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My Dog Is Dying: The Real Life Crappy Choice Diary, Entry 3

January 23, 2012 by Robyn Fritz

Murphy is dying. Can’t stop it, might be able to slow it down a bit, as long as she’s comfortable. Not sure.

All I’m really sure about is that she’s dying.

And that many people, including well-meaning friends, are idiots.

I’m sure most idiots don’t mean to be, well, idiots. But here’s a painful situation where all you can do is laugh at them, because what you really want to do is scream and cry and yell.

People say, “She doesn’t look like she’s dying.”

Well, what the hell does dying look like? Ask them that, nobody seems to know. They shrug, embarrassed, because truth is, in our ridiculous self-centered, youth-blinded culture, we have no idea what dying looks like. Because we don’t have to look at it. So we don’t.

Instead, we assume that death is old, debilitated, too feeble to walk, too sick to care, crippled and pathetic. Kept alive by a blind faith in technology and a refusal to let go until there’s very little left to let go of.

Death is something we lock away in nursing homes, or ignore until we can’t anymore.

People say, “She looks good. Are you sure she’s dying?”

Idiots. Yes, I’m completely sure. Don’t like it, but I’m sure.

And you know what? I’m glad she looks good. I’m glad she feels good. I’m glad the idiots are saying things like, “She doesn’t look like she’s dying.”

Because I realized that my life with my animals and theirs with me has defined a new way of living together as multi-species families. It’s defined a new way of looking at the human-animal bond.

It looks at animals as equals. At lives as valuable. At choice as real.

At death as part of the process, part of our lives together.

Ironically, it’s only at the end of a beloved animal’s life that I realize we are defining something more for multi-species families: we are defining what death looks like.

Death looks like Murphy. Vigorous. Happy. Tired.

Dying.

We don’t like it. But we’re living with it. Until it’s here upon us. And then we’ll say goodbye.

Not one second sooner.

My Dog Is Dying: The Real Life Crappy Choice Diary, Entry 2

January 17, 2012 by Robyn Fritz

my dying dog So dogs with splenic tumors can abruptly die, or abruptly go into just about dying. Meaning in Murphy’s case, the tumor could rupture and she’ll bleed out.

The words ‘bleed out’ and ‘my beloved dog’ just don’t make sense together. They really should never make sense together. Apparently that doesn’t matter.

Besides that, what the hell does ‘bleed out’ look like?

So I’m out there, walking Murphy and Alki, getting ready to pick up their poop. This is a fact of life, picking up dog poop, all part of that mystical, smelly real life human-animal bond, not the reason why mine is a multi-species family, but part of it. At least I’m not paying for college.

No, I am not a poop voyeur, I’m just someone who really does clean up after her dogs. And, well, poop comes in all forms, depending on how the dogs have digested whatever it is they’ve chosen to eat.

I cook for Murphy and she disdains things on the street, so I know what she’s going to eat, unlike her brother, Alki, who eats whatever he can as quickly as he can because he knows damn well he shouldn’t.

Murphy eats what I give her to eat.

So I was surprised to see big red globs come out in her poop.

My heart stopped. What, is she bleeding out? There were no signs! What the hell does bleeding out mean, anyway, and why should I have to know this? This can’t be happening.

Besides, that’s really round globs of … cranberries.

I’d put whole cranberries in her food, and Murphy had just pooped them out intact. One by one.

Anybody who saw us at that moment would think I was crazy. Laughing. And crying. At once.

My Dog Is Dying: The Real Life Crappy Choice Diary, Entry 1

January 16, 2012 by Robyn Fritz

my dying dog The lure of immortality dances through our lives, weaving delicate patterns that tease us with the possibility.

To live forever.

And then, of course, we don’t.

Honestly, I never expected to live forever. You’re born, crap happens, fun happens, you die. Nope, I never expected to live forever, and I didn’t, either: last February I died of the flu, and, sure, I obviously came back, but I still died. At home in bed with my kids: my dogs, Murphy and Alki, and Grace the Cat.

I never thought Murphy would live forever. My dog. My eldest. She had so many things go wrong early in her life, we were surprised she made it to 3 and celebrated when she hit 5.

Today, January 16, 2012, she is 13-1/2. She’s been healthy and vigorous since she was 5. Mostly. There’s arthritis, things like that.

But to think of “Murphy” and “old age” astonishes me. I’m still more astonished that, somewhere along the way, deep down inside, I thought she would live forever. What an idiot I can be.

