Not a Dog Person
Instead, I was a Fern person
CW: grief, loss of pet, apocalyptic thinking
Welcome to Healing is My Special Interest, the newsletter that used to be about the intersection of late-diagnosed neurodivergence and healing from high control environments . . . and is now about whatever I want it to be about (mostly autonomy, and reclaiming hope for the future). Today is a personal (and short) post about the grief I am currently swimming through. Thank you to everyone who supports my work and my writing. If you would like to read this post but don’t have financial resources, perhaps consider a way you can support me (sending me a nice email, sharing about my work on social media, donating to your local food bank in my honor) and then reach out to strongwilledproject at gmail and I will hook you up with a one year paid subscription.
My beautiful, precious little Corgi Fern died last week. I am still figuring out how to process this. One second she was there — always attuned to me, ears perked up, following me around the house — and the next she wasn’t. She died like she lived — not afraid of anyone or anything. She wasn’t like me. She wasn’t anxious and homebound and terrified of the future, her brain puzzling over all the biggest problems in the world and how to solve them. She was on a walk and she saw one of her best doggie buds. She somehow wriggled out of her collar, ran a few happy zoomies across the street, and then a speeding van came careening down the road.
As a family, we have now experienced a profound trauma together. Seeing death, seeing tragedy, and experiencing loss. We are getting through, and we are so happy to have each other: hours of watching movies and coloring and just huddling together. We got her almost four years ago and she was our first dog ever. I always said I was a cat person, and then I got Fern. And after that, I always told people that I still wasn’t a dog person.
Instead, I was a Fern person.
The week Fern died was also the week my parents told Krispin that they were leaving on a two month long road trip across America, where they intended to look for another place to live. Somewhere far away from me, my children, my younger sister and her kids — all the family members my parents are currently estranged from. They framed their decision, as they always do, as them embarking on another adventure with God. When Krispin told me the news I was puzzled at the emotions I felt. Wasn’t this the best case scenario? Them leaving, so I wouldn’t be haunted by their absence in my life? I wouldn’t have to worry about seeing them at the grocery store or at the gym, or stopping by to drop something on my front stoop? Knowing they were so physically near and yet so emotionally absent?
But I wasn’t relieved, I wasn’t happy. I was angry. Here was proof that my parents were running away from their problems instead of facing them, something they had done my entire life. We moved every 2-3 years when I was a child, and my parents always told me it was because God had called them elsewhere. Now that I am older I can see the broken relationships and endless conflicts that my parents either couldn’t or wouldn’t face littering our every move. It was easier to move on, go somewhere new and exciting, and leave as soon as accountability was called for.
In March of this year I sent my parents an email. It was so much more honest than they deserved, but I kept on hearing through the grapevine that they were confused as to why I was still so distant from them. So I cleared up that confusion. I mostly told them how angry I was at them — how I was raised, the fear they instilled in me at the end of the world, the hateful bigotry I heard day in and day out, their Republican politics and the suffering it imposed on so many people. I told them what I would need to be in relationship with them: frank conversations on this hurt, them being a witness to my anger, and taking accountability for the trauma caused by their beliefs and actions.
They never responded.
Which, of course, is a response in of itself.
And now they are running away for good. Or as my dad said, starting the next (and final) stage of their lives on a new adventure.
When Krispin told me, I comforted myself with what I had around me: my little family, my friends, and my dog. I have been learning these past 4 years how to be OK without being loved or seen by my parents. I held Fern’s soft little ears and I kissed her sweet little snout. Despite all the pain and suffering in the world, there was still some good in it. I could still find unconditional love after all, despite spending almost 4 decades of looking for it in the places where it could never love me back.
