Tinkie A.D.

A bridge between the hands and the heart…

This is from my bunspace blog

Sweet hearts, I am going to try very hard to not make anybun cry today. I feel so sad for all you that are so depressed here at bunspace these last days. I remember back quite a while ago, a time when all the sadness got to me as well, it seemed like every other day a precious bun was going to the bridge.  Well there are some weeks worse than other and they do add up, but its a small price to pay for all the wonderful memories and lovely stories. Its very hard to not get so attached to eachother buns, when we talk with each other often or when you see a bun’s face over and over again. We begin to feel like they are family after all they are inside our home day after day, even though its on a screen. I think it becomes very intimate, sharing so much in the voice of a humanized bunny but without all the nasty human qualities (usually anyway)Anyway I always felt like it was what good friends do, we stick together and help support eachother when stuff gets tough, with all that love moving around, eventually things get better and we’re all stronger for it and able to get back to sharing joy and laughs.  I think that is one of the reasons why bunspace is what it is and why is so much better than any other place we could be. I still feel like Trinket in alive inside my computer, like its another world I can come and visit to experience her again.

I forgot to mention something very moving to me. The day Trinket passed over a single red poppy bloomed in her garden, it took several more days for any others to bloom, but we had planted them way late and I didn’t expect them to bloom at all this year, I hoped the seeds would come up next year. Poppies are very special to me and of course a strong symbol of rememberance. I like to think of it as her way to reminding me to remember all that she was that was unexpected.

Trinket’s Aunti Sherri E’s funeral was quite something. She is jewish and I had never attended a jewish funeral so I quite taken with the beauty of the symbolism. I’d like to share a bit here that I learned just becasue I was so moved by the experience and of course by the life of this amazing man. I know its not bunny related and if this content makes anyone uncomfortable I am so sorry, its not my intention.  Her father was a Holocaust survivor that also spent time in two concentration camps, one of them being Auschwitz. He survived that to just be put in an internment camp for a year here in Northern Canada when he arrived just before the war ended. There he endured more of the same just without the Nazis. Eventually their camp was assisted by a tribe of Cree Indian which helped them to survive teaching them how to survive off the land. He became an honorary Cree as well. Once he obtained freedom through a generous sponsor he began a life of freedom here in Canada. It amazes me that someone could actaully survive such a life and this man kept his strong spirit and kindness intact. As a child he had a beautiful voice and was known for his singing. In the camps then in his early twenties at one point Hitler learned of his skill and found entertainment in forcing this man to sing sacred jewish songs over the ditches filled with bodies. I can only speculate that this was in attempts to break them spritually. With this history this man later became a Cantor, which is a singer of the sacred songs in temple, its a very honored postion in their temple. This man served as Cantor or over 30 years and taught over 500 young people their songs for their Bar and Bat Mitzfas. It was quite amazing to hear this man’s life story told in his tribute. I hope she doesn’t mind me sharing this experience, as it really her story not mine, but i wanted to honor what we took from it. I don’t think I’ll be the same person as I was the day before we went.

I knew this funeral would be a hard one, especially after loosing T so soon. Somehow I felt so lost not having her on our road trip so I did the best thing I could, I brought one of her Tshirts with me. I felt like I at least had a symbol of her close, it did comfort me. My friend held up very well, T would have been so proud of her. Its not easy saying good bye to a father, its even harder to say good bye to such an honored one.

Sorry about the history lesson, it just made me feel so hopeful and proud to know there are some of us people too that somehow learn to survive the most autrociaous acts of hatred and war and not only survive, Flourish! It made me think of Trinket through the whole thing. I know was only a rabbit, and cannot compare to such a thing as a Holocaust survivor, but I saw in her a strength I feel I personally lack and I hope by being witness to it in her I can some how take it into myself. I guess I mean to say, if we are open to reconizing miracles we can find them in the most unlikely of places. It was so strange how this all worked out, It was Trinket’s decline approaching the end that brought about our reunion, and for her only to survive a few days and then pass in time  that when my friend needed us the most we could be there. Life works in the most mysterious of ways and I cannot shake the feeling that she somehow knew.

Oh and you know I had to call Puds and Gracie from the road when were a few hours from home, i know they hang out in the maze very near the answering machine so they would both hear the message. Gracie is so funny, as everytime she hears her name her head will pop out of the maze with her ears all intent to see if she can hear the treat bag! LOL They did great out free all day, over 13 hours, not new carpet plucked and not too many poo balls out of place, I was so proud!!

