Teddi Bear

Teddi Bear

"Little Miss Boss"

Feb. 13, 2009

Teddi was given the good death on February13th, 2009. My face was the last one she saw as she closed her eyes that afternoon, and that was as it should be, as I am certain that my face was the first face she saw on first opening her eyes some fifteen years ago.

I would love to believe that she is playing now in the beautiful meadows on the other side of the Rainbow Bridge with the pack she grew up with, Wiley and Yogi. Perhaps she has even learned to share her toys with them, but somehow I doubt that even more than life after death. If she is there with them, the spirit that I loved is unchanged. She is still a greedy, stubborn, ornery, sweet little girl who believes all the toys belong to her and Wiley and Yogi are letting her have her way as they did in life. She has probably gathered every toy in a big pile, and is even now standing guard over them, eyeing all who approach with the suspicion that they intend to steal them back. If the toys are endless beyond the Rainbow Bridge she will spend eternity trying to gather them all to herself.

As comforting as the idea of a heaven for dogs is I am not sure I can convince myself of it anymore. If there is a heaven at all then certainly there is no creature more deserving of it than dogs, even greedy, bossy things like my Miss Teds. Her very covetousness was a charm. It always made me laugh, as the creator, if such a being exists, must also laugh, and we would not have changed her for the simple fact that she made us laugh. But having recently watched the life leave my beautiful Wiley, and now her, I was reminded of what my father used to say with such conviction: When youre dead, youre dead! Thus, disturbing doubts about the afterlife have come to plague me. Certainly, as she drew her last breath that day I did not see nor was I aware of any spirit rising from her body and ascending to heaven. Not that I necessarily would being only an ordinary human of average perception. All I felt at that moment was that she was no more, gone from me forever. But if I say, she has gone to the Rainbow Bridge, it is merely self-delusion for in truth I do not know. I will never know while alive and I may never know when Im dead if we dissolve into nothingness for there is nothing to know then. We humans can convince ourselves of some of the most incredible fairy stories, and it is the awareness, of our capacity for self-delusion that prevents me from indulging in what may be just another pretty fairy tale. On the other hand it makes perfect sense to me to believe that all life is recycled. How and in what form, I do not know but life is energy, and does energy simply vanish? Does it maintain a familiar form, one that we can recognize beyond its physical form?

All I can say is that I HOPE so. I dearly hope that once my life is done that I will find myself walking across that Rainbow Bridge to find her waiting on the other side, tail whirling like the rotors of a helicopter as she runs to me. That would be my very idea of heaven, nothing more.

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