Blog

5 things I’m grateful for today: 1) my friends Carrie and Michelle for inspiring me to remember my strength 2) Rachel, Amy, Nicole and Mike K. who got me through the night. 3) the homeless man who literally gave me the shirt off his back  4) my friend Andy for bringing me green tea with agave & soymilk, without me having to ask 5) my mom for talking me through my grief, and my dad for flying across the country to help me recover 6) because today, I need a 6^th) the kindness of strangers

The 7 stages of grief:  1) shock & denial 2) pain & guilt 3) anger & bargaining 4) reflection & loneliness 5) the upward turn 6) reconstruction 7) acceptance

Grief: Stage One

I really don’t know how to write this blog.  I didn’t want to.  I just wanted to stay in bed under the covers and weep.  I wanted to cry and scream and feel sorry for myself for all the challenges I’ve had to go through this year.  Right now, it just seems like too much.

2 days ago, I lost my sweet puppy Dagny to a hit & run driver who nearly ran us both over as he plowed almost 50 mph down a residential street in Santa Monica.  She didn’t suffer.  I can’t say the same for me.  I just sat there, in the middle of the street, screaming and crying & holding her tiny little body even though she was gone.  I could not let her go.  I could not put her down.  I could not believe it had happened.  As I sat there in my grief I really believed that if I just WANTED it enough, she would come back.  That this hadn’t actually happened, and it was all just a horrible horrible nightmare.  I kept telling myself to wake up. WAKE UP!!! It will all be ok…… this couldn’t possibly have just happened.

I sat there with her like this for what seemed like an eternity, but was probably only a few minutes, before a kind motorcyclist who had witnessed the accident came over… & helped me off the road and over to curb.  That’s when I noticed: he wasn’t alone.  5 or 6 motorists who had witnessed the accident and seen my profound heartache had all stopped their cars, and bikes, and evening jogs to come comfort me.  Some shared my tears, some sat nearby in reverent silence.  Some offered kind words & support…. And one even offered an ativan to help quell my heaving sobs & hyperventilating.  I couldn’t breathe.  I couldn’t speak.  I could only weep. My sobs came directly from the center of my being.  I was traumatized.  I felt broken all over again.  As if it had finally happened….. my heart had finally been ripped apart & wrenched out of my body to die there on the side of the road with my dog.  And she was not JUST my dog…. I really believe she was my angel.

Within moments, 2 of my friends arrived & wrapped their arms around me.  They did not ask me to stop crying.  They did not ask me to let go.  They did not tell me it would be ok.  They just surrounded me with their love & support, which I could feel even through my sorrow.   One of the motorists, whom I’d never met, and whose name I never heard, took Dagny from me, and wrapped her warmly in a shirt I didn’t recognize and placed her back down gently on the grass.   My tears poured out faster & faster, as my breath got shorter & shorter.  My friend Amy, who is one of the most incredible mothers & all around human beings I know, just held me.  She reminded me to breathe. I couldn’t.  She stayed, and breathed for me, until eventually my panic slowed, and I was able to exhale.  Finally…. After nearly an hour, I was able to give Dagny to my friend Mike, who had dropped everything he was doing to drive over to  help.  He took Dagny to be buried.  I wept as he carried her off.  I simply couldn’t accept that I’d never see her sweet face again, or laugh at her wet kisses.  I wept as Amy walked me home, and as more friends came over with food (which I couldn’t eat) & love (which I didn’t have to ask for).

Hours later, when I felt nearly cried out, my sobs finally slowed and I found myself in a room filled with just a handful of ALL the incredible people who bless my life so richly with their love.  All I could say was “thank you”.  All I could think was how healing unsolicited, unconditional love is.  And how fortunate I was to have it from so many people.

So that day… the saddest day I have known, maybe in my life… my commitment to my “bliss” was to allow my friends to see me at my most vulnerable, and to LET them be there for me, and show their love.  As someone who is much more comfortable GIVING help, it is often a challenge for me to receive it…. to admit that I actually NEED it.  But this time… I did.  I tried to remember how much joy it brings me to support others with help & inspiration, and that it brings my friends the same joy to return it.  We all want to be able to show our love by giving unconditionally.  The other half of this…. The half I SO often forget…. Is that we have to be able to RECEIVE this love and support as well. Graciously, wholeheartedly, and without apology.

I saw both sides of humanity that night.  First, the recklessness of someone in a black Lexus who could destroy one life, and shatter another without even slowing down.  And simultaneously, the polar opposite… the part of humanity that I sincerely believe is massively more prominent in our world…. the selflessness of humanity.  On this evening, that magnanimity was embodied in an elderly homeless man on 14^th street, who saw the heart-wrenching anguish of a complete stranger, and offered her friends the shirt off his back so she could lay her dog to rest.

I have walked the neighborhood these past two days looking for this compassionate soul…. Hoping to thank him, and maybe return the kindness in any way I can.  I’ve not seen him anywhere.  Maybe, he too was an angel… sent to remind me that even when we feel we have lost everything, we still have SOMETHING that only we can give.   And sometimes….. that ‘something’ can mean the world to the person who receives it.