Skip to main content

TO BURY A FRIEND

Sometimes things happen that cannot really be explained logically.  These things can take on many forms; Life, love, stress and struggle.  And sometimes true tragedy happens.  This last week has been no exception for me and my family. What you're about to read is an emotional expression of a first hand account of burying a friend.

Yesterday morning I had to bury a family friend.  A family member really, one I had only recently come to know.  Its quite a thing to grab a shovel in your hand and know that what you're about to do signifies a great and true finality, an end to something.  Its symbolic both good and bad to sink the blade into the top soil, depress downward and pry up a mound of Earth, set aside and repeat process.  Its quite a thing.  You see, a pet is a family member in my eyes and even once removed, while living in proximity, a pet is still a family member all the same.  Yesterday I was to bury a family member. 

Do you express personal disgust at yourself for literally throwing dirt on their faces?  Do you take pride in doing this great deed?  Both really.  You treat the situation as respectfully as possible, despite the nature of it all.  You take the time to wrap them in a cloth and put their favorite possession within their grip and you take another moment afterward to do what you must to fully appreciate the situation.  A moment of silence in many ways.  You think inward.

Her name was George, and she will be missed.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Keep Our Schools Equitably Diverse

  Keeping Our Schools Equitably Diverse I know the 24 hour news cycle can be exhausting but if I have your attention for a moment I’d ask you to think all the way back to the 2020 presidential election. Many of us voted, and many of us watched as Biden was elected as the 46th President of the US. There, right there, lies a schism within our society that I fear only grows, a division that we are now only really beginning to deal with. That moment marked the beginning point of an effort that I hope isn’t only visible to a minority of people, that effort being the willingness to bring the battleground to our backyards, or… more specifically, our schools.  Shortly after the loss of Donald Trump in the 2020 election we saw a great many societal responses from across the spectrums of enjoyment and sadness, liberal and conservative, and so on. But just under that surface there was already an effort in full swing. A reddened scar from a year’s worth of government forced shutdowns, act...
Post a Comment
Read more

Updated List of Published Work

Some of my first writings. Europe, 2004 Over the years this blog has been updated in a less than frequent manner. I can chalk this up to the trials and tribulations of trying to raise two same-aged children almost entirely on my own. Those who say "the struggle is real" haven't tried to raise twins while at the same time maintain their professional viability. That said, I wanted to update this blog with a list of published writings I've achieved over the years. It's not a complete list but one that will give an adequate look at the kind of work I do. Over the years I have been published in a variety of print and online publications. Here is a list of them. Visit Tillamook Coast: I am a contributing and consistent blogger for the Visit Tillamook Coast destination marketing organization. In addition to blog postings I have also helped shape their North Coast Food Trail program with up-to-date postings on area businesses that cater to the tourism indus...
Post a Comment
Read more

TILLAMOOK: 2116

Let me impose something upon you. What will Tillamook look like in 2116?  A hundred years used to sound like a forever chunk of time to me, what separated the modern world from the old, but as I grow older every day I realize now that a century is but a small component in the great human experience.   In 2116 much of the usable pasture land will have been long reclaimed by a rising and everly acidic sea.  Salt marsh and estuary will take the place of field and pasture flooding centuries of local livelihood.  What industry still remains is but a shadow of itself but a hundred years prior.  Tillamook’s namesake, its precious dairy industry consolidated.  Market and societal forces push the need for dairy products from a federally subsidized necessity to cut-rate industry; only the wealthy survive.  Over time the smaller farms were bought out, crowded and pushed into oblivion.  The only survivors were the automators, the ones who held ba...
Post a Comment
Read more