Next week I will start my time off until the new year arrives, but first, I have to make it through the end of this week. My initial plan was to start the break on a high with VR HiveFest, but it coincides with letting go of our dog and I think I will spend the time with my family, even if I did think I would be in the mood to socialize, which I imagine I won't. Tomorrow evening I will be at the dentist for who knows what and after that, we will tell Smallsteps about what is going to happen with the dog she loves.
It is a strange week in many ways and I think the time off will be welcomed, which will mostly be used to prepare and start the move of things and furniture upstairs. This was meant to be a happy occasion after so many months to get to this point, but my wife has already said how we won't all be moving like we should.
We took a few photos yesterday evening with Viski and as our daughter didn't know why, she was in a happy mood while my wife was crying around the corner after watching her gently pat him. I already know that tomorrow is going to be hard and my wife and although I think that Smallsteps would handle the actual news, I don't think she has ever seen my wife cry before and she is a sensitive little girl at the best of times.
I have the feeling that she will want to make my wife feel better, but will not know how. By coincidence today, she wanted to draw a picture for my wife as a surprise, while she was at the grocery store. She drew a picture of my wife walking Viski with a tree and two flowers, wrote all our names on the back and then put it under her pillow for when my wife returned home. When my wife saw it, she almost broke down.
In this family, there will be no mythical farm or dog heaven, we have decided to tell her how it is without going into detail of how it is done, just that we will take him to the vet and he won't be coming home again. She has already understood that things die and we have primed her earlier that Viski will soon, but we are still unsure how she will handle it in practice, losing something so close to her, especially when she see how distraught my wife may become. However, I think it is healthier for children to be introduced to reality as it arises.
For most people until relatively recently, death has been a normal part of life, firstly due to being far closer to nature and farm life where it is commonplace, but also that people tended to die younger and many children didn't make it out of childhood. This meant that it was something that was visible, which took a lot of the power from it. It is not that people enjoyed it or weren't fearful of it, but it was accepted.
Acceptance of a situation means that there needn't be suffering, even if conditions are painful and there is deep sadness in the events. People would pay their respects, grieve and move on the best they can, as there was always more to do, others to take care of, tasks to be done, a finite amount of life to live. Often, there wasn't the luxury of time to dwell or stop, as to do so made living impossible. Perhaps these days it is harder to accept death as not only are there so many possible ways to postpone it, we also have more time to soak ourselves in the misery when it surrounds us, more time to attach ourselves to our own emotional state and hold on, rather than letting go.
I am no expert when it comes to dealing with my emotions, but I generally accept them as they are and get on with the required tasks at hand, regardless of how I feel. Things that need to be done don't care about happy or sad, depressed or bored - and a negative emotional state doesn't usually stop our body from functioning. Things can be done, even while we feel bad and doing things while having strong feelings doesn't automatically mean ignoring what is being felt.
For me I think, I am able to process my emotional position through what I am doing better, than immersing myself in the feeling itself, as it gives perspective on the meaning of the emotion. All emotions come and go and their intensity is a spectrum. Each is independent and situational, not necessarily global unless we identify with the emotion and apply it to every aspect of our lives, as if it must be all-pervasive. In my experience and through observation of others, it is possible to laugh and make jokes while simultaneously feeling sorrow at the loss of a loved one, as the moments that make up our experience are disconnected based on our attention, that can shift second to second. We have no control of which thought is going to arise next, nor what is going to break our attention away from our current emotional state and into another, even if just for a moment.
Friday evening is going to be hard and there are going to be many moments of sadness in the coming weeks, especially at Christmas, where one of the highlights of the day was watching Viski tear open his present and enjoy the Christmas ham for days afterward. It is never going to be the same without him, but that is part of life which must be accepted in each moment, as in each moment, the whole world changes.
He is laying by my leg and started barking in his sleep as I wrote the last line as he often does. In all the times I have known him and heard this, I am yet to hear a growl in anger, which I think is testament to his nature and the kind of life he has lead.
Taraz
[ Gen1: Hive ]