Ok, maybe i can’t keep the promise of no tears. I also realized updating T’s profile that I somehow missed posting a beautiful video made for her by Sussy and her Mom in mid April. I’ve watched a few times over the last few days and I realize that it was really ment to be a memorial video not just  a regular tribute. The music is so lovely and it brought tears again but alot of comfort too knowing Trinket has been so known and loved. I feel the more people that have loved her the greater her impact and her gift to us has been. It makes all the loss and all the tears worth it, every last one. So here it is only months late in its showing, I hope you can watch it and just feel the love, not the tears,

This is from my bunspace blog

I wanted to let you guys know that me and Dave are coming along. There are less tears out of nowhere, but they still come when I read the comments and watch the videos or look at old photos. But even through the tears I still can’t bare to not see her, even if only in pictures. I’m only sleeping with the stuffed bunny now, I can get through the day without holding it so I guess that is progress.

The vet visit with the dog went well, she has an upper respiratory infection and needs antibiotics and we got her some estrogen for her incontinence and we’ve started Metacam for mild arthritis. Too bad there wasn’t a cure for the drooling and farting. Well with that huge releif we also got a tremendous surprise. There is a Bunspace Angel, a person with a heart so rich with love and kindness, who has paid for Trinket’s special Cremation!! This was such a beautiful and thoughtful gesture in doing this, and it kept our bill from going over the top of that freakout number that I have in my head, LOL. Thank YOU, Thank YOU so much, you have truly touched us. The girl who informed me is just so blown away with shock that people we have never met personally would do such a thing and anonomously at that!! She can hardly beleive that such a place as bunspace exists with such amazing and with caring people.

I also found a surprise in my email today as well, notification that another Bunspace Angel has gifted our family with a whole years VIB!!! OMG, Trinket will not fade away into the archives of bunspace!! Thank you so much for helping me to continue to share her with you!! I feel like she has been helped to be raised by this entire community of people and buns that all love her. If only our families and our closest “real world” friends could be so thoughtful and sensative to eachother!

Wembly and his Dad have made another song for my sweet Girl and I have been working on my own Tribute to Trinket all afternoon. The computer went nuts today and I thought I fried my hard drive when for awhile none of the programs would work or open properly, but this evening I finally have things working and have managed to upload to YOUtube. I hope you will be comforted too by what  I think are some of her greatest insites to life. My wonderful girl showed us all so much and somehow I was able to tap into what I think she’d want me to share with you. So its more like her Tribute to Life than my trubute to her.  Thank you so much for another beautiful song Mike and Wembly, I know I will be spending a lot of time watching it over and over again. Your beautiful music and soothing voice has helped bring me closer to  peace and acceptance. What an amazing gift of healing and love for Trinket, XO Laura

And if you haven’t cried enough, I also want to post a beautiful Tribute Video that Suzy Q and Mom did for Trinket as well. I cried and cried when I watched this the first time, but it was a good cry, theuraputic and cleansing so it was such a good thing. Thank you sweet hearts for such a lovely and sweet Tribute to “OUR” sweet Trinket.

So I won’t be around at all tomorrow. I just found out Trinket’s Aunti Sherri Ellen has lost her father just yesterday and the funeral is tomorrow, 3 1/2 hours away. She is unable to get there so Dave and I are taking her down so she can say her good byes and to try and be a support to her. I’m still a bit numb and scattered myself, but helping someone else will help me snap out of it!! Trinket would want me to be strong for her. Loosing a father is one of the hardest things in life, I remember, its still not been that long for me. So she joins me in orphanhood, a wounded child left to carry on alone in the world, no matter how old we get, its a challenging realization to be the last of your family line.

So don’t worry for me, I sucking it up and finding my way along a healing path. Surprisingly making this video of Trinket has really helped me a lot. Taking the time to contemplate her wisdom and strength has given me some freedom of the pain in the pit of my stomach, I think I can finally breath again tonight. I have been spending as much time outside in the dark under the stars as I can. I still cannot find her in the sky above me yet, but I know she is near. xo Laura

This is from my bunspace blog

Trinket’s Mamma here~ I hardly know where to begin again, I have been so overwhelmed with my emotions the last few days, but Bunspace has been such an enormous comfort to me and to Dave to see just how much love and compassion my sweet baby evokes from all of you. Even though reading through comments would often result in the break down of tears, I need to cry them out and when I read these beautiful and heartfelt messages, I feel like I am not crying alone. Thank you seems so inadequate, but there are the only words I can think of to say that I am grateful from the depts of my being for being so embraced by this wonderful community.

