Dog Days - Danielle

[Guest guest]

Dearest Danielle:  My heart hurts with yours as you move through the

ramifications of loss after loss of relationship with your animal children.  I

also relate deeply with the animals in our family, including those of my

children, and have grieved very deeply as they have passed from this life to the

next, but I want to tell you about an experience I had years ago regarding my

daughter and a feeling of loss I had that I didn't understand at the time.

 

Lisa is the child of my first marriage to a Norwegian.  The very first time I

saw him, I " knew " him, and knew we would marry.  That night I told six people

that I knew we would marry, and they laughed at me!  But we did.  I also knew

that he would leave me, and 7 years later he did leave me for someone else.  He

was never connected to Lisa, but I feared that he would try to take her from me,

or try to keep me from taking her out of Norway; (he was an attorney).  I kept

having dreams that he had taken my baby, and than even during  waking hours,

there was this huge grief and tears that he had taken my baby from me, and I

couldn't understand why this was happening. 

 

Even though I am a strongly committed Christian I felt that these feeling were

from a past life in which he had taken  our son from me and I had grieved myself

to death.  In this present life he had wanted a boy and was disappointed we had

a girl.  ( Interestingly enough, in his second marriage he had three more girls

and no boys.).

 

Another aspect of my grief comes from the fact that when I was small I

constantly asked my Mother to have another baby.  Finally when I was 8 she told

me that she had had an abortion when I was 15months old, because both she and I

had almost died  when she gave birth to me and  the doctors told her not to have

any other children.  I can still  recall the feeling that was so deep and 

devastating that I could not even speak!  I felt she had killed MY baby, because

I absolutely adored babies.  I remember I left the room, went to my bedroom,

closed the door and wanted to escape the pain in the only way I knew how, by

sleeping.  When I woke up, I knew I would never feel the same closeness to my

mother again.  To this day, I feel grief for my lost sibling, and I will soon be

69 years old.  But I have become more sensitive to others as  a result.  Pain

carves deep into the soul, but that dept also enables one to contain more joy as

well. 

 

Take heart dear little sister!  You are not alone, and you are deeply loved by

many!

 

Diane