Shadow Animals

Photo by Christian Svane.

Like many spiritual practices, mine involves the use of animal guides for mentorship, metaphor, and personal transformation. But that doesn’t just go for the animals whose spirit I want to emulate or learn from. It also involves the ones that create a moment of true and absolute fear in me. Everyone has something that terrifies them. I am no exception. In order to live fully in myself in this space, in this lifetime, I try to face my fears, albeit one at a time.

My biggest terror is the centipede. My gut response to them is: nothing with that many legs should be allowed to live! It’s primal and irrational. It involves banging on drywall with hammers trying to smash them. I spent my childhood in a home with a dirt-floor basement and we would get centipedes in the house during the summer. I have always been terrified of them. I have woken up with them crawling on my bare flesh and I have almost ruined carpets trying to drown them. Not my finest moments.

And still, that fear is something I usually keep secret because I have always been surrounded by people who think it’s funny to taunt someone with the things that scare them. That is so not the same thing as helping someone face their fears. I once played a practical joke on my suitemates in college with a realistic-looking spider pin I had been given as a gift, because I thought it was so well done. I didn’t know my one friend was as afraid of them as I was of creepy-ninja-swift-crawlers. I have always felt bad about scaring her. She forgave me because I hadn’t known, but I have not played a scary practical joke since… because what if someone thought that was funny to do to me? I force myself to be vulnerable and reveal my cracks, because I am not perfect. That’s the point. I am human and I am a work in progress, and it is often our flaws that are most telling about where those places of fear live within us.

A few years ago, I began to work with what I had dubbed my Shadow Animal. My fear place. What was it about the centipede that elicited such whimpers from me? That drove me onto furniture in a heaving pile of panic? I wanted to know. I didn’t want such a small creature to have so much power over me.

I recommend you look to your places of fear and dive into the darkness. It’s not for everyone, but to stand in that moment, to face the darkness, to step into it... no matter what happens in between that moment and its end, when you emerge you realize that you survived. And maybe it was terrifying. And maybe you really felt that terror. But it passed through you. It didn’t remain. You survived. Which may sound dramatic when we’re talking about centipedes. But we’re not talking specifically about centipedes- we’re talking about fear.

My fear animal became a mirror to me. What is it about the centipede that scares me so? It runs swiftly, like a whisper. You almost can’t see it. They fill me with that swarming sensation, like a tsunami wave coming rapidly and engulfing everything… thousands of tiny legs skittering over flesh in a hot summer. Sweat beads up a little on my skin at the memory of it. But since my youth I have lain beneath a wool blanket in the scorching sun in meditation so deep I did not flinch at the feeling of insects crawling across my skin. I have worked through that fear. So what is it?

They move so fast… The secret beneath the mystery for me lies in the movement, feathers racing across stone. They are just walking, just moving through their world, and I see them, in my irrational brain, lunging and coming straight for me like a predator. They live in a faster world, their lifetime crunched into five years. They breathe at a faster pace than we do, in the same way that our tree friends, who breathe in seasons, breathe slower than we do. To our tree friends, we are constantly in motion and seldom still.

So it’s the pace of the small arthropod that unsettles me and pokes my scary button. It didn’t take me long to hazard a guess as to why. I never dive into anything. I never jump head first without vetting the endeavor. It’s not that I won’t say yes, but I need to weigh it first. Do I have the energy? Do I have the time? Do I have the skills? Do I have the desire? I think my true fear place is a question or situation that involves an immediate and snap decision, and that I will have no answer for, that I will feel frozen in indecision. Cue skittering centipedes.

Knowing that suddenly made the idea of the centipede a little less scary in my head. But in person? Could I face the panic? I didn’t know, but I had the chance to test the theory recently. My friends and I were cleaning out an old woodpile, scraping off the rotting bark and restacking the logs to dry. Beneath the bark were white centipedes with red markings on their heads, skittering madly up the wood when exposed. I totally yelped. I totally dropped the log. I totally asked for someone else to get rid of them. I totally closed my eyes hoping they would disappear while I wasn’t looking.

