In thinking more about what helps after losing Lorenzo, I’ve landed on two things. Beforehand, I should say that there are the givens, and I value them more than ever. My husband: his love and our communication. My mom: her patience and unconditional support. Our nearest and dearest: their letters and conversations. Without these people, I am a blind beast in a cave because that is often what the grief seems to resemble–a new creature’s skin I keep waking up in and learning a different aspect of each day. In addition, there are two specific courses of action that are helping, and they involve a lot of needles and a fair amount of dog hair.

Let’s start with the dog: Ruby. Ruby Girl, Rubicon, Rubes, Ruby Tuesday, Rubik’s Cube, Ru Ru Rooster… the nicknames are endless for our little “Rubia.” Like so much recently, I never saw her coming, and now I can’t imagine a day without her sweetness and play and that face!

 

When Ryan and I were still in California, reeling from this sudden sharp turn our lives had taken, he suggested, partly in jest, that we get a dog. At that point, all we knew was that we were indeed coming back to Santiago and that we were returning without our son, who was supposed to be born here in September. How on earth we were going to get through the days that followed was as mysterious to me then as how stupid movies got made and how it was that there was so much unattended suffering on the planet: the extremes your mind goes to when it can’t process the here and now. So, the second he said it, I held onto it for exactly what it has turned out to be: a lifeline.

We arrived back early on a Sunday in July that happened to be Father’s Day. After a foggy dawn, we returned to our apartment, which I had left some two weeks before when there was a very real possibility I would stay in California and never see it again. I put a card on Ryan’s pillow. I had had my first Mother’s Day the month before when we could celebrate Lorenzo with an “unbridled joy” that I put in quotes now because it feels foreign. I wrote the card because he is a father now and he deserved something that recognized that even though we were so very far way from joy. Perhaps, especially because we were.

Three days later, on the 20th, the day that would mark our due date in three months time, we got Ruby. We owe it all to an expat friend’s husband, a professional dog trainer who happened to know of a litter of puppies way out in a barrio by the airport, and they needed homes. Because it rained that day, he was free to drive me there to meet them. We walked into a muddy front yard and found six frolicking pups, their mom and dad nearby and seeming as worn out and proud as any new parents. I hadn’t known what to expect to see or what I was looking for, but I met this little lady, regal in her calm temperament and gorgeous as ever with that fine white line running down her face, which looked to me like a line I should follow. I held her, put her down, and watched her scamper around with the pack I would be taking her away from, but made a promise to her and to myself to give her a good life. So, when the trainer said, “Okay, Jenn, which one do you want?” I knew.

 

Minutes later I was back in the passenger seat with a puppy on my lap and no leash or collar to speak of, much less a piece of kibble. We had only been going to look at the puppies, after all, but isn’t that how life happens? We can never truly be prepared. We went to the vet right then and there, and got her first round of vaccines, the leash, and the food. When Ruby and I finally headed home in a cab through the rainy streets of Santiago, we were alone together for the first time and it felt like any good adventure does: exhilarating, nervy, and semi-comical. Then Ryan got to meet her, and we introduced her to her new home, took a walk as a family for the first time, and named her (to Ryan’s credit, she is blonde/”rubia,” after all). “You got a good dog,” he said when we finally sat down to eat and I realized that for the first time since this started, my mind had been focused on something else.

She is my day. I wake up in this new strange skin, but I also wake up thinking about her. We walk, we play. She gets me out of the house and gives me purpose. Much-needed chemicals in my brain release because she makes me smile and inspires me to invent actual songs about her and actually sing them to her, aloud. She needs me and I need her. She is our family. When I hold her leash I see a symbol for that lifeline she truly is.

 

It’s hard to leave her. She cries and I want to, but we’re working on it. I do leave her twice a week for two hours to see my acupuncturist. As I told you last time, he is the one helping me see this as a life experience. He is the one doing the body work because that is where so much of the trauma is. I spent a few weeks trying to find a therapist, thinking that’s what I needed. I still may and I understand people who do. But I held back because I did not want to make this about my past or more words. This is about Lorenzo and his loss and communicating with Ryan and about preparing how little we ever really can for our future. So, when a good friend said I needed a laying on of hands, I knew she was right. I needed energy work and realignment and for someone to look at my tongue and see that I’ve been thinking too much and take my pulses (yes, pulses) and send energy to my lungs because that is where my sadness is.

I summarize–the practice is so ancient and the effects so profound, that’s all I feel equipped to do here. All I know is the first day he put a row of six needles along my abdomen, which had been so hard for me to look at, and yesterday he put five needles in my left foot “for my heart,” and in between those two sessions I have made many connections, including but not limited to the abdomen, where Lorenzo lived, and my heart, where he will reside forever.

 

Right now, Ruby and the acupuncturist are helping. Ruby is the way I see and explore the world outside, and the acupuncture is allowing me to sink into the internal world of the body and get out of the way of its healing. Somehow, somewhere in between, I am getting through the days.