I loved him so

Where the veil thins

Warning: pet death story.

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Most of my life I’ve chased bits of spirituality, mostly insisting I believed in nothing, but at times experiencing something unexplainable, which I then explained away as an illusion. My teen years return to me as a time when crystals and Tarot cards took on additional meanings which I could not re-constitute later on. As a child I recall watching a light approaching in the sky, dialing up in brightness until it was surely an angel! Then the light dimmed as the plane turned toward a runway at the airport. This memory has served as a metaphor for any ethereal, extraordinary moments throughout my life: watch long enough, and that thing I saw/felt turns ordinary and understandable.

When I had children, I learned another level of love exists. That cracked open my shell of disbelief, added a wedge of understanding and suggested perhaps I couldn’t know all of the world. Once, a student wrote a personal essay about an experience he had as a child at a tribal ceremony, and without sharing details, demonstrated the power of what is beyond our human perception. In the most recent years of my life, that cracked shell of mine has split even farther. Things have happened that I cannot explain or share. So I’ve begun accepting them.

Jinx, most definitely not worn out, with just one tennis ball.

About a decade ago, my ex-husband and I adopted a black German Shepherd Dog named Jinx. Growing up in my mother’s house, I’d never had dogs, but my marriage was full of them. Jinx, though, more than the others, was special. He loved to watch animals on TV and used to search behind the TV to find where the other animal went when it disappeared off the screen. He took great pleasure in endlessly fetching and was lightning fast. I’d get a constant two-ball rotation going to eventually wear him out. Snowy days were his favorite and he’d dive into a snowbank like a fox. He was particular to fresh vegetables, so while I prepared dinner I’d toss chunks of carrots and potatoes over my shoulder for him to snap up, midair. As do other German Shepherd Dogs, he sharked around beds, tables, couches with those pointy ears. When I changed sheets, I had to close the bedroom door because he adored a freshly-made bed — as do I — and would hop onto the fitted sheet and curl up before I could add the other layers. And he loved me. Jinx nosed his face into my books, around my laptop screen, and under my arm. He slept curled like a cat next to my side of the bed. He followed me like my own shadow everywhere I went.

When I moved out three years ago, the very hardest part was leaving Jinx. I was told he didn’t eat for days after I left. Later, he became ill, developing a tumor of some kind. Over the months and then years, the tumor’s treatment required medicine that had some unfortunate side effects. I heard about all this second-hand from my kids, because I never saw Jinx again.

Jinx posing with a rainbow.

Then one night a few weeks ago, Jinx visited me a dream. In this dream, he approached and sat down in front of me. I reached out and caressed his pointy, furry ears - I still remember exactly how they felt even after three years - and I pushed my fingers into the thick ruff of fur around his neck - I still remember its thickness even after three years. I put my arms all the way around his neck and squeezed a little, just the way I used to. Then he curled up at my feet and I stroked his head between his ears, just the way I used to.

The next morning, I was so struck by the dream that I thought I’d ask my ex how Jinx was faring. I picked up my phone to send a message, and instead found a text from him. Jinx had become very, very ill in the night, and would be taken to the vet that day for the last time.

This is no crystal necklace, no angel in the sky. I know one thing only: The veil between worlds thinned to wrinkle space, and time, and life threads such that a dream became a meeting place. Jinx’s spirit touched mine for a final time, when he knew he would give up his beating heart. And I held onto him.

Jinx at Schwarz Lake with a butterfly over his head.

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Last night I dreamed about the crows outside my house. You may know our townhouse occupants have been cultivating friendships with a family of crows. They land on our carports and yell until we emerge with snacks. First came Maistoo¹ and his woman² and then after summer, their three babies. The brown-headed young ones have different voices, sounding more like they’re cawing into a cup. Finally now, in early fall, their heads are filling out with shiny black caps like their parents, and their voices are changing. But in my dream a young one came to the eaves and called me. When I emerged, she changed her voice to a soft, soothing sound — intimate, even. She looked right into my face while she chattered at me a while before flapping off.

I do not know what to make of this. But when Maistoo appeared this morning, I told him about the dream. I tossed him some peanuts which he tipped into his beak and swallowed. After he left I filled the bird feeder so the sparrows would have something to fight over. The squirrels are befuddled by the missing plants³ but still happy to find the seeds thrown down by fussy chickadees. My neighbors likely think I’m crazy.

But I’ve learned something. It is one thing to seek spiritual experiences, through prayer or smudging or walking through the woods or even reading about these practices, and to perhaps sense a response that I may or may not be imagining. It is fully another to experience something I am certain I did not manifest, and for that experience to carry such emotional intensity.

I would not go backward into a life that does not allow for these possibilities. I know to keep the doors open, I need to connect with relatives, human and non-human, the birds and the earth and the sky and all of it. I want my experience of this life to include the tangible world that I can see and hear, and the one under it: the world where the ancestors speak to me, where a tree hears my prayers to it, where dreams invite visitors to lift the veil one last time.

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I Ask Percy How I Should Live My Life

Love, love, love, says Percy.
And hurry as fast as you can
along the shining beach, or the rubble, or the dust.

Then, go to sleep.
Give up your body heat, your beating heart.
Then, trust.

-Mary Oliver

1. I call him Maistoo because it is the Blackfoot word for “crow” and I was doing a lot of work with Browning Public Schools at the time we started, um, hanging out.

2. Can I tell a male crow from a female? No, I cannot. But the one I call Maistoo has a displaced feather on his back so I can recognize him.

3. I winterized this weekend