At seven Wednesday night, I received Dollar's ashes- it was quite a difficult moment to go home with my little wolf in a small wooden box. The people at the animal hospital were very sweet and gave me his paw print stamped in clay, a dog tag heart with his name engraved on it and seeds to plant flowers in his memory. Dollar is my first pet so this whole process is my first time and am not sure how I am supposed to act. I know he's just a dog, but I feel like I need to give him a proper burial to get closure. Today, I have plans of laying him to rest in a sunny place in my yard and having his tombstone be a statue of Saint Francis.
The loss of a pet, is different for people in terms of how they get closure. Some leave the remains at the vet for the hospital to get rid of them, others save the cremated remains in a special place at home, others buy a plot at the pet cemetery... There are many options and each is chosen according to what the owner of the pet feels like doing. For me I needed to bring Dollar's ashes home and lay him to rest. The thought of leaving his body at the animal hospital felt like abandonment. I was told that I would get his remains sometime in a two week period and Wednesday night I got the call that my beloved wolf was ready to be picked up. It was too dark to burry him that night so I decided to wait until the following morning.
I thought that I would ask dad to help me dig the grave and that would be that, but my immediate family asked to be present. My brother and dad helped me with the burial, I read Neruda's poem, "A Dog Has Died," and we planted my little wolf beside the rose bushes. After that brief ceremony we gathered in my living room and recalled a few favorite memories. I had been restless these past few days and when the burial was over I felt joy that I took care of Dollar until the end. I felt satisfied and the pain of losing him was replaced with peace. I think what I wanted to say yesterday in this post is that we all mourn differently, for me it was important to be there when Dollar closed his eyes, to be the last face he saw and to bring him home and lay him to rest. I didn't expect my family to want to take part of it, but they surprised me asking to be present. I realized that though Dollar was mine, he was equally my family's dog and they too needed closure. We closed a loving chapter in our lives with Neruda's words:
"So now he's gone and we buried him,
and that's all there is to it."
I thought that I would ask dad to help me dig the grave and that would be that, but my immediate family asked to be present. My brother and dad helped me with the burial, I read Neruda's poem, "A Dog Has Died," and we planted my little wolf beside the rose bushes. After that brief ceremony we gathered in my living room and recalled a few favorite memories. I had been restless these past few days and when the burial was over I felt joy that I took care of Dollar until the end. I felt satisfied and the pain of losing him was replaced with peace. I think what I wanted to say yesterday in this post is that we all mourn differently, for me it was important to be there when Dollar closed his eyes, to be the last face he saw and to bring him home and lay him to rest. I didn't expect my family to want to take part of it, but they surprised me asking to be present. I realized that though Dollar was mine, he was equally my family's dog and they too needed closure. We closed a loving chapter in our lives with Neruda's words:
"So now he's gone and we buried him,
and that's all there is to it."
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