I though I was ready to let her go and even though she is gone, I am struggling with all my might to release my NEED to hold her, to kiss her and smell her sweet breath. Gracie and Puds, although I love them both dearly in the way one might love a Tazmanian Devil or an electric eel, I can take no comfort in holding them and kissing them. They have each other and they tolerate me to a point, but my soul craves, like the worst drug, that feeling of Trinket melting into me when I hold her. Each day as she declined further and further to the point of being a rag doll, I did not comprend the impact it would make on me physically, to physically ache without her so much, like I am missing an arm or some vital part of my own self. All I can see is all those way in which she is missing, but the worst is when I close my eyes. I try desperately to see her face and feel her when I take that time to go inward, and I cannot, I feel so utterly alone in those moments.

The first days was just brutal, both Dave and I breaking down over nothing, but at least taking that time to embrace the pain for the joy of having loved her so deeply. She was everything to us and every aspect of the day and everything we did evolved around HER. Even the simplist of task required planning and consideration of her, like going to the store. She was with me always, only apart for me for a total of a few hours of the last months. She was a rabbit in fur only and for such a long time I always thought of her as my companion, a true friend and partner. I know it seems bizzare, but I am sincere in that statement, for me that bond was real and deep. It was one sould being loving another. She was never like something that I possessed or owned, but was always a people who happened to look quite different and didn’t speak my language, but we learned to understand eachohter and of course love eachother.

That first night going to bed seemed impossible. Dave was exhausted so he fell asleep quickly but snored restlessly and each time I closed my eyes I fought to capture a glimps of her or a sense of her near me and I felt desperate to be without her, so empty. I can only equate it to like the Dementor’s Kiss in Harry Potter, I feel like I could never be cheerful again. Not like being happy would betray her, just that any happiness I had in me went with her when she died. For hours I laid there with the interanl dialouge rambling on in my mind, talking to her, telling her how much I loved her and how awestruck I was by her impact in my life. I beleive she can still know my thoughts, but it is I that is alone and disconnected now that the veil of life and death seperates us. Why do I beleive that? I don’t know really, its just something I have always held in my heart so until I know otherwise I will continue to talk to her when I feel weight of the lonliness smothering me.

Finally I got up and went to bunspace, even though I feel unable to yet correspond and speak with her voice as I once did, I read and reread all the beautiful words that you have written for her and for me. Finally i had my big break down cry and sobbed like I have never before, letting each tear be a tribute to my devoiton and love for her. I still hold my anguish in my throat and wrestle to keep it there even now as I type this. After the last tear, I went out to sit on the deck. It has been storming here the last few days. Since she died, its been raining and thundering and then short periods of calm again. I can’t help but think its like Mother Earth crying along with me for she is gone from this physical realm. The rain so much the tears we all shed. So in the wee hours of the night I went out in hopes to find a star, but it was foggy and so overcast not even the moon could be seen. So i sat in utter darnkness on rain sodden rocking chair and just laid back to look up into the sky. Even in that darkness I soon could see the world going on around me, so full of life and activity. The bats swooping through the night sky capturing the bugs and I soon could hear the loons out on the lake.  At first it seemed like silence, but it was the human world that was silenced so now the nautral world became awake and alive. I could hear the coyotees off in the distance yelping and crying while the trees over head would shudder in the breeze and rain down upon me. Again I felt like nature was sharing my grief, crying along with me. Some how sitting there in the dark shut off from the roar of humanity, I hoped I could hear a whipser of her in my mind, but I could not. In the past when I have lost loved ones, it was always those first days that the shocking realization of the disconnection was so apparent. In these days I wouldn’t be able conjure the images or visions of them, I’d be truly alone and without them. But once my anguish diminished it would be then I’d always receive a special dream or fleeting vison or sign of them to say that they were OK and then reconnection of the love. So I’ve come to beleive that hanging on to the pain is what keeps me disconnected from her, but for now I need to honor her and our love through the experience of that pain. I hope I will not linger here long or over indulge this need to internalize this pain to the deepest part of myself, but I have always believed that pain is the equal intesnity of the love, I guess I think of it as joy but with barbs.