But I didn’t run away. I didn’t switch jobs. I pulled up my work gloves and took a very deep breath. I prepared myself that there were going to be centipedes. This is where they lived. I was going to see them. I had to accept it. I peeled the bark up with my (covered) fingers and used the tip of a knife to pry the centipedes off, dropping them into the rot litter below. I didn’t go terribly fast, but I didn’t stop. I made some horrified faces, but I kept going. Little by little, the white-numbing fear ebbed away, a little less each time I uncovered more.

Sometimes, the only way out is through, and not being able to push into these fear places are why we feel stuck, like we’re standing still. They are still my shadow animal. I still don’t like them, or want them in my house. But I’d like to think the next time I see one on my wall, I might not jump quite so high.

Bindrunes for Transformation

When someone I love dies, I say silent prayers that they be free from pain and the tethers to their physical body. I wish that their spirit and soul- for I have seen all the proof I need to believe they exist as entities of their own- transition into whatever it is that comes next for us, as effortlessly as possible. I wish their souls to be at peace so they do not walk in the waking world. In the moment of loss, I try to be selfless.

How do we grieve? How can we wish our loved ones peace in the wake of their loss? How do we say goodbye in a meaningful manner? I’m the kind of person who needs something tangible. I want to put my hands on the dead body and feel that lack of life. I need to feel that their spirit has moved on. I need that in order to convince my brain there is a reason for the physical emptiness that will come. I like to be hands on. It’s not for everyone.

            In the last three years we have had to put two dying cats to sleep, both of whom were young enough that the moment left us unprepared. We stepped up and did what needed to be done, but afterwards the grief left me wanting for more, for a ritual to help me process through the transformation as well.

I like symbolism and the magical intention of it works for me. I use runes in a lot of my healing work, not for divinatory purposes, but for the magical focus of their linguistic meaning, and the emotional translation. I understand the energetic connection between their forms, how one shapeshifts into another, and their origin stories.

I took that knowledge into the woods. Both cats were cremated, the bodies that had betrayed them burned to ash. To heal and soothe my heart, I did my ritual with water. I used the beorc rune, the symbol of the birch tree, of growth and new beginnings. I mirrored it on itself so it became a bindrune, and I took note of the other runes in the image revealing themselves to me. I drew my bindrune for peaceful passage on a piece of birch bark. I threw the birch bark into the water and I let myself cry for my loss.

On a second piece of bark, I broke the top staves off the bindrune and spread them, like wings unfurling. I drew that onto a piece of sycamore bark. Sycamore sheds it’s bark by growing more wood rings beneath it, stretching and splitting it until it sloughs off. I threw that one into the water and simply quieted my heart while it was swept downstream. I waited until I couldn’t see it anymore.

I drew a third bindrune on another piece of sycamore bark. I broke the bottom staves and spread them, again, like wings unfurling. I thought of all the wonderful and weird memories I had of Luna and Bella, and how they both filled my life, in similar and different ways. I let that joy fill me, and I set the bark adrift in the water.

I drew one last picture on another piece of birch. I drew a more fluid interpretation of the bindrune with the staves broken. I drew a butterfly. I said a prayer of hope for Luna’s transformation, for Bella’s transformation. I knew my grief would remain for a while, yet, I accepted the necessity of both passages as I laid the white bark in the water.

It didn’t make the hurt go away faster. But it was a ritual that was meaningful for me. To open the way for dealing with my sadness, it allowed me to accept that we did what we could for Luna, and for Bella. It helped me accept that, as unfair as it seems, both of their times were meant to be shorter on this earth, and that we gave them both good and full lives while they were with us. It reminded me of the love, and because of how much I loved them, it’s important to share that love and carry it on into the world.

Author’s note: In the photos for this post, all the pictures are on birch bark. I do not take photos while I am doing my rituals and did not have any sycamore bark at home to use.

