Among the Wild Flowers

My dog Bruce died just over a week ago. Bruce was an intimate friend to me. He was everybody’s friend, and had the softest fur and ears one has ever felt. Strangely, I feel relief and peace with his passing. I did not want him to suffer. He was a very selfless being. Unfortunately, he was very sensitive to my moods and outrage that would happen intermittently throughout the years we lived together. My episodes were rough on him. But we also had so many good times, and I am lingering with many good memories. Bruce had a good life. He was allowed to run and swim freely, even when it involved bending the rules. Dogs need freedom. It is very controversial, and I do not recommend engaging with this subject on social media. The fact remains. Some people are people people and some are dog people. Then there are those of us that are both. Bruce loved people. He made friends easily. He also kept a young look about him until the last couple years of his life. He was youthful, vulnerable, outgoing, strong, beautiful, and caring. He rests now on our property in a grave, and is free to join the wild flowers.

When a dog passes, it can feel like an era has ended. This last era has been about me settling into these islands and absorbing all that this island community has to offer. I did yoga, I started hiking, I volunteered, I had social fires, I went to the beaches, I worked, I slept, I wrote, I gave up painting, I made new friends, I found sobriety, and I healed a deep heavy wound in my chest. My dog Rudy died the first year that I lived here, and then I got Bruce and his sister Sadie, who died at a year and a half as she had a defected heart. Rudy’s era was spent in the urban areas of Seattle and Bellingham, and in the completely wild spaces of the Methow Valley. Rudy’s era was about camping, drinking, school, painting, shopping, and finding the realization that life was heavy, broken and sad. How different these two eras were. How I have changed and evolved in twenty years. The dogs were also different. Rudy was wilder and not friendly with most humans and dogs. He would bark at everyone, and lacked Bruce’s tame and amiable persona. They are together now, in heaven, with our other dogs, Hera, Kira, and Sadie. Bless them all so much. Bruce and Rudy especially helped me and supported me, and were my disability support animals. I am so grateful for their lives, and having them at my side through all of the journeys that I took these last couple of decades.

As this era and decade are accented with the the death of my best friend, Bruce, I am able to look forward to a new journey. It is not that I am unaffected in this feeling of peace that Bruce’s has left behind. The void is full of spirit. There is still a void, but I am not falling down into the void in a black spiral headed to hell. The void is full of love and peace. Still, it is there and I must sit with the silence and space that Bruce has left behind. What did he teach me? How did he change me? What have I learned during these last twelve and a half years that I spent with him? Where am I headed, now? Wherever it is, I will always have these memories. And so I lean into my other friend, Lionel, and as I hug him, I allow some of the sadness to settle in. We have both lost someone very special, but life goes on. I hope your spirit visits me when I am among the wild flowers, Bruce; happy, free, and grateful.