Dear Karen,
Sweet Rosie has been part of our family here so many years now and in truth it broke my heart to read your post. She was such a sweetheart with the gentlest eyes. Even tho we know their time is drawing close we are never ready for them to leave, regardless of the manner we are never ready. I can't imagine your fear and anguish those days she was missing but I know the heartache you felt once you knew she was gone. I understand the inability to come here and talk to us about her - my Squirt has been gone 5 years this past May and I have never been able to write a memorial for her. I've tried a thousand times but I just can't. I think somewhere hidden deep inside I still hold onto the hope she will one day show up again so I can't do things that make her absence really real. I still have the food I cooked for her in the freezer - I can't throw it out. So, yes, I understand to some degree the pain you are feeling.
Please don't let guilt take up residence. You were the very best of moms to your sweet girl; she knows that and we know that. You did everything possible to give her the very best life every day she was on this earth. She is once again young and strong and running free in the Rainbow Fields braying with joy as she chases butterflies and bunny rabbits. I promise you she didn't cross that Bridge alone - Squirt and so many of her other friends from here were with her at that lake and walked with her into her new world. She will be surrounded by friends and loved ones who have gone before her until that day when your job here is done and you are reunited with your precious baby girl.
My deepest sympathies,
Leslie
Beannacht
by John ODonohue
On the day when
The weight deadens
On your shoulders
And you stumble,
May the clay dance
To balance you.
And when your eyes
Freeze behind
The grey window
And the ghost of loss
Gets into you,
May a flock of colours,
Indigo, red, green
And azure blue,
Come to awaken in you
A meadow of delight.
When the canvas frays
In the currach of thought
And a stain of ocean
Blackens beneath you,
May there come across the waters
A path of yellow moonlight
To bring you safely home.
May the nourishment of the earth be yours,
May the clarity of light be yours,
May the fluency of the ocean be yours,
May the protection of the ancestors be yours.
And so may a slow
Wind work these words
Of love around you,
An invisible cloak
To mind your life.