Grandma's Moon Garden

Grandma's Moon Garden is a special place.

My human mom has really been missing her human mom, so she decided to spend the day working in the Moon Garden. Grandma (Mom's Mom) strategically designed the garden where the moonlight first glows on our Idaho pasture on her August birthday. But when Mom took me out to the Moon Garden during the recent Blue Moon, we couldn't see the moonlight shining on the rocks. There were too many weeds.

While working in the Moon Garden, Mom found a special guitar pick that her older brother used. She found a dream weaver. She found a little moon man and a bigger moon man. She thought about Neil Armstrong and his passing. She thought about her mom and her passing. She thought about how her mom used to say, "Oh, honey. Be easier on yourself. It's all just learning."

People who don't know say to move forward, or to move on, after the death of a loved one, but I don't think that is how it works. I think you walk with your loved one forever more. Every beloved pet that you've ever had is walking with you now. Every beloved person is there, too. It's just that now, instead of the being walking beside you, physically, the being walks beside you, spiritually. But it's even more than that. You contain those beloved beings who have gone before; each one lives within you. It's an honor. A responsibility. A comfort.

But sometimes it doesn't feel like that. Sometimes you just need to touch a rock that your mom touched. You need to touch and to water rocks that your mom placed in her Moon Garden.

While my mom weeded, I sat nearby. And then I started barking. Little yips. High yips. They weren't food yips or upset yips. I couldn't help myself. Mom said, "Oh, Tootsie! You don't let me get oh-so melancholy, do you?"

Mom took me inside the house, and I spent the rest of the afternoon slowly and steadily humping my fur brother Truffle.

I licked his ear and nibbled it all over. And then I air humped Truff some more.

My humpy business just made Truffle squeak, but I think he might have liked it when I licked his eyes and ears.

Mom says that Grandma would have loved me. I love her, too.