It wasn’t until the loss of my dog Milo did I fully come to understand just how much of a Heavenly gift our pets are. He was sent to me, if you will, to help care-take for my elderly mother who was suffering from dementia. Little as he was, Milo never failed her, nor me, with late-night warnings that mother was stirring about the house, or was finding the end of the driveway during the day. Our protector, counselor and constant companion he was. Mom, who was not an avid animal lover, had many one-sided conversations with, “that boy” as she referred to him.
After the loss of my mother, I decided to get for Mr. Milo (now a young man indeed) a little girlfriend: Pixie. A whole 4.13 pounds of pure sass. And we loved her. That same year the three of us ended up with yet another, “Gift”– a stinky, smelly hound girl named Scarlet, whom my daughter decided to rescue from a local animal shelter that could no longer keep her. With my children raised and gone and the loss of mom and my father a few years earlier, the three of them were therapeutic in helping me deal with such loss. But then the unthinkable occurred. One-night Milo and Scarlet had gone.
I woke early to search for them, and as I stood in the yard with the morning sun beginning to rise I saw something in the neighbor’s huge tree, something I had never seen before and have not since. A flock of crows, at least a hundred, flew from the branches. Silent at first. Following them, their caws and cries grew as if encouraging me.
I went with them to the little strip of woods behind the house.
They sat in their limbs, and I looked down and picked up a wing. Odd, I know. One whole crow’s wing and nothing more. Embracing a Native American belief, I knew, deep down, Milo was gone. Those crows had faithfully carried their message from The Other World to this one. On that late September afternoon, we found Mr. Milo’s little white fur body laying five miles away, up on the highway, across the bridge.
A close friend of mine affirmed my grief by giving me a framed picture of my Milo with a copy of the poem, The Rainbow Bridge. I hadn’t known of such a place, until that time, and it took a while before I could look at such a wonderful gift. But I did, and afterwards, I took Pixie and Scarlet to the place I could no longer walk, the place the four of us had been to so many times as a family: Pine Hill.
It was in its meadows that I walked with my grief. It was there that I found that place called, Dog Island.
After enough time had passed, and I could see beyond my tears, I sat down to write what you are now holding in your hands. It’s okay to cry and feel grief when we lose our little friends. How we love them so, and they love us. We can never let go of that, can we? Nor should we.
I hope for you, Dear Reader, that you will find peace in your sorrows, understanding in your tears and laughter when it comes to light.
God’s Sweet Blessings to you and your own little Angels,
Ann M. Andrashie
And the journey begins . . .
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