Valentine For Nikomi The Ferret+

[Chinook]

Nikomi the Ferret

Feburary 27, 2011 will be 3 years since Nikomi, our beloved ferret left us for the rainbow bridge. Even though a lot of time has pass, I still think of him often if not every day. By now, I keep my grief to myself, no longer going to thearpy or support groups mainly because I feel people look at me like I am crazy especially my significent other. I miss him so much and I know his playmate Chinook, our remaining ferret misses him as well. Sometimes I wonder if it is his old age or depresssion that slows him down, perhaps maybe a little of both. I still have his picture up and still have his memorial plaque next to the plum tree we planted in his memory called The Nikomi Tree. With the bizarre weather we had over the last 3 years here in Phoenix, with the strong winds and a freak hail storm, the Nikomi Tree lives on. Other trees we have have died due to the freezing cold weather alerts and other factors but the Nikomi Tree grows strong. Every spring when the tree sprouts its white flowers, I can not help but think of Nikomi's white fur coat and miss him sleeping in my arms and licking my hand when he woke up from his slumbers. I suppose the pain will never go away but it is now a private compainion that I only share with my inner thoughts and private tears. I miss you Nikomi, my friend and time will never never never make me forget you. This is my enternal Valentine gift to you.

Love

Tim

February 6, 2011

[kayc]

Tim,

I'm sorry you've had to learn to live without Nikomi. Don't worry about other people looking at you a little askew...they just don't know. Everyone grieves differently. Sometimes there's just such a bond with another, be it a person or animal, that the missing continues long after their passing. I think when the time comes that I lose my current dog, my grief will continue until the day that I die because the bond is so special and so close. I have learned, from losing my husband 5 1/2 years ago, what you share here, that you learn to live with it as your companion. The grief changes form, from that initial intense pain, to quiet smiles at their memory and knowing how special it was that they were in your life.

Feel free to post here any time, sometimes it helps to create a tribute to that one that you're remembering. Thank you for sharing him with us.

[sunstreet]

Dear Tim,

I am not looking at you like you are crazy. I am looking at you with compassion, understanding and support. Thank you for sharing your beloved Nikomi with us and what a wonderful eternal Valentine gift. Others who look at you with judgment, pay them no mind, for they lack understanding.

I hope time proves to ease your pain and you'll think on Nikomi and feel warmth and comfort. The bond we share with our beloved animal companions is strong, unconditional and deep. It is normal for it take as much time as we need to reconcile their death.

Courage and Blessings, Carol Ann

[Maylissa]

Hi Tim,

Although I can't seem to find your original posts here, I fondly remember you, Nikomi & Chinook and am glad you're still hanging in there, such as it is. It was good to hear you share here again.

You say "a lot of time has passed" and that may be true in a lineal sense, but of course to the heart & soul, we know it's often but the blink of an eye.

I, too, think of my own furchildren every day (how could I not?) and like you, mainly keep my grief to myself, as it's gone within in many respects...too deeply on a spiritual level to be shared much, except for with a very select type of person. I come across this often in my own practice as well and as it happens for many of us, sadly, that may not be your significant other. I know that makes it even harder to bear, though. Yet as Marty here cautioned me on more than one occasion earlier on, one must use great discernment as to whom it feels "safe" to share with, and on what level.

Marty also once shared (loosely paraphrasing here) that there is often a time when our grief shifts to this 'quieter' place within us, a place where we do just hold it safely inside, unspoken, as it becomes more of a part of us and who we are. I think of it as too "sacred" and all-encompassing a place to 'sully' with mere words, and a place where it is to be cherished more within that without. As a card I got from one of the grief workshops I once took, puts this feeling so eloquently:

Grief...is only the beginning.

After a time it becomes something less sharp, but larger too, a more enduring thing called loss.

~Anna Quindlin

As enduring as our love for them...

Despite the pain, I hope the special bond you've now developed with Chinook will help you both through your shared loss and its effects. The road may be pretty lonely feeling, but as Robert Frost so wisely said, “I took the road less traveled by, and that has made all the difference.” Such is how I see our non-human relationships, the deep sense of loss that ensues when our beloved companions return to spirit, everything 'beyond the norm' that they teach us, and what we then bring into the world because of that - a road worth having traveled. After all, what would we have been or become without that bond?

I have a lilac bush that bids me both weep and smile bittersweetly each spring as it begins to bud out, ever reminding me of how much my boy loved to munch on its new leaves and rub its branches. It's old and really ought to be removed, but I simply can't. I also have a rose bush I keep potted which I bought in my girl's memory, residing in one of her favourite resting spots each summer. With each new pink blossom that appears, my heart cries out for her presence. Our yard and everything in it, old or new, and despite new feline visitors/friends who now frequent it, still belongs to "my kids," as it always was.

So as The Nikomi Tree abides, so does yours and Nikome's love for each other...pure and white as its blossoms and never, ever to be forgotten.