Animal Voices
dawn baumann brunke
Chapter 3
I’m in Your Heart
It’s Friday the 13th. Bob had planned to leave on his 10-day solo moose hunt today. I had bought him a new tent and fancy lightweight titanium stove. He had all his gear neatly packed in the garage — and there it remains. I had planned to change the sheets when he left, to enjoy fresh bamboo sheets while he was gone. But now, I never want to change them again.
I clean and tidy. My neighbor Sue brings over homemade beef stew and biscuits. Flowers arrive: white roses and freesia; yellow roses and sunflowers; a gardenia plant. Another neighbor brings a charcuterie and veggie platter. People call and stop by, everyone shocked and saddened by this news. Each delivery, each call, each visit stirring up uncomfortable feelings, the sharp ache of loss.
In the afternoon, Alyeska tells me we must get out of the house. We drive to Reflection Lake, one of our favorite places to walk. I bring Deshka and Alyeska brings Cherokee, the oldest of three dogs who live with her.
The day is overcast and a bit chilly. It’s a mile walk around the lake and as we near completion, it begins to drizzle.There’s a faint mist against the darkening skies, but just as I emerge from a cover of trees, just as the path veers from forest to lake, a flash of sunlight gleams through the clouds. The water sparkles and tiny droplets of mist shimmer like champagne bubbles in the air. I move my hand to my heart, for in the magic of that moment I feel his presence so strong, so alive. It seems a sign: the shimmering mist, the flash of sunshine through the clouds, his sudden presence. I feel him beside me, and I hear him, his words a gentle whisper: I’m in your heart.
I call to Alyeska, ahead on the trail with Cherokee. She walks back and I point to the sparkles, the misty air, and tell her what has happened. She nods and tells me she felt it too, she felt his presence near, that he was happy to see us out in nature.
On the way home, we pass the river where Bob would have parked his Xterra for the boat ride to his hunting camp. Huge black clouds are settling over the mountains. I point and say to Leska, “That is where he would have been.”
And then — a rainbow! Huge and glowing bright. I can see the full rainbow, end to end, from where he would have been, arching across the river to the hay-flats near to us. “Look at that!” I exclaim to my daughter. “Do you see that?” Part of me still not believing this can be true.
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I feel him smiling. I feel him laughing and whispering in my right ear, I can do things like that now! I gasp, for once again he is so fully present within my heart. I keep my hand there, holding him near and dear. And for a second it doesn’t seem quite so terrible after all.
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Ups and downs. Back at home, alone, I miss him once again, so much, so deeply. His physical form, his voice, his smell, his smile, his way of being. His chair is empty and there’s no one to make dinner for, no one to watch a movie with or cuddle close beneath the sheets.
He whispers to me, floating in my dreams, smiling in the remembered sunshine and rain and distant clouds over the mountains. Again and again, he reminds me, I’m in your heart.
~ ~ ~
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Chapter 4
A New Relationship
My husband was two months shy of his 61st birthday when he died. To all appearances he was a strong, healthy guy. He rarely got sick, rarely complained of aches or pains, and had spent hours on our elderly neighbor’s roof only the week before, using a pressure washer to spray away moss.
No autopsy was performed. Cause of death was deemed “probable atherosclerotic cardiovascular disease.” I didn’t want to think about clogged blood vessels or the sudden seizing of his generous heart.
Instead, what to do with all the camping and cooking gear, the hunting equipment, the tent and tarps and totes of freeze-dried food that was taking up a good portion of the garage? Alyeska and I remark how Bob would have been incredibly irritated — ‘majorly pissed’ as he’d say — to miss his moose hunt, planned for months and set to begin just days after he died.
On the first day of the not-happening hunt, I wake early in the morning. Lounging in that drowsy state between sleep and waking consciousness, I hear his voice inside my head.
I’m going on the hunt. He speaks matter of factly, as he sometimes did when a decision had been made.
How can you do that? I ask.
He says he’ll take his spirit body to the place where he had planned to go, a wooded area not far from the Knik River. He tells me there is an overlay between the physical and spirit worlds, and that he can be in several places at once. Things are different now, he explains.
He does not intend to kill a moose or even shoot at one, but rather to watch. Animals are more open to me in spirit form, he notes. He shares the image of an owl and says he can fly with the bird. That owls are special birds because they acknowledge the spirits and so he can glide beside one, even go inside of it and share its feelings. But only if you are invited.
~ ~ ~
Alyeska returns to work, and I need to figure out how to live again. I still feel numb and empty, no foundation, no stability, no sense of inner balance.
Get yourself together, I tell myself. I’m appalled to find myself so needy and desperate. This isn’t me at all, I think. But who am I now? I’m lost and sad and can’t remember who I used to be.
Several friends from the past reach out. A close college friend, Amy, whom I haven’t heard from in ages, calls to share the story of her husband’s passing several years ago. She describes how Dave collapsed in an airport restroom, hit his head on a basin, and arrived at the hospital brain dead. When the doctors said he’d not have his intelligence if he survived, and because Dave was all about his intelligence, Amy and her son made a difficult decision to stop life support.
She tells me to expect lots of paperwork, waves of sadness, and plenty of well-meaning but unsolicited advice. “But here’s what you really need to know,” she says with the weight of experience. “Seek your own guidance. Follow your own counsel. Do what feels right to you.” This will turn out to be some of the best advice I ever receive.
As Amy listens to my stories about feeling Bob’s presence, she assures me it’s real, that Dave was with her for years, offering advice and simply being present. “Then he gave me a dream that he was leaving. Onto new adventures! He kissed me and then he was gone.”
A friend named Jude whom I also haven’t spoken with in quite some time tells me about her husband Jimmy, who died seven years ago. As the conversation progresses and I cautiously mention I’ve been talking with Bob, she relates that she talked to Jimmy too. “All the time! He was always talking. He was feeling regrets about his life, so he was kind of heavy and stuck. He was here for a long time. But then one day I saw his spirit rise above me, his toes wiggling right in front of my nose, and he was gone!”
When I tell my friend Taryia, a depth psychologist and dream worker, what happened at the lake and what Bob’s been sharing in the early mornings about his hunt, she encourages me to write it down. “Not only for you,” she says. “This may be helpful for others.”
After a pause, she poses a question that offers a small light, a glimmer of a possible pathway forward. “Are you willing to let go of the idea that this is an ending?”
That’s not to say I won’t miss him, of course— his physical presence, all he did around the house, the joy of our weekend adventures. But maybe love, once deeply rooted, finds ways to keep growing. Can I imagine moving into a more spacious way of being? Am I willing to explore a new type of relationship with him?
Tayria tells me she has encountered many souls who seem lost. “Maybe this isn’t just for you,” she suggests. “Maybe your talks will be helpful for him too.”
Maybe she’s right, I consider. Love doesn’t have to end, even with loss. It is ours to follow wherever it leads. If we choose.
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