I just never expected it: either Murphy’s old age or, then, Murphy dying. I should know better, since I was only 9 when the first person I thought was immortal died, and I’ve lost many people and several animals since then. But somehow I just assumed that Murphy would skip that phase.

And now in the last few weeks I’ve learned that she is dying. Purely by accident, since I am the super careful slightly neurotic overly analytical intuitive, we discovered that she has a tumor on her spleen.

Murphy is dying.

Somewhere in the last few days I decided to record our last journey together, from the shock of discovery to the agony of choice to the stupid things you think of when someone you love is dying. A running journal. The story of almost immortal.

I know how it’s going to end. I don’t know when. I only know it happens a little bit with every breath I take, I can feel it.

The human-animal bond is a strange and wonderful thing. Living a multi-species family life is both inspiring and terrifying: every day you should be realizing that it’s one less day, not one more, but you don’t. You can’t.

Living an intuitive life where you know that all life is equal is also a strange and wonderful thing. You learn about choice, about individual choice, and family choice, and community choice. It’s beautiful. Terrifying. Absurd.

Real life is about choice. Crappy choices are part of it. How do you live, and die? What does it look like? Why should we share it? What can it mean for our lives in community, for our lives as humans with animals, and homes, and businesses, all wrapped up in the mystery of nature and of the planet itself?

What happens when someone you love is dying?

Once again, I’m going to find out. Write about it. Maybe see what you think.

Will it be cathartic? Maybe. Angry? You bet. Resigned? Never. Goofy and absurd? Most likely. True? Every single word.

Even in my most optimistic moments I can’t see anything positive coming from this, because at the end Murphy will be gone.

But something is coming.

We shall see.

Love and Choice at the Crossroads

January 10, 2012 by Robyn Fritz

Every January people think about New Year’s resolutions. I never did get that, maybe because I think of life as a choice, and I’m glad I get them.

Or I used to be.

My work as an intuitive, as one being on the planet, is about choice. How can we grow as a society by recognizing that the world, and everything in it, is alive, conscious … and free to choose its path? Everything.

Humans are not guardians and caretakers. We are equals. Equals to everything from our chairs to our cars, our homes and businesses, the land and water around us.

Equals to the animals who are part of our multi-species families.

They get to choose. We get to live with their choice. With them.

Sure, it’s cut and dried in theory. In practice, it’s fascinating and exciting, because that’s when participation in the great dance of life helps us hear, for example, what a hurricane thinks about its work, or what little tweaks would please and invigorate our homes and businesses.

But choice can be painful, and we’re living that now in my family.

My beloved eldest dog, Murphy Brown Fritz, has, in her own words, chosen to ‘walk the mystery’ and to refuse surgery that would complicate but possibly save her life. For a short while, anyway. Maybe. Nobody really knows. I tried to find out, and I couldn’t.

At 13.5, she’s had a long and fascinating journey to wellness, one that I walked with her, that we all did as a family. This fabulous life I shared with this stunning dog has inspired my work as a writer and intuitive, my view of the world and the human-animal bond, my work with my crystal partner, Fallon, my sense of humor. Together, Murphy and I got well and went out into the world to do our work.

But we now know that Murphy’s journey is ending. She has a tumor on her spleen, and there are no easy choices. Remove her spleen and she may live, a few weeks or years, we don’t know. But if it’s a bruise or a tumor that is the spleen’s own way of dealing with a lifelong platelet disorder, maybe, just maybe, surgery is not the answer. And right now it isn’t, anyway, because this all started because she had a mild cough and UTI, and she has an infection to beat first.

That we even know about the tumor is because the intuitive in me kept insisting there was something more. Now there’s another part of me that asks why I insisted on finding out.

I thought science would give us an answer, a time frame to plan our year, an answer of some kind, a clear path: if you do this, then that happens.

But science doesn’t give answers like that.

Love does.

This surgery for Murphy would be complicated. And we had a deal. Through the ups and downs of our journey to wellness our deal was that we would fix what we could because the larger journey to wellness was healing our wounded souls. We got well together. That done, we agreed that I wouldn’t ask her to do any more, but she’d get whatever she wanted. No matter what.

And she got it. She’s been healthy and vigorous for most of her amazingly long life.

But science and thoughtful care take you only so far. Love and choice do the rest.

Stunned and griefstricken at this news last week, I had sense enough to give this choice back to Murphy. “What do you want to do?” I asked her.

