The Turtledoves’ Pain
In a few days it will be Rosh Hashanah. It reminds me of happy times when my beloved Peter was alive and I felt whole, alive, and vibrant. I feel this way during each holiday. A large part of me is missing and during holidays I feel it most acutely. Today I saw something on Facebook that made me cry in earnest. It made me sob. A couple had a pair of dogs which they had owned for a few years. I do not know the reason why, but they decided to put them in an animal shelter. It wasn’t bad enough that they abandoned them, they separated them as well. One of the people in the animal shelter decided to video the animal in their care. The poor dog was frightened, bewildered, and tears were pouring down its face. You could hear the woman’s voice trying to comfort the misfortunate dog, but the dog couldn’t comprehend this tragedy that had befallen it and why. Looking at that video, I associated with the pain of that poor creature.
My mind raced back to decades ago. Peter and I had gone to Los Angeles to visit the family. It was early on a Sunday morning of summer.
We were staying at my parents’ house in the Valley. We had risen early to take our morning walk. The weather was crisp and refreshing. We felt invigorated. We wound our way through the silent sleeping streets as we took our leisurely walk. The smell of the orange and lemon trees was heady. Their flowers were exotic to us New Yorkers. We were thoroughly enjoying our surroundings. We meandered haphazardly from one street to another. We eventually reached a main street, Sepulveda, if I am not mistaken. There was no traffic. The world was still asleep. The stores were closed. The sidewalks were deserted. As we walked we noticed a turtledove lying still on the pavement by a store window. By its side sat its mate, its little chest heaving quickly in distress. We stopped and looked at them in sad dismay. The bird had flown into the spotless window pane with such speed it seemed to have died. Peter knelt by it and touched its chest to see if there was a heartbeat. He felt none. I knelt beside him. We both willed him to be alive. The mate looked at us as if hoping we could do something. We looked back at it sadly. We felt the deep loss and pain the bird felt and wished a miracle would occur. No miracle did. I never forgot those two turtledoves, nor the throbbing pain of the mate that was left behind. I remember thinking it doesn’t matter which of God’s creatures we were, pain was pain and each and everyone of us experienced it equally.
We were either in our late forties or early fifties then . Years passed, and it came time for me to lose my soulmate. It was time for me to experience the searing excruciating pain of my loss. In those first dark foggy days I remembered the turtledoves and I silently apologized to the remaining mate in my mind. I thought I had experienced its pain. I had just experienced a shadow of the shadow of its pain. It is holiday time, the most difficult time to be alone. As I sat contemplating the loss of my beloved husband and missing him, I came across the story of the poor dogs who had as suddenly lost everyone they had loved, all those whom they cherished and whom they thought had cherished them. I then had to put things into perspective. Who said my pain is stronger than the pain of the poor abandoned dogs or the turtledove on the sidewalk of Los Angeles grieving and crying for its soulmate lying by its side? What makes mankind feel so superior to all the living things that our creator placed on this earth? God created all of us. He had instilled feelings in all of us. No one’s pain is lesser or greater than the others. Today I grieve the pain of the turtledove and the poor abandoned dogs and the pain I feel for being left behind without my soulmate, the love of my life.