Death has been following me lately. Working in animal care, I knew that this was going to be something that I had to deal with but was not expecting it to be drilled in so hard in the last few months. Each a completely different circumstance; we lost our first baby- a snake we had barely had a month after he escaped the room and didn't recover. Then my childhood cat finally passed after 16 years.Then a hamster at work died in my hands while I was trying to save him from neglect. Then one morning I went out into the backyard and our resident hog was flipped over on his back by his hole, later we determined he was picked up and dropped by a hawk or eagle. When death follows us many of us assume we have wronged someone or something, that we have angered the gods and they are punishing us. After many, many, traumatic and expected deaths of animals and people, it never is easy. Why me? Why am I the one who has to bury the animals? Why am I the one praying for them? Why are they coming to me in my dreams? Why do sick animals always seem to find me? Do I attract the death and sickness? Or am I a respite for the weak? Do I offer small comforts to small creatures who otherwise would be thrown away in the trash or left to die alone? I've asked my spirits and it all comes down to one thing: I cared.
I bought a book on a whim, "The Pagan book of LIving and Dying" by Starhawk and M.Macha Nightmare and have used it more than any other book I have, despite barely being a few chapters in. I highly recommened this book to everyone because we will all die one day and it's nice to have a reference for something that isn't so Godly. Below is the impromptu ritual for burying Hogzilla (tw: dead animal pic under the cut. a groundhog in a shallow dirt hole sprinkled with flowers and covered with a large leaf, non graphic and no blood)
