By Nancy Chuda founder and Editor in Chief of LuxEcoLiving and co-founder of Healthy Child Healthy World.
My dearest friend lost her beloved companion today. Cella was an inspirational pet who was truly loved by friends and family and the many strangers who admired her beauty and special spirit.
As humans, in care of one another, we are often faced with decisions about life and death that prolong the inevitable. Yet, we all know that when you own a pet the promise we make when the time comes is to let them go. I would like to dedicate and share one of the most beautifully written and consolable works of prose by Robinson Jeffers in memory of (Cella, an Italian spinone)
The House Dog’s Grave
(Haig, an English bulldog)
I’ve changed my ways a little; I cannot now
Run with you in the evenings alone along the shore,
Except in a kind of dream; and you, if you dream a
Moment, You see me there.
So leave awhile the paw-marks on the front door
Where I used to scratch to go.
And you’d soon open; on the kitchen floor
The marks of my drinking-pan.
I cannot lie by your fire as I used to
On the warm stone,
Nor at the foot of your bed; no, all the nights through
I lie alone.
But your kind thought has laid me less than six feet
Outside your window where firelight so often plays,
And where you sit to read—and I fear often grieving
Me—
Every night your lamplight lies on my place.
You, man and woman, live so long, it is hard
To think of you ever dying.
A little dog would get tired, living so long.
I hope that when you are lying
Under the ground like me your lives will appear
As good and joyful as mine.
No, dears, that’s too much hope: you are not so well
Cared for
As I have been.
And never have known the passionate undivided
Fidelities that I knew.
Your minds are perhaps too active, too man-sided…
But to me you were true.
You were never masters, but friends. I was your friend.
I loved you well, and was loved. Deep love endures
To the end and far past the end. If this is my end,
I am not lonely. I am not afraid. I am still yours.
