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Czesław Miłosz

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Two things I most often find myself wishing there were a word for: 1) the poignant little silent film installations that occur when the silhouette of a branch or tree moving in a breeze refracts through a window and projects onto a wall, suspended in a box of sunlight. 2) the peculiar feeling of longing and unease created by a mid-day darkening of the sky that prefigures rain but does not produce it; a longing for rain that is missing. *Pluviadolor may work for 2. On 1 I am perpetually thinking...

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for piggy & for clifton

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Griffin and Geoffrey. Adopting two kittens, or any new creatures at all for that matter, was the last thing in my plans for the foreseeable future, still in the fresh-feeling thick of grieving Clifton and Piggy. But when I saw a photo a local shelter had posted of the little guy on the left, whom they'd just trapped from a feral colony, I broke into tears because it was like a baby Clifton was looking back at me, the resemblance was so uncanny. In fact the resemblance was so perfect I half convinced myself that Clifton had heard my pleas these last months that if it were possible, he somehow find me again, on this side or the Other, and that he had reincarnated himself into this little lion and come back for me. I don't believe in that kind of stuff. But that doesn't mean I don't desperately wish it might be true. No one could ever replace Clifton, there could never be another Clifton (or another Piggy, or another Charlie), but in case it was My Lion Himself come back to find me, or his little spirit somehow summoning me, I reached out and asked to meet the little guy. Turned out he had a brother who'd been trapped the week before, and they weren't ready to be adopted out yet but could use a foster, if I wanted to get to know them both for a couple of weeks and see if one of them felt like a right fit. "If." "One of them." I actually thought I had options. They've been here one month now, and Geoffrey has Clifton's epic acrobatics, talkativeness, and irrepressible affability; Griffin has Clifton's face, his look of wonder, and his quiet contemplativeness— Clifton would sit and watch the same single unmoving gnat on the ceiling forever. Griffin obsessively watches the shadows play in the sunlight on the wall. I chose their names, Griffin and Geoffrey, in tribute to Clifton as well. My favorite cat poem, a fragment of the longer poem Jubilate Agno by Christopher Smart, begins "For I will consider my Cat Jeoffry." That poem always reminded me of Clifton. And for the little one with Clifton's face, I tried to think of a name that actually echoed the sound of Clifton. I thought of Griffin, and when I looked up the meaning of the name, it said a lord or a prince, also a mythical beast with a lion's body and eagle's wings. I called Clifton my little prince from the time I brought him home from the shelter almost exactly 11 years ago, and I called him my little lion. Now he is my lion with wings. So Griffin it is. And if he isn’t Clifton’s spirit re-embodied, or if he and Geoffrey together aren’t, then Clifton somehow sent them to me, I think, didn’t you, my irreplaceable nonpareil, as surely as I’ll miss you every day for the rest of my life?

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Oh Piggy. Darling Pig. This life and these days and this house without you, words don’t work to say how painfully you are missing to me. You always will be. I love you my boy, beyond beyond. I don’t know where to put it anymore.

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Dear Piggy, I feel a withering sadness today. The large leather-colored leaves have amassed in the streets in those deep, papery piles you discovered with such delight on our November walk two years ago, diving in with your whole body, rolling around with pure-sensorium relish, burying yourself in the smells and textures. Now I can’t look at a leaf pile without something like a wolf howl erupting in my heart. 

