The Holy Trinity

“The story of a love is not important – what is important is that one is capable of love. It is perhaps the only glimpse we are permitted of eternity.”
(Helen Hayes)

 It’s been a long week.  As suspected, Suki did develop pneumonia and while it seemed the antibiotic quickly began its bacteria-killing magic and my precious Lazarus would surprise us yet one more time, instead what we’d always known was the possibility of something serious brewing became a grim reality.

Suki awoke this morning with a good amount of brightness; breakfast was taken eagerly, though the medicine for dessert caused him to grumble a bit.  All he wanted for lunch was his lately much-beloved apple and though my spider sense began to ping, when he sat up to eat it and then polished off a nice-sized piece of pear, too, I brushed aside the worry.  Such a long and serious illness was simply going to take time to get through.

But what I call getting through was not how Suki saw it.  Midafternoon today Suki called it quits and, as I held him and stroked that white, grizzled muzzle one last time, he quietly took his real and final leave.

Somewhere in what we humans call heaven, in that precious, sacred place those of us who love the nonhuman know as the other side of the Rainbow Bridge, a holy trinity is now again complete.  Sunny, Eleanor and Suki; each one a keynote ringing pure and true through my years of wildlife rehabilitation are now together to forever sound a single glorious chord.  One that will forever haunt this battered, aching human heart they’ve left behind.

You’d think that having thought I said goodbye to Suki once already, forced by those mysterious circumstances to live without his bright, daily presence until resignation of the loss was reached, this one might somehow, maybe, possibly be just the slightest bit easier.  It’s not.  Second chances don’t come often in life so the best thing to do is to treasure every second but, at least in this moment, those second chance seconds now numbering almost a year seem just that much more knowing how much I must miss for the rest of my own life.

Through a blinding veil of hot tears, as a chapter closes in ways I can not yet clearly see, the one thing I do know is that despite this wracking, deep pain, there isn’t a single moment I would trade for anything different.  It has been a privilege and it has been a blessing to have shared my life with each one of these great and grace-filled souls so cleverly clothed in a fox squirrel fur coat.

Godspeed, Suki; my precious, real-life Lazarus.