Kurosawa

A story about a beloved 3 footed pet lizard

I’ve rarely written about my other pets, because after my dog Ruby died, I felt all my words and energy went to finding ways to speak on that particular relationship— because it was so profound for me.

But alas, they are all profound.

This was Kurosawa, (see below) my beautiful serene three footed lizard of unmatched majesty (she had lost a foot as a juvenile, with her previous people.)

When she was a baby she once escaped and was found beneath and up inside a giant recliner, that easily could’ve crushed her. It was a miracle she was found. (This was not how she lost her foot.)

As an adult she seemed content basking beneath the warmth of her bulb, and taking her baths. No longer an escape artist.

She would get feisty and her beard would turn black.

She’d fall asleep on your chest.

I just wanted to digitally immortalize her here on this page with some words. She brought me great happiness those 12 yrs being her caretaker, and in the end she just became frail and there wasn’t much that could be done. She died three summers ago on my lap in the sunshine.

I buried her the next day.

I started out with a shovel, but quickly ditched it for a giant metal spoon, and I was amazed how hard the soil was. My hands bled.

My tears fell into the soil. I let everything pour out of me into in that seemingly small hole.

It seems that bleeding hands are written into the script, no matter how big or small the grave is that your digging.

You’re just really lucky if you get to dig the grave in the first place.

All my other pets are ash, waiting for me to die, while cloistered in plush velvet bags or small wooden boxes, (which I greet with a “good morning” and a gentle“goodnight” each time I shut the living room lights off)

I will be scattered with them, if I’m lucky enough to have people around to take the directive seriously, by the time I go. But sometimes I feel selfish keeping them so constrained beneath their weight in carbon ash.

Confinement feels wrong (but then so does burying;) I mean it’s all surreal and horrible and beautiful—and so is the nagging reminder--that I no longer feel strongly about that one specific spot I had wanted our ashes scattered.

My heart is in too many places now, and the places I loved so dearly—well they were marred—turned into long sprawling housing developments.

When I was young I was so certain of ”the place.”

Anyway….

All I know is, When it comes to these ashes— one plus one equals one and so on.

I will eventually settle on a place that makes sense (probably some prairie remnant off the side of a small highway, that feels like you could be anywhere and has that universal melancholic ache, when the light hits just right, as your driving into the late afternoon sun thinking to yourself that even though highways are ugly man made constructs, your heart still melts looking out from beyond them.

It may seem strange to talk more of her death than her life, but It’s complicated in the end.

I know in my heart of hearts, I am suited to be an undertaker, and I was born into the wrong time —the wrong profession perhaps--

— def the wrong time—not just for the living—but for the dead.

It was once that you let the dead sleep while rubbing their feet with oils and wrapping them lovingly in fine cloth before saying goodbye.

Death took the time it needed.

She laid in state overnight and was buried the next morning wrapped up in a t shirt remnant with her little head sticking out one end, with some beautiful trumpet flowers.

Now some Black Eyed Susan’s grow upon her.

She too would have been ash, but I don’t drive, and I was alone that summer when she died , with no way to get her to the cremation place an hour away (a little animal cemetery on farmland, were they let you place your pet in the furnace even tho it’s probably not legal). They even cremate horses ( the man who looked like Santa meets Johnny Cash told me “only woman do that”;) and when my dog Ruby was being cremated he made me play him a song on his guitar and eventually sang for me. We sang Ruby into the ether together, as her bones and fur turned into a black ribbon of gentle smoke against the blue sky.

Anyway. Finally my words came for Kurosawa today.

I will always have you with me dear Kuro.

And I love knowing where you are in the meantime …. and that I put you there.