Finally I was able to go to sleep at 4 am, thankfully last night was easier so I guess the exhaustion is finally taking over enough to force me to what I need to do, sleep. Gracie and Puds are somewhat at odds with the different energy in the house. That first night they were literally spooked at every little thing. When we came home from the vet we had showed them her shirt and her empty carrier, but i didn’t think they’d Need to see her body, but now I wonder if they are having trouble understanding her being gone. I do think the energy of our grief must be frightning for them to expereince and I hope as things calm down here and evolve into a new routine that they can once again relax and maybe then we’ll see how this changes them now that Gracie is the alpha. I keep telling them now that T is gone, it is their JOB to take care of the humans and that means some smooches! They both shake their heads in a mortified gesture, “NOOOOO” we’ll see as I am determined.

No other bunny could ever fill my heart the way Trinket does ( I still cannot say did) I know it would have been Trinket’s intention to pass the torch so to speak to Gracie and although they were rivals I think T always admired Gracies and will find her worthy of being the holder of the wisdom and the storyteller for our family. Trinket always intented that Tinkie Couture go on without her and I will although right now it pains me to even concieve of it. I will not blog as Trinket again unless if by some special message she gives me words to share with you. I think she may always have a few words for special friends when words of love and comfort are needed, but for right now I do not feel her words in me, I am isolated from her in my grief. She always amazed by her capacity to love. Anyone who held her and showed her respect, love and care, she would love back 100 fold, giving them kisses and all of her trust, even before she was really sick she was like that. I don’t think that is like a regular bunny at all, she truly is a special soul.

I am going to be taking a bit of a break from bunspace, I don’t know how long, I need to heal myself and being here is bitter sweet, its loving and amazing but at the same time its so hard becasue SHE IS still here in all of you. Your tribute to her by taking on her name in yours and her photos for your profiles has touched me like nothing else will ever again. You honor me and you honor her beyond anything I could ever declare as anything other than pure love, just like she was in life~ Thank YOU. Some dear sweet friend has honored us with another month of VIB and I am so grateful for you, Thank YOU! I knew the day would come soon when the membership would run out and all her photos and comments would disappear and it would be so much like her fading from me, the thought was quite painful, but for now every bit of money has to go to paying down the huge vet bill. Sady I couldn’t stay away even a day, Mato the old dog has to be seen today as she has developed a respitory infeciton and is coughing. It never ends so it seems I will be taking the time to come around and respond to each of you that have reached out with such kindness, please be patient with me, its going to take a while. I will be taking a systamatic approach to this with answering messages, nomie gifts, profile comments and then blog comments. Each and every word everyone of you have written has immense power and has brought comfort, please don’t ever think other wise. I hadn’t felt able to reply just yet, but I’m hoping soon I can begin to. I’ll still be lurking around somewhat but I need to withdraw from commenting as T had for  so long on her friend’s blogs.  I am sure I will struggle to feel Gracie’s unique voice. I’ve always thought of her as the wise old girl, who has come through homlessness and the trials of loosing all her children other than Puds. She is no stranger to fear and pain, but now has contentment and I hope soon that she will accept devotion and love as T did. I think it will take a while to find the words that I know are inside her.

As usual I can’t keep a blog short even though its not my intention to the be the run on queen. Thank you so much for helping me through this, its been harder than I thought. I hoped the relief would settle in my heart by now, but still a bit beyond my grasp just yet. I have found that if I hold this stuffie bun that has one of those heatable jell packs for a tummy, on my chest and shoulder where T would lay for hours, it comforts me on a physical level. It has the right amount of floppiness like her and the weight is sadly close too. No beating heart or sweet kisses, but for now I am clinging to this substitute. I feel like a little girl dragging this toy around with me, but for now its all I have while I learn to be in a world without her. I hope the rain will stop soon so I too can look to the sky and in contemplation of her rebirth and maybe catch of glimps of her in all her wonder. Carole thank you for that gift, that idea of her as a star to shine on forever, too far to behold her body, but still basking in her glorious light.

Much love, xo Laura