Transcript

I’m Major Jackson, and this is The Slowdown.

When our dog Buzz declined in health, Didi leaned down and whispered in his ear, You better come find me in the afterlife. And then, she hugged his whole body and rocked. She comforted his ailing bones. She comforted herself through tears. Grief ran ahead of her; the only consolation at losing our golden retriever was to project a reunion with him in the unforeseen future. 

The seed was planted. I envisioned a reinvigorated Buzz galloping around in search of us, tongue lolling from side to side, as if looking for his favorite toy, then, upon finding us, exuberantly gazing up, expecting a treat. 

Then, I thought of our neighbor Bruce. He was crestfallen for a month after his pug died, a dog he walked every day at the same hour. I dreamed once that Bruce continued to walk up our street in the morning though the leash was empty. The two of them would also be up there, reunited. Suddenly, I saw hundreds of people leaning down rejoined with dogs of every breed, even stuffed pets.

Imagining a doggie heaven fired up the same psychic energy, the parts of my brain I use to write a poem. It’s almost as if my imagination overcompensates for extreme emotions of grief by putting me into a mode of creativity. I guess some of us are most inspired when facing life’s harsher realities. Watching Didi grieve Buzz, our dog, gave me a window into the depth of loss, how we long to retain a connection to the dead, how we perceive them as always present in various forms, maybe most in the love they left behind.

Today’s poem calls back to a deceased beloved, to return to this side of existence, to traverse the layers of time — an incantation that wishes to reunite us with the bliss we once knew.

Echo
by Christina Rossetti

Come to me in the silence of the night;
   Come in the speaking silence of a dream;
Come with soft rounded cheeks and eyes as bright
   As sunlight on a stream;
      Come back in tears,
O memory, hope, love of finished years.

O dream how sweet, too sweet, too bitter sweet,
   Whose wakening should have been in Paradise, 
Where souls brimful of love abide and meet;
   Where thirsting longing eyes 
      Watch the slow door
That opening, letting in, lets out no more.

Yet come to me in dreams, that I may live
   My very life again though cold in death:
Come back to me in dreams, that I may give
   Pulse for pulse, breath for breath:
      Speak low, lean low, 
As long ago, my love, how long ago!

This poem is in the public domain.