"His ashes are in a box on the shelf in the closet right now, but in a couple of weeks he'll get a proper burial..."
we had a beautiful male shepherd that had to be put down due to liver cancer. he was such a brave animal, and he fought so hard to hang on. he was twelve, and i loved him with all of my heart.
we had that magnificent animal cremated. the shepherd we had prior to him we buried in a grove of trees. so this cremation business was new to us. when his ashes arrived in a wooden box (about half the size of a shoebox), we knew that we wanted to spread them about at some of his favorite spots.
to my surprise, upon opening the box, some of the cremains weren't so little... in fact, there were a few bone fragments on up to the size of about an inch. not exactly right for spreading in the wind.
we decided that we needed to separate or sift these larger chunks from the ash... so believe it or not, right there in our garage, we took an old window screen and gently poured the cremains through one corner. what a sight that must have been.
we then took the larger pieces and buried them at the base of a rose bush that the vet had delivered to us in the dog's memory. we knew that these unburned bone segments would quickly nourish the rose plant and every blossom would be a part of our fine animal friend.
the rest of the cremains, now sifted down to ash, we divided out into six little plastic sandwich bags... the method to the madness being that we thought of six 'favorite' places where we wanted to place our guy's ashes. the river, the beach, a few of the walking routes he enjoyed the most, and even a big old rock that he always peed on.
then we set out, six bags in hand, and took our magnificent german shepherd for his last walk to all of these places. he was in the wind, in the water and in the weeds and dirt and plants that he always visited.
this was four years ago. we have another special male shepherd today. i know that we'll have to deal with him too, one day. and just this afternoon, i brought two roses in from that bush and put them in water on the kitchen counter.
our animals are always with us, aren't they
:)
mark |
