Loss

For times when you just seem to keep losing things

I wanted to write something else today. I wanted to finish writing the “Single Mom” series I started this week. Every series I start seems to be interrupted by something that requires more immediate attention. I find this annoying. I also find that if I don’t write the story that the Universe hands me, I end up miserable trying to force a seed into opening that isn’t ready. And not processing the thing that needs to be processed. And it all just ends up being more work. So this morning, I am plopping down right where life would have me. I am writing the story I need to write. Not the one I want to. 

Loss is an ominous vacuum. I experience it every night when I sleep. My dreams for the last ten years have consisted of some rendition of the following:

I am wondering from room to room inside a million-story hotel. I am trying to make a train or catch a flight that leaves in an hour. But my passport is gone, or I left my money on the 2,882 floor or my phone has been swallowed under a pile of clothes in the room I slept in that I can't remember the number of, or my car has disappeared somewhere between levels A + ZZ of the parking garage. I wake up, as my girls are so quick and giggly to remind me, having “sweat the bed.” 

“Mom, you sweat the bed again last night!!” 

*mischievous cackle 

Loss, according to my thesaurus, which is how I learn definitions of things, is synonymous with misplacement, forgetting, dropping, and overlooking.  

Loss, according to that same thesaurus, can also mean death, end, casualty, or bereavement. 

The insulatory nature of my dreams is still not enough to keep it from bleeding into my waking life. Soaked sheets and panicked 3am intermissions. Losing things and losing things and losing things. I just seem to keep losing things. 

In January I moved out of our house on 67th. I took our family dog, Lolo to be with me there. But left our one remaining pet rabbit, Coco. We had made the executive decision to let her roam free in the vastness of the backyard up on the hill. Where she darted and bounced, grazed on long grass to her heart’s content. While it might have been more responsible as pet owners to keep her contained, we couldn't stand seeing her bound to the hutch. 

So she lived mostly outside happy and contented. Until one day three weeks ago when she started limping. Head cocked to one side, only able to hobble about in a circular circuit. Like a wreath. My oldest daughter hypothesized a broken leg. Coco was brought into the vets office. And diagnosed with a likely incurable inner ear infection caused by a tiny parasite that puffs swelling into the brain. The doctor asked if we’d like to talk about an MRI for little Coco, to see if there was anything else that could be done. When I shamefully inquired about the price, it was decided that Coco had lived a good life. We would treat her with antibiotics to see if those might help, over the course of two weeks, and if not, begin discussing quality of life. 

For the last two weeks, I couldn’t face Coco. I knew she wouldn’t be with us much longer. Even though she was at their dad’s house sitting in the hutch in the garage because she couldn’t be trusted to walk, I couldn’t get out when I stopped by to collect the girls on a Sunday. I wanted to hold her but couldn’t. I was too weak. Or too sad. Or both. 

My breath snagged on tears that showed up inconsistently leading up to the final vet visit. She had brought so much joy to my family during a period of transition. A period of hard. She loved being stroked with one hand from her nose all the way to her ample hindquarters. And I’d often crouch down on the floor with her in the kitchen and touch my nose to hers in those moments. She taught me how to slow down and be still. And breathe in a gentle calm. A calm that I seemed to come by so violently. And she seemed to come by so gracefully. But she taught me these things. 

She’d plop her entire body into the food bowl, which was a nonstick sheet cake pan, and eat around herself in a circle. Like the wreath she’d eventually become. She followed me to the fridge in the early mornings and climb inside the vegetable drawer always eager to munch on happy crunchy nourishment. And man alive. Am I sad she’s gone. 

Coco was comfort and the holiness of nature in a velvety, rotund package. She was a mystery that distilled healing and hope. She was something that cannot be described in something so simple as language. Her life wrapped us up like we wrapped her up in those last moments before the doctor came to take her away. 

Closing our eyes to the hurt doesn’t make it go away. Turning away from the hardness doesn’t make it softer. Nothing can insulate humans from loss, even if the humans are small and you can’t stand seeing them cry. Not dreams, not drugs, not resistance not denial. Just like learning definitions of words by associations, we learn life by living into each other. A loss. A love. A wreath. A gone bunny whose name was Coco.

One tender branch at a time.