Backtracking... Thoughts about blogging, and Holly, and Jude

One of the real down sides of trying to resurrect this blog is the big shift in how I process my own feelings in recent years. In the past, sharing the deep stuff came as easily as sharing the small moments. Maybe not everything and maybe not to a worldwide audience, but at least to a few. I could process and process and process and the words would flow evocatively.

Over the last four years I find I have changed more than I thought possible. Besides becoming a person who withdraws from others when hurt, I've withdrawn from myself too. And I also find that is completely okay with me. I've hit some places where just too much is wrong and there just aren't words for it any more. I am very okay being a person who can be totally emotionally present for others, but keep that a one-way street much of the time, or at least keep the traffic my direction well controlled. My heart was very open to giving, but mistrustful about allowing anything in return. I feel safer in silence. Alongside this evolution has been a stronger sense about what God asks of me in this world, and it never involves putting my own feelings first.

However, all of this is a disadvantage in trying to resume writing as an honest practice too. I realized this weekend that a compromise may lie in revisiting previous events, where the processing is largely done and some perspective has already occurred. Holly's arrival in my life unlocked some doors that had been pretty slammed shut, with the deaths of Hunter and Piper, the decline of my mom's health and the constant stress of worry about her care. Holly brought joy and resiliency and a willingness to open my heart to receive again.

And that brings me to Jude. Some months ago as Holly's dad, a former client, began making plans to move to the Calgary area, memories of my time there with Jude were very front of mind. I would often think with a smile of how Jude would have delighted to add Holly to her long list of beloved seniors. As Holly's relocation plan progressed, I began to feel something stirring as it clicked for me that her target, a small community south of Calgary, was the very one where Jude had relocated and where she died.

On May 3 in this blog, I wrote about my awakening feelings... "But the tide is ebbing and I am being pulled with its shift. And, not surprisingly, all of it is under the influence of one dog. This weekend was the first time in 18 months that I allowed it to take me deeply into the undertow. It was a meaningful baptism."

The previous Friday evening, I had taken Holly to see her dad before he left Anchorage for the final time. (All of this was before her cancer diagnosis and change in plans.) The next morning, the sun was really bright, I had a million things to do, but I sat down and started writing because I felt sad inside. I thought it was from sadness over watching the pain of that parting and thinking of my own loss in Holly's impending departure, but it turned out to be years of unresolved grief over Jude's death. I wrote and wrote and wrote. Then I edited and rewrote, and found words more perfect for what I was feeling, and cried harder than I have cried over anything in years. Under the tears I found the bright love that I carried for Jude and that I carry still, and the life-changing impact that her presence, like Holly's, had brought to my life.

I didn't experience this as a series of small coincidences (client has senior dog, client moves to town where friend died under strange circumstances, friend was champion of senior dog rescue). I experienced it as a series of doors unlocking quietly, and suddenly all of Jude's wonderful passion and heart was connected to mine again.

What I wrote that day is just for her. I hope that before too many more years go by, that I will go there one autumn day to visit Jude again, retrace some of the steps we took there together, and share all that I found buried in my heart for her that morning. To abandon the lingering burden of senseless loss in her death, and instead to look on our years of friendship with a sense of true healing and celebration is one of the greatest gifts that I have received, because of Holly.