- It’s so easy. Like Sorella herself, everything about her was easy. Trouble 2 said.
I am finding that what’s the most difficult is the transitions. Getting up from the couch. Moving between the rooms. Especially the change of floors. Coming down in to the mudroom. Opening the front door. And she isn’t there.
It’s been a week now. I see her in the corner of my eye when passing her favourite spots. I here her at my every move.
As Sorella became more of a dog she always heard my moves and reacted on it. Getting up from the couch she got up too, wherever she was. Walking down the stairs she followed me. And if already downstairs she met me in the mudroom.
As long as I am on my couch working on something, I am quite okay. But moving and the house is yet still, that’s painful. The absence of her gentle steps.
Sorella was such a gentle soul. Her body little even with that long and fluffy fur of hers. Her approaches to people were shy. Her love and affection was subtle. Her territory was small, calling for her she was never far away, the front yard and the nearby fields her queendom. And she backed out of every fight with fellow neighbour cats crying for my help. But boy, what a hunter she was!
It was on Tuesday that Trouble & Trouble and I buried Sorella. We picked one of her favourite spots. On the brink of the ditch separating the front yard from the fields to the west. When the old mountain ashes were still there she used to sit in them getting the perfect overview of her grounds. Later, a bit desperate, on the stumps of them.
Now mountain ashes replaced by the young cherry trees, she always could tell when I was watering them. Wherever she was, her ears found the sound of running water and came drinking from out of the craters around the trees. The most appreciated was the one next to the baker’s cottage. It’s also the most beautiful of the three trees.
That’s the place we chose for Sorella’s grave.
Now, digging in the ground at my place here at the end of the road is tough business. Almost impossible. Stone, stone, stone. Wherever you put a sharp pointed iron bar to the ground it says “klonk”. My poor sons have never experienced putting a shovel in the ground, the soil giving way for it. Until this Tuesday afternoon. They kind of went all in, just kept on digging until I stopped them: i think it’s deep enough now. Yeah, but it’s just so easy!
- It’s so easy. Like Sorella herself, everything about her was easy. Trouble 2 said.
The shovels dug a perfect shape for Sorella’s coffin. Yes, I don’t call it a box anymore since Cathrine had wrapped it in beautiful white wallpaper. We covered the coffin with the clump of grass we first took out. It’s looking good. Perfect even.
I sang my favourite evening hymn to her again. It didn’t go that well. But I told her I would sing to her all summer when watering her tree.
Afterwords we all went inside. We lit a fire in my yellow kitchen. The candles at the table. And had a funeral fika. We talked about how bad we (people in general) are at taking care of death. How we are shying away from it, and studies show we are even doing it more and more.
Funerals aren’t an efficient contribution to society. Coffins are getting more rare which is not helping the grieving process. Memorial parks are often beautiful and soothing but your loved ones are thin air and hard to grasp.
To take half a day off from work for saying goodbye to someone close should be a natural priority. To face the body shaped coffin is painful but that’s where we need to be. To design a tomb stone for the past and the future is hard work but it is an important one. And to take care of it is an act of love and respect.
I told Trouble & Trouble those hours with the passed away Sorella in my arms right after her death, that’s what I would have needed with my father. To be with the body who carried his soul through my life. The body I knew so well. Now empty and still. Quite. To stay with his death. To not be moderate and sensible and well-behaved. But to feel his death on my skin. Until I could let go.
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