A Death at Gettysburg, 150 Years Later

One-hundred and fifty years ago today, my 2x-Great Uncle George Harrison Whitcher was killed in battle on Cemetery Hill at Gettysburg, Pa at the age of 21 years. He was born and raised in Lockport, NY, to Bailey Harrison Whitcher and Ordelia DeLozier. Around 1856, George moved to and took up residence in Michigan. My 2x Great-Grandma Emma was 10 years old when he left New York.

George Whitcher enlisted as a volunteer at Port Huron on Aug 6, 1861 at age 19. He again enlisted as a Private in Company A of the Michigan Seventh Volunteer Infantry on August 22, 1861 at Monroe, under the command of Captain Thomas H. Hunt of Port Huron. The Seventh left Michigan on September 5, 1861. George was in Company A with Charles Thompson from Port Huron, also 19 at his enlistment. Charles and Emma, my ancestress, exchanged letters in 1862, inferring that Charles and George were the best of companions. They were best friends. Charles was wounded but survived the war.

The Michigan Seventh saw engagement at Ball’s Bluff, VA on October 21, 1861. In April and May of 1862 they engaged at Yorktown, West Point, and Fair Oaks. In June and July they engaged at Peach Orchard, Savage Station, White Oak Swamp, Glendale, Malvern Hill, and Manasses. The Seventh was commended for its “steadiness under fire and for its gallantry in action and its stubborn resistance when confronting the enemy.” In August and September they engaged at the 2nd Bull Run, South Mountain in Maryland, and Antietam on September 17, the bloodiest day of battle in the Civil War, where the infantry’s numbers were cut in half.

In December they fought at Fredericksburg, Virginia before the winter set in, where they volunteered to cross the Rappahannock River in pontoon boats against enemy fire, to drive Confederate sharpshooters from their hiding places, so that Union engineers could continue laying out the pontoon bridge for crossing. It is said that the Seventh rode so quickly across the water, their boats suffered minimal losses. They acted as provost-guard at Falmouth until the spring, when they saw battle at Chancellorsville and Haymarket, before advancing to Gettysburg, Pennsylvania. There they joined the Army of the Potomac’s Pennsylvania Campaign. Between June 27 and 29, they marched 73 miles, each soldier carrying a rifle, bayonet, cartridge-box, belts, blanket, haversack, and canteen. Upon their arrival, they were placed in the front of battle at Cemetery Ridge, where they remained for the duration.

The Michigan Seventh took 14 officers and 151 men into battle. In the two days of engagement with the enemy, they lost 21 men and 44 were wounded. My ancestor was among the slain. The hardest of bullets fell around two in the afternoon on July 3, and all guns were silent by 6 o’clock that evening. Between the 75,000 Confederate soldiers and the 83,000 Union soldiers, there were 50,000 casualties, more in three days than all of the eight years of the Revolutionary War.

Bodies of the dead on the battlefield.

Across the battlefield were 7,000 dead men and 3,000 dead horses; approximately 6 million pounds of dead flesh broiling beneath a summer sun. It was left to the population of 2,400 in Gettysburg to dispose of the carnage and care for the wounded. The smell of death cloyed the air for three months, until the first frost set in. And still, when Abraham Lincoln journeyed to Pennsylvania to dedicate the new Soldier’s National Cemetery in November, four and a half months later, stacks of coffins awaiting re-burial in the new cemetery sat nearby.

What must it have been like for the families with no answers? With no dead to bury? For the families whose loved ones blistered in the sun before an identification could be made?

The Seventh Michigan Infantry is honored by an 8’ tall monument at Gettysburg, installed in 1888. The Westerly blue granite monument, with a bronze relief, was sculpted by Joseph Pasetti, and dedicated on June 12, 1889. The marker stands where the Seventh held their position on July 2nd and 3rd in Gettysburg. It stands in the field where my ancestral Uncle fell. It sits east of Hancock Avenue and just south of the copse of trees on Cemetery Ridge.

