I wrote this over the holidays a while back, but decided it was too bleak and perhaps too personal to share. But damned if life just refuses to offer respite from loss and suffering. So here it is— a few months late.

In the season when thoughts drift to auld acquaintance, and newspapers (Remember them?) publish lists of those who left us this year, a tinge of melancholy can cloud a sunny day. Funerals ought to take place in the rain or at minimum on a raw, blustery day when dead leaves blow across the graveyard. Sometimes death on a warm, bright day carries an unfair irony that’s too much to bear.

But a funeral is just a punctuation mark. The event—the one which tore us apart inside is past, sometimes long past. And the death itself may carry less grief than the chain of increased awarenesses that foretold it. A state trooper knocking at the door. A phone call too late in the night to be bearing any news but bad. The gut wrenching sound of a cannon bone shattering under you. The horrifying moment when the vet unsheathes the terminal needle.

Loved ones come in all shapes, sizes, and species (excluding, please, invertebrates). The loss of a parent or of a child is life altering. We who may spend more time with a horse or dog or cat whose uncompromising loyalty melts our heart, know that the loss need not be human to burn deeply.

I was at my father’s deathbed to help him cross. One bat-eared best friend played a last two-foot Frisbee toss, peacefully strolled over to a shady spot and put himself to sleep. Another bulldog trembled in my arms as seizures took him away with hardly any warning. Over the years I’ve buried more than my share of horse friends. I can relive each one without closing my eyes. Perhaps the worst is a death that’s long and lingering as the person you know and loved withers and disappears before your eyes. It’s all about perspective. Who’s to say which is harder, which is worse? We face it as best we can, and we go on.