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I did an Allhallowtide hike in remembrance of my 3 lost boys, Charlie, Clifton, and Piggy. As part of that, I did a thing I have felt utterly incapable of doing since I received my dog Charlie Bear’s ashes two years ago. Over the last few months, I have acquired two more boxes of ashes after my precious Clifton and then Piggy died. In the wake of their loss, I had created a memorial altar where all three of their engraved wooden boxes of ashes rested, along with their pawprints in clay, Charlie’s dog tags, a tiny teardrop-glazed cup of kitty whiskers saved over the years, a vial of dried Forget-Me-Not flowers, little sunbursts of Piggy and Clifton’s fur pressed in a hanging glass frame, and the same septarian nodule fossil I held against each of them as they passed in my arms and out of this life. I keep fresh flowers on the altar and light 4 candles on it every night. Having this ritual, along with the physical memorial, has become a great comfort to me. But I have never been able to open the boxes and look at their ashes. This year, however, still in the thick of grieving Clifton and Piggy, I felt a desperate need to do something more to honor all of them and to feel more connected to them. I decided I would open the boxes and put just a little of each of their ashes in 3 small glass specimen vials, and take them to scatter in some place meaningful and holy (hallow) to me. The process of confronting the ashes filled me with dread. I knew that it would be the most visceral reminder of how truly gone they are, which has been an unbearable absence. I also had some sense of what I thought I would see: a uniformly fine black powder. To assist in the transference of ashes from box to vial, and in the spirit of remembering the dead, I decided to use a tiny silver salt spoon I inherited from my grandmother, which had probably belonged to her mother or grandmother. I arranged the boxes on my coffee table and began with Clifton’s. When I slid the box open, there was a ziploc bag of pale grey aggregate folded inside. It looked nothing like what I expected. It looked exactly like a handful of beach sand you might scoop up some sunny day, filled with tiny broken shells of all shapes and sizes. The sight of the ashes, holding them in my hands, did bring me to my knees and I wailed and cried and whispered My baby, my baby till I could cry no more. Then when the weeping had exhausted itself, alongside the grief my attention turned to wonder. I put my hand inside the bag and indeed, it felt just like beach sand, and I ran my hands over so many tiny bone shards and what I even thought must be fragments of teeth. His little teeth. His body. My boy. There was more of it there than I had anticipated, more than I thought could survive the fires, and to touch these pieces somehow brought me comfort. I scooped a few tiny spoonfuls of the finer ash into a vial, and then with a larger spoon picked out some of the bigger bone and tooth shards to place in a separate vial on the altar. I then moved to Piggy’s box. His ashes were darker, but also like beach sand. So, I thought, here is the shore to my ocean of grief. Piggy’s bone fragments were bigger, which made sense. Clifton was tiny, a naturally thin little lion, where Piggy was stocky, thick and big-boned in the way of Russian Blues. Charlie’s bag of ashes was much larger, also paler, and where the kitties had slivers and shards, Charlie’s fragments were hard white pebbles. Tied to his bag was a blackened metal circle which had gone through the fire, and into which had been stamped the words (none truer), Forever Faithful.  For each of them I made a vial of fragments for the altar, in addition to the vials of ashes for scattering. I made small bouquets of marigold and forget-me-nots from the garden, and placed the vials in a velvet-lined box. These I carried with me to the summit of Craggy Pinnacle, one of my favorite vistas, and there I sat for an hour in the sun, accompanied by my friend Anya, who hummed a hymn of grief and blessing when I finally opened the vials and released that small portion of my boys back to the earth— to the wind and the ancient rocks. I whispered words to each of them and the wind took those too, along with my tears, and then my own long exhale. In our culture that is so rooted in the sickness of death denial, I am grateful to have found my way to days and rituals like this, grateful to the cultures that have long practiced them, from the ancient Aztec rituals that are carried on in Mexico’s beautiful Dia de los Muertos celebrations, to the Roman Catholic All Souls’ Day, to the Hindu and Japanese Buddhist ceremonies honoring departed spirits, as well as the many other Festivals of the Dead practiced around the world. As we sat on the mountainside, Anya explained to me the incredible jazz funerals of her African and New Orleans heritage, the literal long slow walk through grief and mourning to celebration, in which a jazz-playing marching band leads family and then the greater community. She then suggested we process the day by listening to John Coltrane’s inimitable A Love Supreme in full on the drive home. Though I am abashed to admit that that was my first time listening to it, it also felt like there could not have been a more perfectly suited first time. What a gift. I ended my words to my boys on the mountain with my favorite Buddhist precept: I do not know, I do not have, I do not understand. And against all proof or evidence, I whispered my hope nonetheless that we might one day find each other again on the other side of this Mystery.

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[...] "[B]efore you become forest again, and water, and widening wilderness in that hour of inconceivable terror when you take back your name from all things— Oh, just give me a little more time! I just want a little more time. I want to love the things as no one has thought to love them, until they’re real, and worthy of you." —from “Dear Darkening Ground,” by Rilke, translated by Joanna Macy

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My darling Piggy, sweetest companion of the last decade, died in my arms today, in his home, and is laid to rest with a letter I wrote him; his favorite mouse toy which he loved to toss high in the air and catch, over and over; a swatch of my favorite Buffalo plaid pajamas, against which he slept and purred so many countless nights; and my favorite flower (and color), Forget-Me-Not. I want to write a proper tribute for Piggy, but I have not even been able to summon the strength to write Clifton's tribute in these 3 months since his death, for which I am still in deep grief. One day I will. For now it would be a great solace if anyone who cares to might light a candle for him, as I have done every night for Clifton since he passed, and will now do also for my cherished Piggy. This living is so much losing; I understand less and less. Rest peacefully, my beautiful boy. You are eternally, desperately missed. “For some must watch, while some must sleep, So runs the world away.” -Shakespeare

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but though I am living without you, surely I can’t live without you: -A.R. Ammons

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Advice to the bereaved whose days sink deeper into grief I am told: find one good thing to praise. Oh— Blessed is the darkness into which the world going on without you fades, for a little while.

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How do you say goodbye to someone you have loved more than you can love?  Clifton the Great died in my arms, taking with him all of my heart. My brave little lion, you were the Sun. Now there isn’t one.

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In a meadow I am not permitted often to return to I who never don't look back am packing up all my want you are there forever whose body said isn't the rain even a path and ran wringing light from silence alike the you the I that hour pasture and now I night   I now        admit there is none of you left but the grass still blows and I see you there and I see you run your going is folded into the sun

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One of the first markers of Spring I most look forward to are the tiny perfectly spherical spore capsules of Apple Moss. It is as if the rotifers and tardigrades (aka "moss piglets" and "water bears" if this situation wasn't cute enough already) inhabiting this beautiful bryophyte decided to throw a celebratory Spring party and here are their microscopic string lights and paper lanterns setting the jubilee aglow... #moss #mosslover #applemoss #bryophyte #bryophytophyle #tinyjoy

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That is solemn we have ended,—     Be it but a play, Or a glee among the garrets,     Or a holiday,

Or a leaving home; or later,     Parting with a world We have understood, for better     Still it be unfurled. -Emily Dickinson