My dog Rocket passed away yesterday. I have one other dog and a cat. Rocket was the sweetest of the bunch. He was a wonderful pet, and yes even a friend. When hard times come, I theologize. It helps me feel closer to God, and that helps me feel comforted. Here are some thoughts and feelings evoked by the sad passing of my canine friend. Excuse me if these are disjointed, I'm not in a very organized place just yet. Sometimes the rawness of the experience is worth recording, even precision is not possible:
Let me begin by saying I loved my dog. I was not just 'attached' to him, he was my friend and I loved him. But I screamed and cried, having arrived to the house just moments after his passing. I am still finding moments where it is hard not to tear up. Do I love my dog as I loved the people in my life. No, of course not. But my dog was a fixture in my life, and I loved him, and so his passing was very painful. Judge me irrational if you will. There are some who will understand this experience better than others. That is the way it is with every moment of grief. I know some of you are going through much harder things. Know I pray for you daily. This is my pain, in my moment. Petty though it may be in the grand scheme, in my life it is real. And it gets me thinking.
My dog lived and died well. He was loved, and well cared for. He lived to the age of 12. Time works differently for dogs because of differences in metabolism. They perceive time passing more slowly. While it is an exaggeration to say a dog lives 7 years for every human year (it ranges between 4-6), it is true that those 12 years were a lot longer for him than they were for me. He died fairly quickly, with little pain, in the arms of the woman who loved him most, my wife. I missed my chance to say goodbye to him in life. I think I got to say goodbye though, in a different way, which I'll talk about later. His death was unexpected. He had been sick a few weeks ago, but it was from something he ate and he got much better. A recent vet visit put him in 100% good health. Everyone thought he had quite a few years left in him. His passing, then, was unexpected. But in the end, we should all be so lucky to live and die so well. So for me there is great pain, but no tragedy, not real suffering.
The difference between tragedy and suffering on the one side, and pain on the other is the threat to the meaningfulness of life. When the evils of this world genuinely threaten one's sense of meaning, then the pain enters to the level of true suffering. There is none of that here. His death was surrounded by signs in his behavior that he was somehow ready to go. I can't go into details, as dwelling on the last week hurts too much. But it was like a conversation was going on between he and I, and between God and myself. The full meaning of that conversation did not become clear to me until later, but now I see what it was all about. Knowing that it matters doesn't make it hurt less, but it keeps me from truly suffering, in that very specific sense. For that and for so much else in regards to Rocket, I am thankful to God.
But I miss my friend. And I will miss him for the rest of my life, as I have to miss so many others. Death is envisioned in the Bible as a demon, one that will be defeated at the End of Days. I have to say that usually I reject this view. I see death as a natural part of life. But when grief strikes, I find that image of death as the enemy coming back to me, and somehow seeing it as an enemy that will be overcome makes things a bit easier. So when death surrounds me in any of it's forms, I read Revelation 20:13-14 and am comforted.
I think my dog is in some kind of afterlife. I am not certain of this, and that uncertainty is part of the cause of my pain. I'm not CERTAIN of my own continued survival beyond death, and so that uncertainty has nothing to do with Rocket being an animal, rather than a person. Christians who deny that animals have a soul on Biblical grounds are only reading part of the Bible. There are other parts that indicate a near-equality between humans an animals, and cast doubt on the proposition that humans go to heaven, and animals rot in the ground. See: Genesis 2:29-30, Numbers 22:22-40, Jonah 4:11, Habakkuk 2:17 and especially Ecclesiastes 3:16-21, Ecclesiastes 3:21 is particularly interesting, for Ecclesiastes says in essence "for all you know animals go to heaven and it is man that rots in the ground." That is about right.
I believe my dog is in heaven because of my experience of selfhood. I discover who I am in my relationship with other beings. My dog was, in a small but significant way, a part of me. My soul was discovered in relationship with other beings, including Rocket. If Rocket is a part of my soul, and my own soul is immortal, than Rocket must share in my immortality. Further, the ultimately self-discovery takes place in my relationship with God. In God I find my true self. I think that this is true for all beings. Rocket shared in the life of God, and God shared in his life. Rocket was, in a very small yet I think real way, a part of God, and God retained all of Rocket's experiences in Himself. If Rocket's self was inclusive of God, and God is eternal, then something of Rocket, indeed the most important part of him, must live on in God.
Finally, I really can't bring myself to believe that the wonderful reality I related to in my dog is just obliterated, any more than I can believe the best parts of any living thing I meet are obliterated. Let's imagine a world where there is no real divinity. Well I experienced my relationship with Rocket as divine. So whether or not it was divine, it is AS IF a piece of God was in my arms, and now is not. It is AS IF, divinity was present to me in this simple creature, and it is dead. That seems unbearable: the death of God in the world. Yes, there are other divine-like experiences, but how can I experience them with any joy if I know that "God" will ultimately die in all and every form? Moreover, each expression of divinity is unique in some special way. The loss of that god is final. Unless one trusts that experience of divinity as real, as pointing beyond the experience to some real transcendence in the world. In that case, the death of one instantiation of divinity need not be the end, for that godness returns to God increased. If the divinity I experience in my relationships has some eternity, I can give myself over to them with reckless abandon. If not, then I cannot bear the thought of their loss, of the loss of God in the world over and over again, and all a prelude to a final death, where no more experienced divinity will ever appear, anywhere.
In the latter case only a Buddhist attitude seems reasonable. Detach from all, and ignore the eternal passing of God into death. No, I cannot accept this. I rather accept the words of the gospels, which ring truer to me in moments like this. Irrational, you say? Wishful thinking, you say? Well, okay then. I am weak, you are strong. I cannot pretend to be what I am not. I choose to hold onto the divine experiences of my love for others, believing that if I hold tight enough that I will be dragged beyond death and into new life. That crucifixion leads to resurrection. Call it stupidity, it gets me through the day. As I've said before, "to love the world so much that the destruction of any part of it should destroy you, and to trust that yet you will not be destroyed, that my friends is faith."
I learned so much from Rocket. Rocket was very needy. And needing me more, I loved him more. I realized that dependence can breed a deeper kind of love. When it lessens the other person it is destructive, but one need not worry about that with a dog. And his need for me, his constant reliance on me, deepened my love for him. It is a contrast to my other animals who are more self-reliant and independent. I love them all the same, but there was a special love with Rocket. I realized eventually that God must experience this with us every day. One benefit of our sinfulness and stupidity and our constant need for Him, must be the love it engenders in Him. I believe we are in a state of inter-dependence with God. But we are galactically more dependent on Him than He on us. So it is no wonder His love is deeper for us than vice versa.
Rocket was an excited dog. Everything was a blast and a half. He made me more like that. I loved life more because of him. If only life could be that much fun for all of us all the time.
His death makes me glad for my more cosmic understanding of atonement, whereby Jesus reveals God's universal nature. For it means that in the resurrection I can find hope for him as well. And indeed I do. I know that writing like this over a dog may seem silly, maybe it is, but it's as concrete and real for me as the keyboard on which I write. I had a dream last night about my dog in heaven. God revealed some wonderful things to me surrounding him. Stupid you say? Nothing but wishful thinking and a hurt psyche? Maybe. Or maybe it is a thread, a glimpse of something ultimately true and real. If it is real, Rocket's joyful ways now echo in eternity. Oh God, please let it be real.
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