
Grief has many faces and tonight he is a four-legged, glassy-eyed ball of fur, drool dripping from his motionless mouth. I never knew life until I saw the fire ants funeral-parading around the tiny bag of bones I loved and lost in all of four months.
Life is a cake and a carcass, a river and the silence of the ocean bottom. It is the first seconds of daybreak and the deep, deathly hours of sleep. A golden autumn leaf in a mid-air summersault and a bud breaking through months-old winter frost.
I never knew life until I saw my little friend, silent as if only sleeping, that once held all the world’s light in his lopsided grin and the lolling of his tongue. I never knew life until I knew of the chaos in the order and the order in the chaos.
This is how the universe began. A writhing, sunless cosmic mess. And this is how the universe ends.
