How we helped Anna (and me) cope

I don't know if it's because I wasn't present when my dog died almost two weeks ago, because of the shock of it, what Anna had to witness, how my niece and nephew reacted, or that I was extra-sensitive to Anna's grief needs...but as soon as I got home from San Diego almost two weeks ago, I was aware of a few things in my own grief over our dog.

Perhaps it was because I'd just sat through a session at the widowhood conference on How Infants Grieve, but one of the things forefront in my mind was that I wanted to do something...something physical, tangible, both for Anna...and for myself too.

The speaker at the session gave some wonderful suggestions on art projects or different things you can do with your small children to help them express their grief, yet still make it fun or meaningful. One thing she suggested was getting a box and letting the child paint and decorate it however they wanted, so that they can put all their special things about the person (or in our case this time, a pet) who died in it. At the time, I'd chalked it up as a possibly interesting idea for whenever it might be useful with Anna for her dad. Little did I know I'd be doing it very soon and for a different reason altogether....

So guess what we ended up doing the afternoon after I got home from San Diego? Yup, we wandered Target and Michael's (a crafts-store chain) for stuff to do our own Chase art projects.

One project was the decorated box. But the other one was a random choice on my own part, as we wandered around Target (retail therapy? definitely...) and hit the scrapbooking aisle.

Now, I'm not a scrapbook-y type of person. I admire the end results many times, but I simply don't have the desire, skill, or patience to do it. But in my unknowing need to do something for my daughter, my niece and nephew (who were also present on the ill-fated camping trip and were very upset--my nephew in particular--when Chase died), and for myself, a light bulb clicked on.

I have a lot of photos of Chase. I'm a photo whore. And I decided in the scrapbooking aisle at Target that I'd make little photo albums for the three kids, with pictures of Chase in it. (I got smart the next day and got stuff to make a more grownup version for myself too.)

It's a tossup who I was really doing these projects for: for Anna, my niece and nephew, or for me.

Wednesday of last week--the second full day Anna and I were home together after Chase died--Anna and I tackled her special Chase memory box. She was really interested and proactive about the project...something that surprised me a bit. (I guess she really needed to "do" something tangible too, just like I did.) Also, we're not a very big craft- or art-project household (that's why I send her to preschool, so she can do those things and I don't have to supervise, assist, or clean up), so I'm sure the added novelty helped.

And $40-some odd dollars later (like I said, we were an art-supply-poor house, before this trip), here's how it ended up:







Jewels, paint, stickers, pom-poms, ribbon (which just finally got glued on this morning, one week later), glittery letters...we went hog wild with Chase's box, and aside from Mommy's guidance/limitations based on price and pointing out things at the craft store that I knew Anna might like on it, everything on there was Anna's choice. And Mommy unbuttoned herself enough to let Anna do all of it on her own, told Anna that this was her project and that she could do it however she wanted, and only lent a helping hand when needed.

It was fun doing it together and watching as she demonstrated her artistic skills. The box still isn't 100 percent done--I still need to spray it with a sealer--but it's done enough. We put Chase's dog toys, two gnawed ends of his Nylabones, and--mercifully my parents thought to remove it before burying him--his collar with his dog tags in the box. When we get that far (meaning, when I finally 100 percent finish the thing), Anna can keep it in her room. For now it's still sitting on our dining room table, with the strewn paint bottles and miscellaneous art supplies (and all the other piled crap). But at least I can count the venture as a success: unlike several things I've gotten for Anna for Daddy (or intend to do), we actually finished this one...a first for me.

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My first, vague, grandiose visions for the photo albums for the kids, however, got downgraded after Anna and I finally finished the bulk of the work on Chase's box on Wednesday and Thursday. I was simply too tired and worn out to make the albums as fancy as I first thought, nor did I really know how to achieve the vision in my head. And besides, we were talking about $2 brag books for little kids, between the ages of almost 5 and 9; they weren't going to care about or appreciate a fancy scrapbook.

So in the end, the photo albums ended up being much simpler. And the kids loved them. My nephew, especially, kept thanking me for the album (he and his sister just got them yesterday) and kept telling me how much he liked it.

I intended to make Anna's more of a story book, with words and memories about our dog, but in the end, hers, too, ended up being very simple: just some pretty, fun, bright-colored paper for the front and back covers, and photos of Chase. I wrote an inscription on the inside of the front cover and a brief blurb about when we got him and when he left our lives. But that was it.

It's now sitting, propped open, on the bookshelf next to Anna's bed.

And since I'm at the end of my crafty rope, the supplies I got to do my photo album for Chase will be going back to Target, and I'll make a photo book on Blurb.com instead. (It'll turn out better that way and will be faster and easier. And besides, it'll be a good test run for whenever I finally get around to getting my blog printed out, like I first thought of doing a few months ago.)

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The other thing I did for Anna (and my niece and nephew) was spontaneous, purchased at the San Diego airport as I made my dazed way home about 15 hours after getting the news that Chase had died. I'd neglected to get any sort of souvenir for Anna earlier in my trip, and all the San Diego shirts, paraphernalia, etc., that were available at the small airport gift shops were beyond cheezy.

But this little guy caught my notice:



I bought him, a brainless magazine for the flight (which remained unread), and some mints and left the shop. But as I passed another (equally poorly stocked but larger) gift shop, I wandered in again. It dawned on me that perhaps G and B, my niece and nephew, might get some comfort from their own "stand-in pooch" too. So I bought two more dogs, one bigger to give to Anna instead.

But when I got in my parents' car at the Portland airport and gave Anna her new dog (which she has since dubbed "Tiara")--"for when you're extra-sad about Chase," I told her--

...I gave her the option of keeping the two smaller dogs too.

And like any smart kid (You mean I could have **3** toys instead of just 1??), she elected to keep all three and agreed with my suggestion that we could find other stuffed dogs to give my niece and nephew.

Target let us down with its stuffed animal and stuffed dog selection and we didn't have time to hit the mall before my appointment with my grief counselor on Tuesday afternoon, but Toys R Us surprised us with a jackpot for my niece and nephew: dogs that looked just like Chase (mostly).


In our rush to get in and out of the toy store in five minutes so I wasn't late for my appointment, I was rather jubilant at first that I'd found a stuffed animal that looked just like Chase did (except Chase didn't have the typical Border collie scruff anywhere)...but later, it hit me rather hard just how much the stuffed animal resembled Chase...and I was glad that Anna's token snugglie looked nothing like our real dog.

I gave the matching stuffed animals to my niece and nephew last Friday night, when they came for a sleepover. When I gave them the dogs, my nephew exclaimed (rather excitedly), "Is this because Chase died??"

Smart kid....

And whether it really means anything or not, Anna's been sleeping with her new dog Tiara every night since.

And I'm still glad that we don't have Chase's stuffed doppelganger in our house.

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And just for fun, here are some more photos of our memory-box-making venture....