Late August Indian summer teased, the ocean was especially warm, crystal clear and the tide particularly low. I don’t think it was a moon tide, but the water was out far, exposing the flats of the sands rarely shown, the ripples and the ridges alive in the light like a creature. Life by the ocean is defined by moon and her tides. All things are interconnected living on the edge, and we accept that we too are a part of this ebb and flow, as humans have been since the beginning of time.

Exactly 7 years ago, I adopted Mia at Christmas (actually I fostered, and then foster failure followed but that’s another story) and a few years later realizing I could not foster, I had the opportunity to help out Paws New England in a pinch. Just in time for Christmas we transported a dozen animals from Tenessee to New Hampshire, from a place which did not want them to homes in time for the holidays and it was the most wonderful experience of the true holiday spirit.

I have spent the last weeks in shock, dumbfounded by intensity of the sadness and pain of loss I feel with Mia’s passing.  I thought I had prepared for this, having spent so many years with her in ER’s and hospitals, she had been to more types of specialists and doctors in her short 6 years and 5 months with me than I have seen in 37 years.  I used to expect her to pass on the regular, placing my hand on her curly blond torso for the rise and fall. This was so familiar, from nights with pneumonia and chronic bronchitis, surgeries and unnamed scares, that when the breath went out of her the final time in the hospital I found myself utterly unable to fathom that her tiny body was truly still.