“We had a deal,” she said. She thinks her time is close anyway, and she doesn’t want the complication of surgery. At least not now. We are exploring her options, to give her more information. But right now she thinks she will live longer without the surgery, and she could very well be right. She wants to “walk the mystery” as freely as she can. I’ll be there with her, as will Alki and Grace the Cat. Our medical team. And our intuitive team, which includes guides and dragons and Fallon and the entire Alchemy West Committee and the one intuitive in the world I trust when I need to step aside and ask for help: Debrae Firehawk.

Murphy’s defied the odds before: the little dog no one expected to make it to 3 is 13.5. In my less rational moments I want to grab her and run as fast as I can, to outrace whatever it is that’s taking her from us. In other moments I’m arranging supportive care. For all of us.

We’ll be chronicling our journey, wherever it leads us, and we invite you to share it at our magazine, Bridging the Paradigms.

For this month, we’re just pointing us all back to New Year resolutions. Forget them. Instead, ask yourself what you will do with your choices. What do you want your year to look like? What will you do if things change? How does love choose its way? How do you honor love’s choice?

This choice terrifies me. I guess the important ones should. Everything I believe about how we should live our lives comes down to honoring Murphy’s choice. Find out everything I can. Explain it to her as best as I can. And then let her choose her path.

When I could throw everything in the universe at a tumor that may be killing my beloved dog, would I take her choice away to suit mine?

Can I? Should I? What does love look like?

It looks like choice. Her choice. We’ll find out where that takes us.

Oh, and another thing. There’s a new “energy” system, something that showed up here about five years ago. I kept trying to give it away. It kept coming back. Fallon and I have been using it at times during our intuitive consultations, when it has shown up and clients have agreed to experience it.

When I say I am not a healer, I mean it. I am not a healer. Fallon is. But I can use this new “energy” in a new way, and I will. So I can say for now that I’m a healer, but that word has no real meaning in the new paradigm. A new word will come.

This “energy” is something very new in the world. Very right. A new paradigm for vibrational work. For healing. For choice.

Murphy chose that as her option. Fallon and I are on it. As are Alki and Grace the Cat. It does not promise a cure for Murphy, whatever that means. It just helps create space for choice, for Murphy, for the tumor, for us.

Can’t define the energy right now. All I know is that it’s about love and choice.

So this New Year I resolve to honor choice. Whatever that looks like, wherever it takes us.

What choices will you honor this year?

Walking the Birthday Walk with Dogs

December 30, 2011 by Robyn Fritz

When you live the human-animal bond, you celebrate birthdays with your multi-species family.

Even when the birthday in question is yours and you’re getting older (it happens yearly).

Okay, we were celebrating my birthday this time. But it’s in the dead of winter, after Christmas, before spring. In Seattle. Pretty much the weather sucks.

Does Grace the Cat care? Of course, she stays home.

Do the dogs care? Of course not. They’re Cavalier King Charles Spaniels, born to flirt and goof off. They have jackets and a lazy human who doesn’t like to be cold. They can routinely trump that.

So why not take the dogs for a walk in the sun on my birthday?

There are hazards. It’s Seattle. In winter. At the beach.

You expect wind at the beach. But on a sunny day you expect sun. You forget that in winter the sun only manages to get halfway up the sky, and then only stays there for 20 minutes (15 on the weekends, it’s apparently celestial labor law). And the sun, being a wienie, races through the winter days here as fast as possible, so it can hang out somewhere warm, like, well, somewhere else way far south of us.

Birthdays may warm you up, but the air, it’s colder than all get out. Why? Because we’re way far north in Seattle, almost to Canada, which is right at the North Pole. Especially in winter. Because when you’re at the beach in Seattle, you’re right in the path of that cold north wind, nothing stops it, and why is that? Because Canada ducks as it flies over, that’s why.

So, anyway, at the beach on my birthday. With the dogs. Walking the sun walk. The dogs are thrilled because the sun shining means they can see their prey better, which is all manner of completely uninteresting inedibles that smell as bad as they look and the dogs can’t sniff fast enough.

Really. Multi-species families are cute. And gross.

But it’s sunny. Except I forgot about that halfway up in the sky bit. It may be sunny, but the sun isn’t up. It doesn’t clear the West Seattle hill in the winter. We forgot that. So we’re in the shade. On a sunny day. Freezing our city slickerness right off.

The dogs don’t care. They’re on an adventure. They’re too low and too small to be real windbreaks. And, now I notice, they are standing behind me.

Survival of the fittest. They win.

“Hey,” I say to them. “Want cookies?”

