Still Consumed

Interesting that the word we use to describe being heavily involved in something also means used up. Grief, I am learning, consumes people. See I think that the hard part of this for me is that I invest. Another capitalist word. What would you say instead of invest if you were communist? The hard part of this for me is that I share myself so deeply. I don’t even like dogs. Well, I do, but I would choose a cat over a dog any day. Except Pippin. I can’t explain it. I am sure by now that you are sick of hearing about my love affair with a dog, but his eyes haunt me. His big soft paws haunt me. His need to leap up into my face to be eye to eye with me haunts me. I was smitten with this dog. I am smitten with this dog.

I think Pippin’s death has triggered some things in me, too, things that I don’t want to admit about myself. Death doesn’t scare me, but I know it is there. I keep thinking this could have been my dad or either of my grandmas. It could have been any person I know. What scares me is that when people die, I can’t access that part of me that grieves. I have had friends die, great aunts and uncles, and never have I been as sad as when Pippin died. Why? Do I care more about a dog than a person? I am trying to write about Kate Chopin and Mary Cassatt, and I don’t care about them right now. I don’t care how they represented women or how they felt about the state of women in their time. I want my fucking dog back. I want the last six months of my life not to have been complete shit. I want something fucking marvelous to happen in my life like right fucking now! I want to go get pissed and not think about it. I am sick to death of sadness.

I sort of feel like Job, but I can’t say that I am confident enough to know that God will bring good of this. I think I may be more inclined to be like his wife: “Why don’t you just curse Gods and die?” I am waiting for the sores to break out all over my body. I think I have of shards of clay at home that I could scrape them with.

Realistically, I know my life is good. I have food, shelter, a job, clothes, friends, family and all those things that make life good. I am not in a country that is being constantly bombed in the name of Christianity or democracy. I am not three years old wondering why I have no parents because they both died of AIDS. I am am not wandering around looking for food or clean water or sitting in a heap dying of a perfectly curable disease.

So I wrestle. I am devastated, but I am sated.

I know that I am blessed beyond my wildest imagination, and I know that I am redeemed and in grace. I am filled with glory and righteousness. I know that better times will come. I know I miss my dog.