shared. Marie too would take her face in her hands and the silent love expressed was audible when we would go to visit Marie at her house or she would come to the farm. My dog shared great love with many and I can’t write anymore. The first time I wrote in the hours after was virulent and unapologetic in my grief. I will probably write again because it comforts me in her memory and my life is better for having shared it with her. Rest in peace my beautiful Luna. I loved you and cared for you imperfectly but the best way I knew how. December 28th 2010 to December 6th 2023 loved treasured and missed my beloved dog Luna
