It’s been over three months since our German Shepherd Dog died in our home due to a brain tumor while we helplessly watched and waited for the vet. Three weeks from now will mark the one year anniversary since he had his very first seizure. He made it only 7 short months after that first seizure. But this is not a post about his death, it’s a post about what I’ve allowed his death to teach me in life.

The first week after Connor died I reached out to a local woman, Sara Baker of the Pink Pinecone Studio, who made a lot of seasonal décor and who I knew had a formal fine arts education. I asked her if she could make a portrait of Connor, with lots of color and not necessarily a portrait that looked exactly like him, but something that captured his essence. She agreed.

Three days after Connor’s death an out-of-town friend, who had been scheduled to visit for several months, arrived. This friend had lost her mother only a few months earlier. The first couple hours of our visit was spent sitting in my dim living room rehashing my recent trauma and discussing her loss as well. It was sad. It was cathartic. It deepened a bond between the two of us. Her presence delivered a gift of lightness and energy to one of the saddest times in my life. When she left 5 days later, she said that she felt that the timing was meant to be, that she was meant to be in our lives that week. I cannot believe anything else. She absolutely was meant to be there for us. We were blessed to have her.

Time passed. The artist I contacted about painting Connor started sending photos of the progress she had made in sketching out and then painting our dear pup. Every photo was a gift and sent me into a fit of tears. Loss is hard. I felt the need to say to people, “I know he was just a dog but…” in order to protect myself in case they thought my level of sadness was unusual or weird or that I should just “be over it.” In retrospect, I don’t have to justify my grief at all. No one does. Grief is grief. If I say I’m sad, and I need time to process and work through my pain, that’s my right. If I’m going to work, if I’m paying my bills and not crawling into a bottle or strangers’ beds or going through cases of Doritos, there’s no need for concern, just empathy.

I think life is one long lesson, one after the other, you either get smarter on the lessons you’re learning, or you just bang your head against the same damn lesson your whole life through. One lesson I have struggled with is how to express empathy. It’s not that I haven’t had concern for people, it’s that I struggled to really put myself in someone else’s shoes in terms of coping with a sick loved one, grief, or really any type of trauma. The loss of Connor finally split my heart open wide enough for the lesson to take hold. His death gave me empathy. I can now empathize with the feeling of being a helpless bystander as a loved one endures an illness that has more questions than answers and no clear path to wellness. Or perhaps no path at all. The illnesses may vary, the scenarios each unique, but the helplessness and the worry and the tears are all universal. And I can say with so much more conviction, how sorry I am, and offer hugs and inappropriate jokes and anything to give a little emotional release. It does not matter that Connor was “just a dog.” We had a deep and unusual connection, and I took his death very hard.

The piece of artwork resembling my sweet dog continued to take shape in someone else’s home as I waited (mostly) patiently. I should add that Sara, the artist, is not someone I knew personally but to whom I would send unsolicited blogging advice. Yes, you read that correctly. She started a blog after I did, and I would send her articles that I thought were helpful and informative. After all, I had done the reading of a ton of crappy and good articles, why not share the good ones with someone? I assured my friends (who thought I was crazy) that I wasn’t critiquing her actual blogging, just passing on information I thought was helpful. (they still thought I was crazy). I felt a kinship with her because she is local to the area and we both have creative talents.
You can tie together the natural power of the body to heal itself will also be one of the rising Dorn communities in cialis generic from india Australia and all over the world in no time. Some of the common damages that occur for iphones include water viagra generic mastercard damage, cracked screens as well as other damages that occur as a result of accidentally dropping the gadget. Erectile Dysfunction is a form of sexual dysfunction that occurs in men and destroys canadian viagra 100mg their sexual life. One tablespoon of apple cider vinegar can be taken even without consultancy of doctor. viagra fast

I received the final photo of the painting last week, I gave my okay and she applied the final seal and we arranged for me to pick up the painting over the weekend. I pulled up to Sara’s house and as I was walking up the drive, she stepped out the front door with this enormous canvas with my dog’s energy looking out at me. I burst into tears. Me, the one who doesn’t like crying in public, burst into tears in front of a stranger. And then we hugged. I not only cried in front of a stranger, I then HUGGED her. Grief makes you do weird things. But it also opens your heart to people you might otherwise not have been open to.

It was like Sara was meant to make this painting for me, to help me heal, that she would gently soothe my sadness with the loving strokes that she put down on canvas. We stood and chatted for a bit about her desires for her own business, that doing fine art, painting, is where her true passion lies and that it is a path she hopes to move further down. I thought that was amazing, that here she was giving me this gift of my dog, but this was also meaningful to her as it was a step toward something she wanted to develop for herself. And in the same way my friend was meant to arrive the week that Connor died, I believe that Sara was meant to put this piece together for us. She was so sweet to work with, and the piece of art she created for us is not only amazing for its artistic quality and her talent, but because she managed to capture our dog’s spirit in those paints. It is something mystical that she was able to translate with her painting.

If you’d like to check out her work, her website is here and I highly suggest you follow her Facebook here, that is where you can see her artistic journey unfolding.

Thank you, Sara, for this wonderful gift.

If you would like to follow me on Facebook, you can find me here. I’d love to have you as part of my growing community of amazing people.