On the front, it is dedicated to the Seventh Michigan Infantry, 3rd Brigade, 2nd Division 2nd Corps. On the back, a part of the monument states: “Regiment held this position during the engagement of July 2nd & 3rd. 1863. On the evening of the 2nd charged front to the left, meeting and aiding in driving back the enemy. On the 3rd assisted in repulsing Pickett’s Charge, changing front to the right and assaulting the advancing force in flank. Present for duty 14 officers, 151 men. Total 165. Casualties, 2 officers, 19 men killed; 3 officers, 41 men wounded. Total 65.”

There is no grave for my ancestor at Gettysburg. According to his dear friend Charles Thompson, he was not listed among the men buried in the Michigan plot there. There is no grave for him in Michigan, where he had settled for 10 years before joining the volunteers. There is no grave for him in Lockport, as there was no body for the family to mourn or bury.

The Whitcher family spent a large amount of time and money in a vain search for his body, or any trace of it, to no avail. I have seen the photos taken of the bodies strewn about the field. I have down the embalming history about how even the families who could afford to reclaim their dead for travel back home had tough luck identifying them on the battlefields. And still, some embalmers were taking unclaimed bodies for the purpose of posting them outside of their tents and stores as evidence of their work- a thing to which the surviving soldiers railed against at the time. But the thought remains that to a family who had the money to search but could find no body, whose friend was on-site to look for him, possibly encumbered by his own wounds… perhaps the earth claimed it faster under the blazing sun. Perhaps he became a prop in an indecent man’s business.

Sadness would follow the family when Orville Bailey Whitcher, George’s brother, died the next summer in battle in Virginia. Their father Bailey Harrison Whitcher died the following summer. George’s mother, Ordelia, died in 1888, just one year before Daniel Raymond Whitcher, her eldest son, received a letter from Charles Thompson, George’s old comrade. Twenty-seven years after the battle at Gettysburg, the late Lt. Col. Charles Thompson returned to the site- something he had perhaps done as an annual pilgrimage. There, he found “a small metallic plate battered and covered with hard earth, in which was stenciled the dead soldier’s name:”

George H. Whitcher

CO A, 7^th MICH., V.

It had been buried for nearly 24 years and had been dug up from the field three years earlier. He sent the identifying metal to the family and inquired as to whether or not George’s body had been recovered and buried elsewhere, as his name was not among the list of the dead. So many years later, the story made the local paper, and while no body was ever brought home, it was more closure than many families received.

George was on the ridge above Little Round Top, along the vertical line of blue, where the Union soldiers were stationed.

Related Posts:

The story of Emma's letters to Charles Thompson.

The story of the Whitcher family's life in a small town along the Erie Canal.

The story of Peter Lozier, George's Grandfather, a P.O.W. in Tripoli. 

More on Midwifing Death

When babies are born into the world, expected, they are greeted with great fanfare. There are many people supporting them- doctors and nurses, doulas and midwives, expectant parents and grandparents. Everyone is rooting for them and calling them into the world. Mothers push them out as others coax and pray the newborn into the world. And someone is there with hands to catch them.

This is how we begin. No matter what detour life takes after that first breath, in that last moment we are willed and wanted into the world. That is how we begin. But how do we end? In what manner do we leave the world? There is a growing movement of people who are interested in that very question. There have always been midwives to help babies into the world. What about midwives that help people out of the world?

This is not a new concept. In fact, I think in a world bereft of funeral directors religious leaders, our instinctive bodies would intuitively lead us to tend to the dead and dying. We would see the shadow of death coming, and rather than open the door to fear or denial, we would let time stand still to savor those last days. We would sit vigil and ward off the loneliness in our loved one’s last moments. We would save our grief for when breath had ceased and we would walk with our companions as far as possible- until their journey ends. 

Think about funerals and the purposes they serve. One is to honor the deceased’s life and tend to the disposition of their physical body according to their spiritual or religious beliefs. The other is a model that hopefully facilitates an outlet for the grief of those left behind. They are about the dead, but cannot be for the dead. In cases where there is any measure of forewarning to death’s approach, those last moments could be about what the dying person wanted, or what the dying person needed. And a person who acted as midwife could help oversee that.

