A Day of Grief and Healing

It's been three years since I heard Alex's friendly, gruff voice and his thick, musical Swedish accent. Three years since we shared hugs and cuddles. Three years since I've looked at his living face. He was my best friend. I just wanted to be around him all the time. I felt so close to him that I felt like we were two parts of a whole. How could one part of a whole be dead and the other be alive? How can that happen? How could he have gone somewhere I can't really fathom? I can't wrap my mind around the two of us not sharing the same reality. I remember what my friend said to me when she came to visit me in Stockholm shortly after Alex's death: she said that maybe Alex and I are still in the same reality but now we exist in it on different levels. Her statement really rang in my spirit. She took me on a hot-air balloon ride over Stockholm. I think she might have wanted to help me be closer to what it's like to be on the pure spirit level of existence. She was living in Berlin at the time of Alex's death. She knew when he died, even though it would be two days until I called her and told her the news. On the day he died, she was taking the U-Bahn and got off at Alexanderplatz by mistake. Something just brought her there. When she came up onto Alexanderplatz from the U-Bahn, she suddenly began sobbing. Her spirit knew.

I think my spirit knew that Alex would die before any of us even knew he was sick. I remember two times when Alex and I were hanging out before his stroke when everything seemed fine, and I suddenly began sobbing uncontrollably. I sobbed my heart out and he would hug me. I felt this huge well of sadness inside, and it was sorrow over Alex. I didn't understand why I felt so much sorrow, but I did. It's like I was grieving for him, even though he was alive. I remember how, as I lived with him that autumn, I would dream of him at night, and the dreams were incredible. They felt like the aboriginal paintings of "Dreamtime", and in my dream, "Dreamtime" was filled with pure and incredible love between Alex and me. I mean, pure spirit love, with all of the living world things sifted out. There are no words to explain purely spiritual things like that. It's extemely hard for me, living in this material world in this physical body like I do, to sift out all the crap and feel the pure spiritual state that the deepest part of me is always in. That pure spiritual state is where Alex and I still meet. Our spirits will always be entwined in love and friendship of the deepest level. Being in this physical state in this material world, I miss Alex's presence here. I miss it so very, very much.

I finally buried Moritz this morning. I dreamt that the plastic bag with Moritz in it had somehow magically taken itself out of my refrigerator and put itself in the middle of the floor between my sleeping area and the kitchen. It was Moritz's way of saying, "Gurl, you need to bury me now. It really is time." So, I woke up and dressed in Alex's sweatpants and t-shirt (which I often wear around the house). I took the bag containing Moritz out of the fridge and opened it, scared of what he'd look like after months of cold storage. he looked almost exactly like he had when I put him in there, except that his little black eyes had sunken into his head. I went outside and dug a hole a couple of feet deep right under the bottom of the big tree under which I had found Moritz sick last autumn. I carefully laid him at the bottom of the grave, and I told him that it was time for his body to rest and go back to where it came from and be protected by the tree roots that would surround it, the roots of the same tree that had provided him with acorns and a safe climbing structure and shelter during his life. I saw other squirrels jumping and climbing and twitching their tails and scavenging for acorns in the yards around me. No doubt these squirrels are Moritz's relatives and friends. I told Moritz "thank you" for being my friend and that as much as I'd helped him, he'd helped me. I placed a paper crane, that I had folded for Alex years ago, in the grave with Moritz. I delicately placed moist, cool earth over his body and filled up the hole.

I understand the underlying reason why it took so long to bury Moritz. I wasn't ready to say goodbye. I wasn't ready to say goodbye to Alex, either, but I had absolutely no control over Alex's body after he died. There were all of these legal rules and regulations and medical procedures and cultural factors and familial wishes that separated me from being as close to the body of my partner as I wanted to be. I wanted to have control over what happened to that body I loved so much, but I had none. He had an autopsy (which I wanted him to have so that we could determine why he had suddenly died). He sat in cold storage for a few weeks in the hospital (I never saw him during that period). He was transported to the crematorium/funeral home in his neighborhood, a process that I was completely disconnected from. He was cleansed and dressed and sewn up so that his mouth and eyes stayed shut. I had no part in that. They put him in a simple wooden casket and brought him into a room for us to say one last goodbye. Why were these strangers in control of my loved one's body? Why did they determine who, what, when, where and why when it came to the body of MY loved one? Why were we kept so far removed from the final processes done on the body of OUR beloved Alex? I wanted a part in EVERY SINGLE THING that happened to Alex's body after he died, but I was kept so far removed. His family chose to cremate him. This broke my heart, really. His beautiful body would be turned into ash. Only a pile of ashes would remain of this body I loved so much. I don't even know WHICH DAY they cremated him. I was so far removed. We didn't even get to bury his ashes ourselves. The funeral home/cemetary people dug the grave, brought out the ashes in an urn, let us simply TOUCH the urn (not let us HOLD it for HOWEVER LONG we wanted to), and then THEY put the urn in the earth. THEY friggin put earth over his remains, not US. It was like losing Alex doubly. I don't understand this far removal from death that occurs in some of the world's cultures. Why are loved ones kept so removed from what happens to their departed ones' bodies? I wanted to be there for the autopsy, I wanted to see that he was okay in cold storage, I wanted to be in the transport van that took him from the hospital to the crematorium/funeral home, I wanted to be there when they got his body ready, I wanted to be there when he was cremated (though I would have preferred him NOT to have been cremated), I wanted to be there when they put his ashes in the urn and brought the urn out to the grave site and dug the grave, and I wanted US, his loved ones, to hold the ashes and be alone with them for as long as we needed (without some funeral home person looking on), and be the ones to put them in the ground and put the soil over them. I wanted a part of every single thing that happened to Alex after he died, but I was helpless. With Moritz, I had complete control over what happened to his body after his death. Maybe Moritz sort of symbolized being able to have the freedom and access to go through bereavement with a body on MY terms. I think that finally putting Moritz into the ground on the anniversary of Alex's death was a way of dealing with my feelings over what happened to Alex's body after his death. As I lovingly tended to each aspect of preparation for Moritz's burial, it's like I was taking back control and preparing to bury Alex again: burying Alex again through the loving care of a squirrel I'd tried so hard to save the life of. Today I buried Moritz, and in a way, I buried Alex, completely with my own hands and on my own terms. He knows that.

Rest in peace, little Moritz Squirrel.

Rest in peace, sweet Alex. I wish I could have been much more a part of what happened to your body after you died. Jag älskar dig så jättemycket, lilla gubben. Jag saknar dig varje dag, varje timme, varje sekond. Önskar att vi igen ses i Nangijala. Kära älskling, jag älskar dig för alltid.