My first memory of any kind is my grandmother’s wake. It was in our house. She was the last of my grandparents. I remember being puzzled as to why everyone who normally greeted me with smiles looked so somber, seeing my parents wipe their tears with handkerchiefs, and seeing my grandmother in the casket thinking she looked beautiful. I was three. This is not a sad or scary memory despite the event. I don’t remember my grandmother when she was alive, or anything about how my parents and my older brother, who knew her, grieved.
We brought Trixie’s ashes home today in an urn, along with a clay paw print the hospital made. It’s been a long and odd five days, acclimating to life without the dog. We realized that there are so many dog routines that have been embedded into our bodies that it’s disorienting to suddenly have to break ourselves of them. I don’t know how to cook without tripping over her and giving her bits of vegetables. Philip doesn’t know how to wrap up his evening without feeding her and letting her out. Both of us separately and simultaneously caught ourselves planning our outings around a dog. And in doing that, we realized that we have included Yuki into those routines.
We forced ourselves out of the house the day we lost Trixie and managed to spend a couple of hours out of the cloud but when we got home and pulled in to the garage, Yuki said, “Tadaima Trixie!” (“We’re home Trixie!” in Japanese.) It stopped us in our tracks. We sat silently in the car, frozen, and Philip reached over to hold my hand. And we sat for a couple of minutes while Yuki went on happily, singing to herself. While Philip carried Yuki through the snow ahead of me, I followed, weeping, for the fiftieth time that day. It was our ritual to say to Yuki “Let’s go home to Trixie” and to say hi to her first thing when we got in. Yuki was just obeying her ritual without realizing that the dog is no longer around. The next day as she was eating her lunch, she reached under the table to sneak food to Trixie (which is something she did when she was tired of her food) and called her name. I cried again. Then the next day after that, as we were leaving home, Yuki ducked under the kitchen table and said bye to the dog. By this time, I was done crying and asked Yuki, “Do you see her?”
Since then, we just say, “Trixie is not there anymore” whether she understands or not, but we let her say it, and we don’t flinch. Trixie is in couple of home videos Yuki likes to watch. Yuki calls her name and we call it with her. It is sad to know that pretty soon, she will stop saying Trixie’s name altogether and that she won’t remember her, but then we also have to move on. We finally had the frame of mind yesterday to remove Trixie’s beds and her dishes, pack her treats and put things away. And we agreed that in many ways, this was the perfect time for Trixie to go because in another year, Yuki would be old enough to be aware of her being gone, but too young to understand why. There is nothing harder than seeing a young child with a broken heart and trying to figure out ways to make her understand while you also grieve. This way, she will grow up hearing stories about Trixie and seeing her in photos and videos, and think of her fondly. And eventually when we are ready, we will get her a dog that she can grow up with that she will later look back and know was a great dog.
Philip had a parakeet for 8 years that died about a year after we got together – as if it wanted to make sure he had a companion. Trixie came into our lives and gave us company while we waited to have a kid and left when we got situated as parents. I can’t help but think these things don’t happen by accident.
Thanks Trixie. You trained us well. Because of you, we all know how to be around dogs and love them.
We brought Trixie’s ashes home today in an urn, along with a clay paw print the hospital made. It’s been a long and odd five days, acclimating to life without the dog. We realized that there are so many dog routines that have been embedded into our bodies that it’s disorienting to suddenly have to break ourselves of them. I don’t know how to cook without tripping over her and giving her bits of vegetables. Philip doesn’t know how to wrap up his evening without feeding her and letting her out. Both of us separately and simultaneously caught ourselves planning our outings around a dog. And in doing that, we realized that we have included Yuki into those routines.
We forced ourselves out of the house the day we lost Trixie and managed to spend a couple of hours out of the cloud but when we got home and pulled in to the garage, Yuki said, “Tadaima Trixie!” (“We’re home Trixie!” in Japanese.) It stopped us in our tracks. We sat silently in the car, frozen, and Philip reached over to hold my hand. And we sat for a couple of minutes while Yuki went on happily, singing to herself. While Philip carried Yuki through the snow ahead of me, I followed, weeping, for the fiftieth time that day. It was our ritual to say to Yuki “Let’s go home to Trixie” and to say hi to her first thing when we got in. Yuki was just obeying her ritual without realizing that the dog is no longer around. The next day as she was eating her lunch, she reached under the table to sneak food to Trixie (which is something she did when she was tired of her food) and called her name. I cried again. Then the next day after that, as we were leaving home, Yuki ducked under the kitchen table and said bye to the dog. By this time, I was done crying and asked Yuki, “Do you see her?”
Since then, we just say, “Trixie is not there anymore” whether she understands or not, but we let her say it, and we don’t flinch. Trixie is in couple of home videos Yuki likes to watch. Yuki calls her name and we call it with her. It is sad to know that pretty soon, she will stop saying Trixie’s name altogether and that she won’t remember her, but then we also have to move on. We finally had the frame of mind yesterday to remove Trixie’s beds and her dishes, pack her treats and put things away. And we agreed that in many ways, this was the perfect time for Trixie to go because in another year, Yuki would be old enough to be aware of her being gone, but too young to understand why. There is nothing harder than seeing a young child with a broken heart and trying to figure out ways to make her understand while you also grieve. This way, she will grow up hearing stories about Trixie and seeing her in photos and videos, and think of her fondly. And eventually when we are ready, we will get her a dog that she can grow up with that she will later look back and know was a great dog.
Philip had a parakeet for 8 years that died about a year after we got together – as if it wanted to make sure he had a companion. Trixie came into our lives and gave us company while we waited to have a kid and left when we got situated as parents. I can’t help but think these things don’t happen by accident.
Thanks Trixie. You trained us well. Because of you, we all know how to be around dogs and love them.
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