As a disclaimer, I’m not talking about assisted suicide, though our cultural views on that would likely change if the way we handled and viewed death did. Most people who are supportive of assisted suicide, are not talking about doctors killing people who decide to die even though they’re healthy. If a person knows they are facing death, and the doctors cannot help them anymore without extreme or invasive measures, why shouldn’t they get to decide how their life will end? Why shouldn’t the dying get to decide what their last moments are like? When their last breath comes?

We welcome newborns into the world. Why shouldn’t we also celebrate the endings, and bid our beloveds a bon voyage? Perhaps that is already happening, beyond our perception and vision? Maybe there are spirits on the other side of this world, known and unknown, encouraging and rooting the dying on, waiting for them as they cross over. I know that while we sat at my Grandpa’s bedside and told him it was all right to let go, my Grandma’s spirit filled the room in the instant that his heart stopped beating. I believe she came to claim him. For my Grandpa, my family and I acted as midwives to him, keeping him company, telling him whatever he needed was okay. Telling him how much we loved him. Not everyone, in that moment of their own grieving, can be that person to the dying. And that’s all right.

Someone who acts as a midwife would help ease the disconnection of the spirit from the dying body. Then, when the person was truly ready to open that door, and embrace the end that comes to us all, they would be free to do so. I don’t have a lot of experience with shepherding living beings to the other side, but I have some hard ones. I sat in the hospital room with my Grandfather when he passed. And he waited until the moment we were turned away to die. I held the faces of both of my beloved pets at the moment of their death. I hold sacred the mystery and truths of their last moments.

When Bella began to struggle, I swallowed my tears and told her it was okay if she was ready to go. Even while we were crying in disbelief, we told her we would be okay, that we would take care of each other. We were her family and acted as her midwives into whatever was to come next. We didn’t know what that was, we just knew her time here was done.

It was the enormity of our love that moved us to let go of our feelings and do what must be done for her. Her peace was greater and more sacred to us than our grief. We felt the spiritual calling to keep her calm and at peace and ease her transition so her last moments would not be fraught with pain. That’s part of what it means to be a midwife, I think. We saw the need and we answered it.

We saw the shadow of death. I know the minute I saw it in each of the three cases I have experienced. There’s a quality of it that some people can see. And we can open that door. It takes faith and trust. And should you ever find yourself staring into the face of death, you will know it. And you will be able to let your loved one go, with all the love and grief in your heart, and you will be able to whisper to them to go. That it’s okay.

We’ll do it, when the need arises, because we have it in us to meet the challenge of it. We’ll do it, not because it’s easy, but because it’s hard. Because these passages are what define us, and because love should be the legacy we leave behind. Love and kindness should be the way we both come into and out of the world.

Grieving

(But) this love will carry. This love will carry me.

I know this love will carry me.

~ Dougie McLean

This chorus has been the ticker tape thread running through my heart this last week. It buoyed me through the days of tripping into unknown routines that Bella had been a part of. It held me every time we started games we’d play with her, waiting for her to say her line… cue the crickets and silence. Then the remembering that she was gone. Is gone.

In my grief, I say a prayer for every parent, and every ancestor of mine, who has ever lived to see the death of a child. I cannot imagine that pain and I intend no comparison. But I feel like I have a small window of insight into that kind of loss. I have no human children, but ten years ago we brought home a sick, dying kitten...

You take a living being in. You raise them. You care for them. You watch them explore the world and you hold your breath when they take their first steps. Their first wounds. Their first joys. And you become a family. Then, one day… they are gone? What words can describe such loss?

I am the kind of woman who sees life as life. A part of my family is missing. Again. But the difference is tangible this time. Both of the young cats died before their elder, who spends most every minute sleeping on a soft cushion. Now, the house is still. Disquieted. There used to be a foundational layer of energy in this home, made up of small feet padding around and about, patrolling and getting into mischief.

That is what death took from our house, literally pulling the energy-rug out from under us. Well-worn pathways feel abandoned. Haunted. Gone are the backdrop noises that made me wonder things like, where did she just jump down from? Already, I can see the need for new life in this house, but it will wait.

