Molly

I haven’t made any artwork for about a month. We have been caring for our sweet dog Molly as mast cell cancer affected her little body. We lost her last week.

Losing her has torn and shifted us in so many ways. She was with us for almost 14 years and, with her loss, the dimensions of her presence in our lives have shown themselves to be so many times her physical size. She filled every room and beyond.

I have experienced grief before. Family has passed and friends have gone from illness and accident. Those loses rippled out over years. Grief comes and goes — creeps and surprises. We see the faces of people lost in the streets on other people’s bodies and we feel them missing as our bodies make their way at through once familiar motions.

I have still been making bread each week and the simple flower-form cuts in the top of each loaf are the closest to a creative act I have felt capable of.

Making bread is a warming and sustaining act. It’s simple and has both an immediate purpose and a grounding sense as we tap the sweet scented loaf in a ritual my partner Gayla and I share.

…

I know that for my head, hands, and heart I need to return to the basement table where I make most of my art. I know that grief requires tenderness and patience.

Losing Molly, more than any other grief I have felt, is like a breach of the heart. I feel her everywhere and the love I have for her bounces around in me looking for what was its familiar wonderful previous direction. It’s a singular love for her as a being who became a deep part of our family.

She is gone but the aspects of her that touched me will always be there. The initial chaotic frenzy of my nervous system’s search for her will soften but I think I will always feel an absence around me and within me.

She is the closest to a child I have ever felt in my life. We cared for her deeply and she cared for us. She changed me by softening my heart towards her, externally to others, and internally to me allowing the tenderness I felt for her to also embrace parts of myself that needed soft care.