Of course they do. Walk is over. Birthday cookies coming up.

Next year I’m celebrating my birthday in the summer. Every once in awhile we have one of those in Seattle.

I hope before, well, next winter.

Happy birthday me!

Solstice Sleeping: Dogs Softly Breathing of Home

December 23, 2011 by Robyn Fritz

I awaken in the night and hear it. Silence. I wait for more. It comes. I smile.

I hear the dogs breathing softly in the night. Now, in the longest, darkest time of the year, I awaken in the still, silent night and hear only my dogs’ relaxed breathing. I smile. It’s comforting. Peaceful.

My dogs snore of home.

I can tell them by their breathing. Murphy, my delicate, mild-mannered oh-so-polite aging girl, snores like the proverbial lumber jack. Only, size for size, decibels louder. First time I heard it, she had just come home to live with me, and I leaped out of bed, sure we were being invaded. Over 13 years later, each time a snort startles me, I know the invasion was successful, and smile.

Sometimes, most times, she breathes with soft, gentle sighs. Other times I rest a hand lightly on her back, to make sure she’s still there. She’ll rouse and snuggle up, and we’ll go back to sleep in the cold dark night, back to back, butt to butt.

I used to wonder, way back when, if I could ever love this puppy who was not my beloved, long-lost English Cocker, if we could ever fit. We were strangers, but it didn’t take long for love to settle in my heart. Her snorts, her relaxed sleep, remind me.

Now, as I hear her soft breathing, I know that love, home, settled deep in hers. In theirs. Because all my animals sleep well, comforted in their safety. Knowing we are family. We are together. They do not have to be on guard. They can let down. They can breathe softly in the night.

Love created space to sleep.

Alki, my raucous ten-year-old boy, is rambunctious by day, soft murmuring dreamer by night. His breath whispers of deep dreams, contentment, secure and relaxed and deeply resting in his secured spot in bed. Storing up for daytime mischief.

I smile in the night.

Sure, I poke Murphy sometimes when her snoring shakes me out of mine. She’ll start to grumble but is asleep at the next twitch. Alki’s soft breathy lullaby ripples mildly.

I never hear Grace the Cat breathing. No snuffles from her cat perch above my desk, no soft snores from her Snuggly Safed bed at night. She’s there. Just can’t hear her. She’ll prowl the night, inspect us, snuggle.

Suspended in darkness, I am awake, happy, content. They are here, content with me. Species mingled, personalities meshed, family.

In the heart of a 21^st-century city the only sound in the deep night is a 21^st-century family, sleeping the human-animal bond.

Soft breathing, counterpoint. Pause. Rhythmic.

Life resting before dawn.

How did it come to this? How did so many years go by before contentment settled so easily on me?

But it did. We’re family. Here. Now. Content. Woman, cat, dogs.

Murphy snuggles closer. Alki is still, soft swoosh rising. Grace the Cat burrows deep.

I hear the dogs softly breathing.

Yes, they snore of home. Of love.

I smile.

All is well.

I am home. We are home.

We are family.

Animal Communication: On Being Frankly at Home with Animals

December 14, 2011 by Robyn Fritz

Living with anyone, especially yourself, can be irritating. You have grand illusions about being saintly, or at least perfect, but reality doesn’t seem to work like that.

So you need a sense of humor, especially if you’re living with me. I’m lucky that my two Cavaliers, Murphy and Alki, and Grace the Cat know how to laugh.

I love my kids, my beautiful multi-species family. They are living reminders of what it takes to live the human-animal bond. They love me, or do a really good job of faking it. I appreciate that. Makes me feel good. Illusions and all that. (I mean, really, can all your foibles be loved all the time?)

Sometimes my kids irritate me. They’re not perfect and that can make me impatient. Or at least exasperated. When their bad habits annoy me, they simply annoy me, even though I stop to think that my bad habits annoy them.

Take my Cavalier boy, Alki. He’s slowed down a bit, but he still has a lot of energy—to chase and eat a stick, track gull poop right off the seawall, eat whatever he can as quickly as he can, roll in muck, bark at anything he feels like … and gulp water just before bedtime.

One night I stomped into the kitchen, yelling at him to quit drinking. He finally stopped.

I was annoyed, since this happens almost every night. They need water, but he can overdo it and barf it (I know, I know, don’t preach about this), and it’s just not thinking. (I know he can think, he proves it all day long. He’s also really good at just doing whatever he wants because he doesn’t think hard enough, one of his bad habits.)

