Birth and Death
The Call to the Wild
My dog died last night around 2am. It was mostly peaceful, although there was some moaning and howling. Around midnight I started to hear some funny sounds coming from the living room, where her bed is, and I came out to check on her. She was quiet and calm so I went back to bed. Then around 1am I heard her howling and came out to be with her, as I thought she must be in pain. I set up a pillow bed with a blanket next to her and pet her, trying to comfort and sooth her.
I was reminded of my first labor experience 5 years ago, when I woke up in the middle of the night with contractions. I went out to the living room because I couldn’t sleep and laid on the couch with Teeny Dog. Every 20 minutes or so I sat up moaning and pet her for comfort. She was my doggy-doula for my first birth and I was her death doula last night. At first I was worried that she was in terrible pain and that we might be up all night in agony. I felt guilty that I hadn’t chosen to euthanize her sooner but then I remembered my birth and the waves of contractions coming and going and how right it felt to howl to the universe and call in new life.
That’s how it felt, like she was howling to the great beyond. I tried to accept the pain, just as I had with my own births and kept telling her to relax and let go. To surrender and that there was nothing to fear. Her pain came in waves just like birth contractions. She would moan and then relax her body completely, letting go of all the tension, just like I had to allow my babies into the world.
I was reminded of all the parallels between birth and death. The two great gateways and the feminine power of holding space for both creation and destruction. This immense womb-space of the universe, the mysterious unknown. After about an hour she became quiet, calm, and peaceful. I could tell that the pain was gone and the end was near. I pet her gently and cried as she took her last labored breaths. Then she was gone, with one last shutter, and her body was freed. I let sobs wrack my chest and felt tears splashing down my cheeks. All the holding and worrying, the doggy hospice of the last two weeks in our home, the waiting and wondering, and then she was gone. It felt beautiful and right and also deeply sad.
There is something to our culture’s strong aversion to pain and suffering which infiltrates our experience of birth and death, the huge impulse to numb out all the pain. To not feel it. But without pain there is no pleasure. With our culture’s terror of birth and death, and the impulse to skip over, to run away, we are left with an epidemic of anxiety and depression where most of us are only half alive for the time that we spend walking the earth.
I was reminded last night of the sacredness of birth and death, that they are linked and usually don’t need to be medicated or numbed. That we can be brave enough to show up fully for these precious days of our lives including the messy painful beginning and end parts. Without pain there is no pleasure. Without pleasure- real deep sacred universe connecting pleasure- there is no pain, only fear of being alive.
I feel sad but also proud of being able to fully live my dog’s death with her and with my boys. My 2 little boys woke up this morning and wanted to explore this curious experience of death, and the now rigid dog-body that’s still lying in our living room. My 5-year-old put a baby doll on her back and our almost 2-year-old touched her cold nose. Death is nothing to fear, only the most natural book-end to this experience of being alive.
Birth is also nothing to fear. Birth is as safe as life gets. It’s messy, full of blood and poop and wailing to bring forth new life. But what is life without embracing the full catastrophe? I don’t want to be only half alive during my time here, I want to embrace all of it, even the scary gross painful parts. Because we don’t always get to pick and choose. Sometimes love rushes in like a storm and grasps our heart growing roots deep inside, infiltrating our blood and we can either turn away knowing there will one day be a great goodbye. A death of some sort. Or we can open towards it, hazarding ourselves to the painful process of being fully alive.
I choose to open my heart, open my legs, my womb space to life and to death. I choose to be brave, over and over. To feel it. Even when the impulse to numb-out is so strong, so tempting, so encouraged by our society. But no! I will rip off all the band-aids protecting my heart and let the pain break me open so I can be fully ravished by the spirals of birth, life, and death.
Rest In Peace Teeny Dog. May you be embraced by the Great Pussy In The Sky and run amuck with all your friends, chasing deer, squirrels, rabbits, and prairie dogs to your heart’s content. I will always love you.
Beautiful.
💔🫂❤️🩹