In Grief, We Each Take Our Own Path

Her food bowl has been stashed in the back of the pantry, her purple collar tucked in my sock drawer. The giant bone she’d been chewing--and will never finish--now lies abandoned outside the front door.

And the towel bearing her scent--that lay beneath her as I cradled her head while she died last Saturday--rests crumpled on the cushion where our other dog sleeps.

It is all there is left of Cookie in our lives these days.

After weeks of dimly flickering hopes, we finally confronted the choice we hated and said goodbye to the dog who had brought so much joy to our lives.

With us gathered around, our vet dispatched Cookie to an afterlife where two good legs will be enough and pain won’t accompany her every move.

And left us struggling to stay afloat in the familiar, murky waters of grief.

It’s been almost a week, and I can finally mention her name at home without someone bursting into tears.

My daughters don’t cry themselves to sleep anymore, but still wake up confused in the middle of the night because they miss her body sprawled across their bed.

And while I can get through most days without weeping, I lie awake thinking of her every night.

I guess that puts us right on schedule in the recovery process . . . or so the experts say. And if we continue to grieve on schedule, in a few months we’ll reach “closure” and “resolve” our loss, and be ready to move on, maybe get another puppy to love.

Well, you know what? We may get a puppy tomorrow . . . or we may mourn this loss for the rest of our lives. We may never move on, reach closure, come to grips with our grief. . . .

For while the experts can predict a range of typical responses, they cannot give us a timetable for mourning. There is no right or wrong set of emotions, no blueprint to dictate our moves through the pain.

*

It’s become for my family familiar terrain--this vast, bleak territory of death and loss.

When their father died, I studied my children for signs of distress, measuring their reactions against the “norm.”

Was this one showing sadness to an appropriate degree? Why had that one gotten so demanding and mean? When is anger supposed to give way to understanding? And when would all their questions stop?

This time as we mourn our loss, I’m clearheaded enough to stand aside as they struggle, and step in only when their emotions seem too complicated and conflicting to sort through alone.

My oldest--moody and sensitive, on the cusp of adolescence--withdraws, avoiding even her closest friends. She can’t stand their pity, hates the spotlight on her.

That was her reaction when her father died too. But this time, I don’t try to nurse her through. She is learning to deal with discomfort and pain, to trust her own emotions and stake out the space she needs to heal.

Meanwhile, though, she snaps at her sister, who asks--even as she bids Cookie goodbye--if we can “Please, please get another puppy today?”

Is it disloyal, denial or simply survival--the instinctive response of a 9-year-old not up to absorbing a loss so profound.

I shuttle them off to the animal shelter, where I let her hold a puppy, if not take one home. It is only then that her tears can fall, when reality is safely an arm’s length away--and nearby is new life to help cushion the blow.

As for me, I can’t not talk about it. . . . “Our dog died today,” I blurt out to anyone who wanders within range. I am, I know, pathetically groping for comfort from strangers, as if I need that to replenish my store.

I won’t worry this time if we’re out of sync with what the experts prescribe. Grief, we have learned, can be a search without promise, a journey without end.

*

I was counseled when my mother died, “It’ll be years before you stop missing her.” It’s 24 years later, and not a single day has passed that I haven’t thought of her and wished she were here.

When my husband died, I heard “Give it two years . . . It’ll take that long before you’re back on your feet.” Four years have gone by, and I still spend some nights alone wracked with anger and grief.

And for the loss of a dog? The books say I will mourn for months, before moving on. Already I know that is not my way. . . .

Am I just a slow griever . . . a failure in Mourning 101? I can’t seem to reach “closure,” or even fathom quite what it is.

And I don’t know that I want to. Because I know grieving isn’t a process you pass through and emerge unchanged.

Each loss has made an imprint on my soul, has humbled me, yet left me stronger. There are lessons best learned through suffering, wisdom that can only be gleaned through pain.

But forgive me if I can’t see any of that right now . . . There are still too many tears in my eyes.

* Sandy Banks’ column is published Mondays and Fridays. Her e-mail address is sandy.banks@latimes.com.