So, I was yelling at him to stop. I grumbled, “You just can’t help yourself, can you? You do everything in excess.”

Alki paused to consider that as he walked away from the water bowl. “Well,” he said deliberately. “I don’t get enough to eat.”

I had to laugh. When you can talk with animals and other beings like I can, you’re privileged to hear exactly what they think, and follow the reasoning process. Alki heard me complain about his tendency to do things in excess, and he went right to the heart of the matter: his favorite thing is to eat, and he doesn’t get to eat in excess. Plus he was being cheerful and logical even while being scolded.

How many of us are like that with the humans in our lives? Or our animals?

I had to stop and marvel at the mind in this dog body. The magnificent dog who chose to be part of my family. Even with my faults. Who is more patient with me than I am with him, and is thus a living example of light and love.

Nope, my multi-species family isn’t perfect. Neither am I. The human-animal bond stretches to accommodate that, if we let it. If we listen, we can hear our family, whatever the species, remind us of that. It makes life worth it. And fun.

Thanksgiving: What We Should Really Be Grateful For

November 21, 2011 by Robyn Fritz

I was thinking, what should I be grateful for this Thanksgiving? Then I saw this silly article, again, and I knew.

I’m grateful for common sense and for refusing fear.

This article, written by Joan Raymond and updated 1-25-11 at Pet Health on msnbc.com, suggests sleeping with our animals can give us diseases. Okay, it’s a good article. We have to take health seriously, including our multi-species family’s health. And we have to report on it responsibly, as Joan Raymond does. The article is not silly in the reporting but in the culture it reveals.

Reporters can’t comment on the facts or sense of their articles. That’s why they report: they give the facts and let us figure it out. We need straight objective reporting.

Those of us who comment on the straight objective reporting write about what it means to us. For me, it’s how can we re-connect people and the planet, from people to animals and the land and waters around us.

So, Raymond writes about the things that can get us if we sleep with or kiss our animals. Things like plague (from fleas), meningitis, round worms, and other horrific or just annoying things. Okay, first, really? Our animals should be healthy, just like us! They shouldn’t have these problems, so fix them already!

Here’s the problem with this reporting: it’s all filler material. No common sense. Just fear. You wade all the way through this article and find out that what they’re trying to scare us about never really happens.

People get hurt and killed in cars every day. You can sprain your ankle getting out of bed. You can choke on a cherry.

So do you avoid cars, getting up, or eating cherries?

No. You get smart. You say, no, I’m not going to be afraid of that. But I am going to be careful and pay attention.

So here’s what I’m paying attention to at Thanksgiving. Here’s what I’m grateful for:

I live in a country where we can disagree and still be safe, even though there are plenty of people who would like to change that.
A dear friend sent me a link to an inflammatory documentary on purebred dogs, thinking that my dogs being purebreds was the reason they had some health issues. She cared. It made me think about our assumptions, which I will address in future articles. Mainly: shelters and rescue organizations make a lot of money creating fear and prejudice, when they should be encouraging people to find their heart’s match in a dog or cat. Think, people, think! Talk to each other. Love. Be lucky that your friends care enough about you and your family to say something.
People who were users and not friends have left my life, providing openings for wonderful new adventures, wiser choices, and real friendships. Awesome!
Wonderful stores like East West Bookshop in Seattle and Vashon Intuitive Arts on Vashon Island have made me and my crystal partner, Fallon, welcome. We’ve met many wonderful people. And other venues are welcoming us.
My jade tree, Raymond, was dying, but community came together and saved him. A 200-pound houseplant given to me by my father is going into his fifth decade. Yes!
My great-grandparents had the vision to settle in North Dakota and pass a piece of it on to their descendants.
Finally, at long last, some smart medical practitioners have figured it out!
I’m grateful that my writing has touched lives, and that my book, Bridging Species: Thoughts and Tales About Our Lives with Dogs, was recognized with the prestigious Merial Human-Animal Bond Award.
My multi-species family is proof that the human-animal bond is alive and well and sleeping cozily together at night, 10 years now and counting!

This Thanksgiving we are grateful that we are all here, together, so we can write and talk about what makes sense, what doesn’t, and how we can create love from fear, starting with sleeping sensibly with our animals.

We celebrate Thanksgiving at our house: yes, that means the animals get to eat, too (and no, not stupidly).

We celebrate something everyday at our house, even if it’s just the joy of greeting each other in the morning and at night: in bed.

