Saturday, January 19, 2008

Memorial

I wrote a small obituary for Mojo today.  It will be placed at the Pet Memorial Program for the WSU College of Veterinary Medicine when they have time to process my email and post it.  I'm not sure how long it will take.

I've owned a lot of animals over the years.  When I was a child, I viewed pet ownership as something done by my parents for my pleasure.  Over the years that's developed into a sense of privilege.  It's so worth it.  Over the summer I wrote often, and with pride, about gardening and how it's so beautiful to have living things respond to my care.  My early feelings about animals were similar, but now I have different sense of the relationship.  We're a family.  We live, grow, and die in a continuum of community.  We depend on each other, and love each other.  I don't think animals have the same sort of love for us that we do for them or each other, but then human beings express their love in a huge number of complex ways.  It's not a stretch for me to call what Wiz feels or the puppies feel or Nikita feels as real love.

I wonder how my children feel deep-down about our pets.  I know that they love them, but how is a mystery.  How I love others in some ways is a mystery to myself as well.  Maybe that's just the way love is.  Like the magnificence of music or the intense glow of sunset, it is what it is.

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