Our usual leader at Writer's Group has been away so I offered to head up the June meeting, held yesterday. For our writing exercise I offered everyone the choice between 'Can you go home again?' or 'what was your first significant pet?'
I had been reminiscing about my two gerbils, Ticky and Chi-Chi who gave me nothing but happy memories and many, many litters of brand new gerbil babies which were the easiest thing in the world to give away at the time. I would spend hours with them out in the dirt patch, digging channels and pits for them to roam. My weird, little 10 year old brain invariably got a big kick out of imagining infractions that would result in the gerbils being sentenced to solitary confinement until one by one the gerbils would wind up all together in 'solitary' confinement...get it?...get it??
As I said: strange little child.
But for the rest of the group?
Oh. My.
The assignment uncovered a world of hurt and unresolved loss. The first person to read her piece presented a beautiful, warm, sensory account of her first morning with a new puppy...'kay, that's kind of where I though we would go... Writer number 2 jumped in right after with a decidedly different tone; hers, from the perspective of a dog who cowered beneath a sideboard between beatings. Very dark and riveting.
From there, every single account and anecdote became increasing sad. One person had to surreptitiously dispatch a rapidly ailing pet on a camping trip...another informed us that our town has a bylaw against burying animals in town (read: backyard) and had conscientiously complied which meant taking his beloved cat to the dump in a garbage bag and having to pitch it into the large pit reserved for animal carcasses. He can still get choked up when passing the dump. Another situation involved disinterring the bones of their dear family dog while replacing a fence. The final person given a chance to read declined since she felt she would become too emotional but did add that it was nice to be able to write it out.
Quite a few tears and a completely different tone than I'd anticipated.
Like the father of a recently deceased young person stated "With great love comes great loss".
No comments:
Post a Comment