We celebrate birthdays. We celebrate the day each animal joined the family. We celebrate season changes, holidays, mistakes, triumphs, a good meal, a bad meal being over with, gas in the car, sun and rain, cozy flannel sheets on a winter’s night, friendship and family.

And we celebrate reporters who remind us that they’re sometimes stuck with silly assignments, and can still keep a straight face.

We celebrate Thanksgiving. We invite the whole world to celebrate with us.

(Not) Meowing for Mizuna: Exploring Greens with Dogs (and a Cat)

November 18, 2011 by Robyn Fritz

Cooking is a skill I apparently lost with menopause—and only miss when I’m hungry.

I used to be a great cook. When I say this to friends they always pause, clearly deciding between laughing at what they presumed to be a joke or at what I’d cook, which wouldn’t be. It doesn’t stop me from offering to cook for them. I watch their eyes widen in surprise, and I’m thoroughly delighted when they say something like they just want to spend time with me.

And show up with Thai food. This is called ‘everybody scores.’

I do cook. Just ask my dogs, Murphy and Alki. They think I’m a great cook and take food cues from me: as a team we have wide-ranging tastes and low standards. If it comes out of the fridge if must be good, or else why would it be in there? The cookie jar is a given. We’ll eat our veggies, but never stop hoping for brownies. Or anything with peanut butter.

That’s how I know the dogs and I are related.

Grace the Cat, I’m not so sure about. She’s so smug about being right about everything that she takes convincing. Plus she’s fastidious and skeptical. As it turns out, these are all qualities that I need to rely on, since my cooking skills headed south with my boobs.

I learned this accidentally at the weekly Farmers’ Market in West Seattle. Almost every week I load up on great foods, all the vegetables and fruits you could want, and then some. Problem is, I’ve discovered things I didn’t know existed, and most often can’t figure out how to cook. The farmers are kind and patient, but it’s clear they think I’m an idiot and are just too polite to say so.

Take, for example, pea shoots. I love pea shoots. I have no idea what they are, except pea shoots, but we love them at our house, all of us, even the cat. We’re even doing a video starring pea shoots. Now, the dogs always come running when I come through the door with food, but if I say, “Pea shoots!” then Grace the Cat leaps up from her normal out cold snooze and races to hold down the kitchen counter while supervising grocery unloading.

You hold up a pea shoot and she perks up, meowing. No obstacle is too great as she promptly hunts it down: grocery bags, stuff on the counter, nothing stops her. If I offer pea shoots to the dogs (who are politely waiting on the floor only because they can’t reach the counter), Grace the Cat backflips onto the floor and bulldozes right through them. You’d think that for her, a pea shoot is, well, the fashionable cat’s mouse.

So you can imagine my surprise the day I decided to cook that week’s bounty of pea shoots.

I yanked them out of the fridge with a dramatic flourish and waved them at Grace the Cat. “Pea shoots for dinner,” I announced, grinning at her.

She stared right through them at me. Unrelenting disapproval. Stern outright disbelief.

“What’s your problem?” I asked. “You love pea shoots!”

She didn’t move. Just glared. I stuck them under her nose. She continued to glare at me as she strategically moved her head back.

I looked at the pea shoots. “Well, they do look different this week.” Yes, kind of like an entire species different, but I wasn’t going to say that.

Grace the Cat looked at me like I was an idiot. She is no fool. She knows when something is a pea shoot. And when it is not. Still they had to be eaten.

I tried the dogs next. They examined the suspect pea shoots with long, strained faces and then looked at me like I’d done something embarrassing and disappointing to their tummies.

“Lot you know,” I sniffed. “I admit they look a little weird.” I hesitated, but I’m thrifty and I’d bought them so I’d eat them.

Unless I could pawn them off on the cat. I waved them at her again. Nope.

I cooked those suckers for two dinners. Both were miserable: the suspect pea shoots were lank, bitter, limp, and tough, like spinach gone off the deep end. I sighed and ate it. Both nights the dogs and cat completely avoided me. I thought about how they just didn’t like pea shoots anymore, and about how right they were. They’d known something about that batch that I didn’t.

That weekend at the Farmers’ Market I stopped at my favorite greens vendor. Spring, you know, time for good things.

I stared down at duplicates of the pea shoots I’d suffered through. “What is that stuff?” I asked. “I thought it was pea shoots.”

“Mizuna,” she said, patiently. I think she flinches when she see me coming, but she’s always nice, and I always buy. Not sure what, apparently.

“Mi what ah?” I asked.

“Mizuna. It’s a green.”

