So it's been nearly four months since Ginny's death and its still a difficult subject for me.
Since I'm living in an apartment with a roommate the pigs are housed in my bedroom, and I wake up every morning to hear their rustling and wheeking. It still hurts that I don't see her garent eyes first thing or being able to pet her. That last part, the petting, it the worst. The other pigs (Maggie, Clemmy, and Piper) all run away whenever I come near them and are really too skittish to be randomly picked up. Five minutes in your lap and they're already looking to be put back. Ginny loved petting so I could pick her up whenever I wanted with little hassle or even just scratch her nose while walking by. I try with the others, but each time they run away I still feel a lump in my throat.
Great, now I'm crying at work. Anyway, one of the main reasons I wrote an update was because I found a poem while looking for poetry and writing prompts for my students. This particular poem is about putting a beloved pet to sleep which, although not the same situation as mine, is similar to my feelings during and following Ginny's death.
Loyal, William Matthews
They gave him an overdose
of anesthetic, and its fog
shut down his heart in seconds.
I tried to hold him, but he was
somewhere else. For so much love
one of the principals is missing,
it's no wonder we confuse love
with longing. Oh I was thick
with both. I wanted my dog
to live forever and while I was
working on impossibilities
I wanted to live forever, too.
I wanted company and to be alone.
I wanted to know how they trash
a stiff ninety-five-pound dog
and I paid them to do it
and not tell me. What else?
I wanted a letter of apology
delivered by decrepit hand,
by someone shattered for each time
I'd had to eat pure pain. I wanted
to weep, not "like a baby,"
in gulps and breath-stretching
howls, but steadily, like an adult,
according to the fiction
that there is work to be done,
and almost inconsolably.
from Selected Poems and Translations 1969-1991, 1992
Houghton Mifflin, New York, NY