I spent most of the week in a weird fog. I was numb. The days seemed unchanged to me and I was aware enough to note that the thought was odd, since our world has changed. I would stumble into the list of things-that-will-never-happen-again and would cry for a moment. And then move on. I was thinking that I was doing much better than when Luna died, which unnerved me. Because deep down inside my heart, I could feel the small child holding back tears with her hands across her ears singing, “la la la la!”

I’ve been in denial. It’s normal. I just didn’t think it would be so easy to do when the physical evidence of her death surrounds me.

This morning, the Veterinary Hospital called us to let us know that Bella’s ashes were there for us to pick up. I suddenly felt deadened, like weights had just been piled on top of me. And I started to feel the grief climbing up through my belly and my throat for my mouth. We were bringing Bella home. We were bringing what remained of Bella home. It was very real. It is very real.

There’s no timetable for grieving. It’s different for everyone. As routines change and time passes, the daily pangs ebb and healing occurs. We move forward because it’s in our nature. I let myself trust that it will come. Bella’s ashes are home now, awaiting transformation for when my heart is softened and not so raw.

Listen to Dougie McLean sing This Love Will Carry from 2010.

Midwifing Death. Goodbye Bella.

Bella Marie, April 1, 2002 - June 11, 2013

The death of our middle cat, Luna, was one of the major catalysts that prompted me to start this blog and share my work. I realized that yesterday, when I went back into the archives to see what I’d written about then. Only I hadn’t. This is the first time I have tried to write from a place of fresh grief.

Today, we had to put another little family member down. It was unexpected and a quick turn. Our hearts are broken for the loss of our youngest cat. Like many people, we found ourselves in the position of having to choose whether or not we could put an end to Bella’s suffering, whether or not we could decide to open the door for death.

It wasn’t easy and it took us a day of going back and forth to come to an agreement. All the while, our darling girl faded more and more, and we could see it. Still, it was hard to make that choice. It’s supposed to be. We shouldn’t ever be able to choose to end a life easily. It was a sacred choice. A human choice. A necessary choice. Bella was sick. She was only going to get sicker. It was important to us that we be able to make that choice, before she was in distress. We waited too long with Luna and her final moments were not peaceful.

This kind of grief is feral. It threatens to loosen itself at every moment of habit that you realize is suddenly altered-for-life because of the absence of a loved one. This was the second time we have had to make the choice to end a life. When we took Luna to the vet, we thought we were taking her in to get better, only to discover there was only one option left. This time, we hoped the vet would tell us there was some miracle way that Bella could be okay… but we understood we were taking her to the vet to be put to sleep. Put down. Killed. Nothing sounds right, even though it was the right choice. It was not the choice we wanted to make. It was not a choice easily made. But we had learned from the first one.

While waiting for our appointment, we put on Bella’s favorite music, Yo-Yo Ma playing Bach on the Cello. We followed her around the house and cooed over her. We sang her every silly song we had ever made up for her. We snuggled with her. We brushed her with her favorite soft-bristled brush. We told her how much we loved her, over and over.

We held her head and promised her some peace as she died. I told her she was the best girl ever. Just like I did with Luna. And I meant it again. She was our baby. To be able to stand in that space with her… it’s a strength I didn’t know I had. Luna was gasping for air and it was an easy choice in the moment. This one was harder, maybe, because that other loss is still so painful. If you want to know what your places of fear are, if you want to know what you’re made of, the first time you sit a death bed vigil, you will.

She died in seconds, maybe less. I wrapped her in the purple blanket we bought her when she was a kitten and held her to my chest. My heart needed to feel that her heart was no longer beating. I needed to feel the rhythm-less weight of her in my arms before I could leave her body behind me, in the room.

One of the last photos I took of her.

It has only been a few hours and my head is dizzy from the interlocking layers of memory, from the feeling of where the spirit world met this physical world at the moment of her death. I can look in the kitchen and see Bella where she sat just this morning, and I know that moment can never happen again. Won’t ever. But both exist for me simultaneously in this grief. She is here and she is not here. To have had such a friend that my soul is so deeply grieved will be a blessing in the days to come, I am sure.