“Well, I know that,” I said. It was green. Now, how to ‘fess up with the least embarrassment. “Should you cook it?” I asked innocently.

Shocked, she said in a strained voice, “Oh, don’t do that. Cooking makes it limp. And bitter.”

I giggled. For once the bad food wasn’t my cooking. It was mi what ah. I knew I shouldn’t have cooked it, but I’m not much of a predator, and I just didn’t know if it would fight back harder if I tried to eat it raw.

“I noticed that,” I said. “I sort of accidentally cooked it.”

She was shocked, like nobody could be that dumb. She was also disappointed in me. Like Grace the Cat in her stoic cat way.

“Oh, you shouldn’t do that,” the farmer said.

Good words to hear before I’d suffered through two miserable dinners.

Thing is, I wouldn’t have had to hear them if I’d just paid attention to my kids. The dogs, that goofy cat, they knew.

So now I’m a reformed shopper at the West Seattle Farmers’ Market. The vendors tend to explain things to me as they’re putting them in my bag: this is pea shoots, this is spinach, whatever. People in line shake their heads and sigh. But at least I get home safely. With food we kind of know how to eat.

Food that gets vetted by Grace the Cat.

Which is why I’m sticking to things the cat likes. Pea sprouts (certified by the farmer). Meat. Blueberry muffins. Cheese doodles. Salad. Corn bread, even though mine is more skanky than home on the range.

Because I guess I hit menopause and I’m not so home on the range. But there’s this cool grass I grow on the deck for the kids. They love it, so it must be good. Don’t have to cook it. Cool.

The Alchemy of Grief: 50 Years Later

November 1, 2011 by Robyn Fritz

In Memoriam: Randall Ray Fritz, July 26, 1947 – November 1, 1961.

Years ago, I couldn’t imagine that today would ever occur.

Today, it’s been 50 years. What to make of them?

In October 1961 my grandparents came out from Montana to visit. My oldest brother, Randy, was sick, in and out of the hospital, and in those days, it was a long drive to Salem from our small Oregon home town. So far, in fact, that in September Randy moved to Salem to live with our grandparents during the week, so he could attend Catholic high school.

Just like that, Randy got sick.

I remember the last time I saw him. He was in the hospital, pale and thin beneath the covers. Alert.

I was just a kid. Naïve. Trusting. Sheltered. Optimistic. Like all kids and many adults I was uncomfortable visiting the hospital. And I didn’t know why Randy was there and couldn’t come home.

All I knew was that I had always adored my older brother, which is not the same thing as always liking him. But the sun rose and set on Randy. Even when we talked about death in school—because Catholics, at least, only talk about dying, from getting ready to die to actually doing it—I used to think that everyone could die, even my parents.

But not Randy. No, Randy would never die.

All those years ago, I didn’t know what it meant to be intuitive. I just remember what hit me in those last few moments, before we left that day. The last day I saw my brother alive.

Surrounded by family, Randy looked over at me, held out his hand, and as I reached out and held his, our eyes met. In that moment, I knew.

Randy was dying. And he knew it. In that shared moment he said goodbye.

I was too stunned to do anything but stare at him in shock.

I don’t remember when that last day was. Sometime in late October the doctors told my parents that Randy had leukemia and would die in six weeks to six months. He was gone in less than a week.

Sometime in those last days the doctors also asked my parents to allow them to use Randy as a guinea pig. Literally. They need drug trials on a promising drug that wouldn’t help Randy, but might help others in the future.

My dad was a pharmacist. He knew from drugs. My parents agreed.

That last morning my Grandma Fritz sobbed at the kitchen table while my younger brother and I played. When asked, over and over, why she was crying, she simply said she felt sorry for Randy. It didn’t make any sense to me. Nothing did.

I had no context. Why would it make sense?

Later, we were called in from playing. I was taking off my shoes when my mom walked over to me and blurted it out.

“Your brother went to heaven an hour ago.”

I stared at her in confused, stunned silence until it sunk in. I burst into tears. In some ways I have not stopped crying all these years later.

My brother’s death destroyed my family. There’s no other way to put it. My parents … when I think of them I think of impossible grief. Of two people who’d survived a world war, created a good business in a small rural community, raised their kids to be honest citizens, anticipated a future bright with promise, and lost their oldest child in a matter of days to a disease they’d never really heard of.

On November 1, 1961.

My parents never recovered. Sure, they laughed again, they raised us, they staggered on. To a degree. With pain like that you have two choices: to grieve and move on, or to block yourself emotionally. I’m not sure which is the easiest, but they chose to be blocked. Because of that, two little kids didn’t just lose a brother that day.

