Why I’m Holding On to the Things My Loved Ones Have Left Behind
When we lose someone, it becomes our turn to carry on their lives
The other day I was outside under the brilliant New England winter sky with my fourteen-year-old dog, Safari, watching him un-bury then re-bury his beloved collection of ripped-up tennis balls in his various preferred corners of the yard. (He has no interest in whole ones, only the ones sliced open by the summer mower.) He took them gently in his teeth as if they were his own babies and buried them by nosing them into the soil.
He returned to me for some head scratches after burying one along our old, stone 1759 property-line wall when it hit me: I will be finding these little scraps of love for the rest of my life, long after he’s gone. Safari’s ball scraps are everywhere. Under the hedge. At the edge of the woods. Behind the grave of his late dog brother, Booker, who died in 2015.
In The Things They Carried, author Tim O’Brien achingly and lovingly details all the things — personal and militaristic — soldiers carried in their rucksacks in Vietnam. Lately, I’ve been thinking about that book in another way: the things they left behind. We all have those things that we often hold tight when someone leaves us inside our grief and love.
Booker was fifteen years old. Fifteen years on this warm, unpredictable Earth, and these are the things he left behind: his collar, his Kong, a tumbleweed of his hair out in our Forsythia somewhere, or maybe under our bed. Those little scratches in our old, hardwood floor when he’d dig in his nails during the later years just to get his mammoth body up.
And, of course, him — buried out back where our grass turns a bit wilder into woods, the world of deer and wild turkeys and bobcats dancing around each other. And, of course, us — all of us who loved him and smell him still, not with our noses but our hearts.
My beloved father-in-law, Bernard, died on Saturday, November 27th, 2021, in the possum-winter-dark hours of the morning while some of us were still sleeping. We’d been waiting for this for days. Dreading it, too. Waiting for what was inevitable — and even a relief after years watching him disappear into dementia — but also dreading the worst news you can hear about someone you love.
I knew the minute I heard my brother-in-law’s feet on the floor in the hall, padding toward our room just after 6:30 a.m. He gently knocked then opened the door. “Matt?” he called out to his brother, my husband, who was sleeping in the twin bed next to me. “Matt,” he whispered. “He’s gone. Papa passed.”
I followed my husband upstairs so we could all hug his mother and each other. Then they all went to say their final goodbyes while I fed our dogs and waited for my son and daughter to wake up so that I could tell them that their Papa, with his deep, twinkling eyes, irrepressible grin, and kindness, died while they were sleeping.
Eighty-one years on this warm, unpredictable Earth, and these are the things he left behind: A lifetime of curiosity, questions, and stories. His loving wife of fifty-nine years. At my husband’s cousin’s wedding, they were the last couple on the dance floor after the deejay slowly whittled the crowd down based on how long everyone had been married. “They won marriage!” my son delighted. They really did.
He left behind the skyline of Rochester, New York, much of which he built running his family’s steel business. He left behind the biggest rubber band collection I’ve ever seen. He left behind Brandi Carlyle; her song “Story” was one of his favorites. He left behind the shoes he wore on the dock the day I first met him. My son has them now. He left behind everyone whom he loved and who loved him.
Grief is like being a Russian nesting doll all tucked in our places. Only we’re missing one.
The air is cold and there’s snow on the ground, which Safari rolls in deliriously. (According to his DNA test from Embark, he’s 37% Siberian Husky, 18.3% Chow Chow, 13% German Shepard, 12.8% Alaskan Malamute, 7.6% Cocker Spaniel, 6.9% Golden Retriever, 4.4% Collie, and clearly some arctic seal.) It’s hard to know how much time we have left with him. He sleeps most of the day, then paces, and pants, and whimpers, but then runs like a thoroughbred across the yard when he’s moving a flap of tennis ball fuzz from Point A to Point B.
I’m also picturing, under all of the quiet snow, his incredible lifelong collection of mangled tennis balls, some of which are buried just beyond the graves of Booker, our two cats Tito and Lolita, several nameless birds, mice, one baby rabbit, and one spider. Eventually, Safari will be there, too. I wonder if that’s why he’s been burying so many there, surrounding his future lifeless body with his precious trove the way the ancient Pharaohs were entombed surrounded by their most special things.
“They carried their own lives,” Tim O’Brien writes in his opening chapter. When we lose someone, it becomes our turn to carry those lives. A dog isn’t a dad. And a dad isn’t a dog. But losing either is to be forever searching for tennis-ball scraps and rubber bands. Grief. Anything we are lucky enough they left behind.
As I’ve watched Safari slow and weaken, even melt into the earth, his eyes and ears cloudier, his back legs shakier, but still wearing that sweet, smiling dolphin face, I’ve pictured what will be left of him when he goes. No doubt, hair for days — years. His coat rivals Chewbacca’s. The slightly torn corner of the rug he chewed when he was a puppy. And his carefully curated collection of ripped-up tennis balls.
Since I know all of his favorite spots, I know in my impending, inevitable grief, I will find myself visiting those places when the snow thaws, and I am once again planting spring flowers around the animal cemetery we’ve reluctantly but loyally built, digging up at least a few of his torn treasures so that I can carry him and carry on.
Chloe Shaw lives in Connecticut with her husband, two kids, and two dogs. What Is a Dog? is her literary debut.
This essay is part of our Moms Don’t Have Time to Grieve column.