A Letter to Bella (April 1, 2002 – June 11, 2013), from your Momma

You were the nameless one. When we adopted Zami, they were calling her Beth, and Luna was named Sandy. But you were a blank slate in a cage in a mall pet store. And we wouldn’t take you home unless we could feel out your name the way we had found theirs. You were turd-colored in your young tortoiseshell mottling. You were so sick, they were considering putting you to sleep. So, of course, we brought you home.

In plumper days.

            Your first nickname was Brutus, because of the way you slapped your feet on the floor. We could hear you coming from three rooms away. You were more bear than cat at first, very roly poly and surprisingly ungraceful. Do you remember when you were small enough to sleep across the top of my head? How many times did I wake to find you gently kneading my eyelids?

You were a good kitten. I love that you spent your formative years living under the bed, or burrowing caves into folded up blankets. I loved the unpleasant cry that we came to learn was your sweet sound, and the way I would sigh and say, “Ah, the dulcet tones of Bella.” I loved making up songs to sing to you to coax you out of your persistent skittishness. I still think “catnip-stuffed purple moo-cow” is the best lyric I ever wrote.

Bella was fluent in Squirrel and learning Cricket.

I miss the jumpiness of the days before we knew how bad your eyesight was. I miss the way you would armadillo-jump into the air at any sudden movement around you. No wonder you spent so much time under the bed. And if anything about a room changed, like a purse was moved, or shoes were where no shoes had been before, it took you forever to slow-stalk your way in, while you pieced together what was different. While I loved the fat bear-cat who would come out at night and sit in my lap, I did love you best when you stopped living under the bed, when you stopped living like a shadow in our lives.

We shall not soon forget your exploits with your Arch-Nemesis, the Evil Yellow Vacuum Cleaner and his sidekick, the Dreaded Swiffer. Who will defend the dust bunny tribes, now? You evolved over the years from Brutus to Peanut (in the very last moment, I called you Nutter). I can’t imagine my life without you.

I will miss your company, and the lengthy conversations we used to have. I loved that you were a talker. I will miss understanding every nuance of sound you made. I will miss you pawing me in the face in the morning so that I would let you under the covers. I will miss the bullying moments when you would slap my knee with your paw and demand lap, right now, mama, damnit! I will miss giving into you. It was an important lesson for me. You were right, by the way. Ten minutes of lap time a day was not a lot to ask for.

            Little girl, who will be our great Moth Hunter now?

Thank you for being part of our family. Thank you for telling us you were sick. Thank you for trusting us enough to do what was best for you. I realized you had not left the door of the house since you were spayed ten years ago. I am glad you got to see the mountains and green fields before you left us. Before Luna came to greet you. I know you weren’t ready to leave us, but you needed to not be in pain. It’s okay that you wanted out of your body more than you wanted to stay. We understand.

You really were the best girl ever, Bella-bear. I love you. I will miss you forever, and remember you always.

Cave-Bella has left the building. Good night and sweet dreams little girl.

A P.O.W. from Tripoli

This week, I am honoring my ancestor Peter De Lozier, my 4x Great-Grandfather in my father’s maternal line. Peter De Lozier, also written as Delozier and DeLozier and d’Lozier, was the son of Oliver DeLozier and Eleanor Erkells, the grandson of Peter “Petrus” Lozier and Fytje “Sophia” Zabriskie, the great-grandson of Nicholas “Claes” LaSueur, the great-great-grandson of Francois Le Sueur, a civil engineer from France who immigrated to New Amsterdam, and Jannatje Hildebrand Pietersen.

Peter was born in Clinton, Connecticut in 1786. He was a marine, serving aboard the U.S.S. Philadelphia when it ran aground in Tripoli harbor during the First Barbary War in October of 1803. The Americans found it impossible to keep the ship afloat while under fire. The crew, along with their captain, William Bainbridge, were all taken and held as hostages. The U.S.S. Philadelphia was anchored in the harbor as a gun battery for the Tripoli.