I think now everyone must have known that Randy was dying except the children. Everyone had time to prepare, except for my younger brother and me. I think even Randy had time to prepare. They never told him he was dying. But I know he knew. I knew that day.

The community rallied around us. Food arrived. Friends and family and strangers flocked to the funeral home. To the funeral. There were so many flowers that the smell overwhelmed me, and, after being forced to touch Randy’s cold, stiff hand as we stared at him in his coffin, the flowers choked me and I turned and raced away as fast as I could, with my uncle running behind me trying to help. He did. But I re-live that nightmare every time I walk into a florist shop. I can’t stand the smell of carnations.

So here’s another story. For several years the community had been raising money to buy land to build a Catholic high school. That school was dedicated two years later, in 1963. My brother and I graduated from it, as did my nephews.

In their shock and grief my parents sought comfort. They decided to scrimp and save and donate $5,000 to the building fund for the school chapel, built in Randy’s memory. It was still there several years ago, at my nephews’ graduation. Once I learned the truth of that chapel, I never cared about it again. My parents had given the money they thought they would spend on Randy’s college education to build that chapel—to somehow make his death mean something, to ease their sorrow, I don’t know. Some people respected them for it. Others decided that if we had that kind of money to give away, then we didn’t need their business.

I know this sounds bitter. Really, it’s ironic. It’s all part of community, isn’t it? The not so nice part that you can sometimes understand because community isn’t perfect. It’s a whole lot of work. Even when it doesn’t work.

I didn’t get to say goodbye to my brother. I carried that pain and grief for years, the fear, that many kids have, that petty jealousies somehow cause our stricken sibling to die. That took years to get over. It makes me really useful to kids who are dealing with that now, because I know exactly what they’re feeling, even if they won’t say it. But I can tell them. And their parents. I can tell them to talk to each other. To hold on.

But for me, truly, it took a dog, and a dog’s well-lived life, to let the grief go. It took creating a family of my own, and seeing family beyond humans, to heal that grief.

It took expanding community to include all life, and working to build it. It took the ongoing work of creating a community with all life—that’s what I do, however I can, in fits and starts.

And healing took a goddess, but that’s another story.

Here’s the thing about grief.

Grief teaches us about all things. From grief we learn hatred. I learned to hate god. On the day we buried Randy I decided that a god who would allow my brother to die was not a god I could respect, or love, or acknowledge. Despite years of being a devout Catholic, and finally being brave enough to leave, I’ve held on to that. Call me stubborn. And consistent. And … whatever works for you.

Grief teaches us fear. If we can lose someone we love, then why risk it? Close the door and hide.

Grief teaches us compassion. Again, you can choose to block life, like my parents did, or you can choose to move on, which is what I did, eventually. Compassion helps our hearts to cry while allowing others to cry with us. Compassion gives us the freedom to reach beyond the hurt to build community. Like my parents did with that chapel.

Grief teaches us love. If I had not been hardened by grief I would not have melted with love. If I had not defied my old community, the one of faith and religion and limitations and petty jealousies and extraordinary generosity and everyday comradeship, I would not have my new community. It means everything to me.

Without grief I would not now be a citizen of the world. I would not now be an intuitive who can talk with all beings, from animals to businesses to homes, to the land and waters and weather around us. I would not now be able to offer compassion to all life.

I would not now have the crystal Fallon as my partner.

There were many things I had to re-learn in the lives that led us back to each other: Fallon, the citrine Lemurian quartz who was rejected around the world, and the lonely lost girl whose invincible adored brother died.

I had to learn the alchemy of grief.

Alchemy is magic. Transformation. The changing of one thing to another.

Given a chance, grief becomes love.

That’s what I finally learned today. The day I realized that it’s been 50 years since my brother died.

Today I learned the alchemy of grief.

So here, 50 years later, I can finally say the tears have stopped. I have moved on. It’s done now. It has been. It’s just time to say it.

Yes, today I finally get to say goodbye to my brother.

Randy, thank you for taking a drug that couldn’t save you, but is now saving so many lives. Thank you for making methotrexate possible. They use it for rheumatoid arthritis now, and at one time it helped our dad as it is now helping a dear friend; it also helped a college student I knew years ago recover from the leukemia that killed you.

Randy, thank you for being my brother.

Randy, thank you for whatever it was we learned together.

Randy, thank you for saying goodbye to me.

Goodbye, Randy.