According to a letter from Captain Bainbridge to the Secretary of the Navy, dated the first of November, the crew made every attempt to keep the boat afloat by offloading the stores of guns and water but the ship was still too heavy. They cut the mast but that was of no help as well. After four hours of fire from the Tripoli gun boats, and seeing their own reinforcements approaching, the Captain and Officers lowered their ship’s colors and submitted to the enemy. Just after sunset, the ship was taken and the men were carried to shore after dark.

In his letter he states that he and the Officers, and their attendants, were quartered within the American Consular House and confined there during their imprisonment. Bainbridge expresses upset over the confinement inside the walls of the house, despite having given their word, their “parole of honor.” He says, “the remainder of the Crew will be supported by this Regency.” Peter DeLozier was one of those men. He was 16 years old. The men were held in the dungeons of an old castle fort in Tripoli, where they were fed 15 ounces of bread a day.

On the night of February 16, 1804, a small contingent of Marines got into the harbor and set fire to the U.S.S. Philadelphia so that the enemy could not use her against them. My ancestor was still being held hostage. On July 14, 1804, an attempt was made to destroy the enemy fleet, but the ship to be used was destroyed before it achieved it’s goal, with a total loss of the Captain and the crew. And still, the crew was held hostage.

In April and May of 1805, Ex-Consul William Eaton, a General, and U.S. Marine First Lieutenant Presley O’Bannon led a force of 8 Marines and 500 mercenaries, made up of Greeks from Crete, Arabs, and Berbers, on a desert march from Alexandria, Egypt to Derna, in Tripoli. They captured the city and, for the first time, the U.S. flag was raised in a foreign land. This move led Yusuf Karamanli to sign a treaty to end hostilities.

According to Article 2 of the Treaty, the Bashaw of Tripoli agreed to return the Americans in his care to America as long as America agreed to return the captured subjects of the Bashaw to Tripoli. Tripoli held “Three Hundred Persons, more or less” and America held “One Hundred more or less” Tripolino Subjects, The Bashaw also required $60,000 in payment for the difference in numbers, which President Jefferson agreed to pay on June 10, 1805.

In this Treaty, the Jefferson administrative made a clear line between paying tribute as opposed to paying ransom. Some felt that buying sailors out of slavery was a fair way to bring end to a war, but General Eaton and others believed that the capture of Derna should have been used as a bargaining chip to obtain their release without payment.

At his release, my 4x Great-Grandfather Peter had been held in captivity for 30 months. Most of the captives had been used for hard labor in extremely foul conditions, exposing them to both vermin and disease. He was about 18 when he returned home in 1805.

He married Lucy Raymond four years later. The next year, their only child, Ordelia, was born in Whitestone, New York. By 1820, Peter De Lozier is listed as owning a cabinet-making business on Richmond Avenue in Lockport, New York.

From what we can gather, sometime between 1820 and 1825, at the age of 33, Peter De Lozier abandoned his family in Lockport and returned to life at sea. In 1825, Ordelia married Bailey Harrison Whitcher, her father’s apprentice in the cabinet-making business; it is likely that Ordelia married Bailey in order to keep the family business going as she was only 15. It’s also possible that Peter saw a connection between his apprentice and daughter and left feeling the family would be taken care of. And possible still that the engagement was already determined. The truth may never be known.

I don’t know what it would have been like to be a prisoner of war at such a young age, for so long, and then try to readjust to a normal life. We know enough about post traumatic stress disorder now that I can imagine the difficulty of surrendering to the expectations of a society that did not have to experience what you did. I don’t blame him, as some descendants might, for the darkness of what the family might have suffered by his absence. Sometimes life deals us hard cards and we do the best we can.

 Peter De Lozier died July 30, 1849 of cholera in Connecticut, where he was listed as a mason worker. He was 63. His wife Lucy lived with her daughter and son-in-law in Lockport, New York until her death in 1874.