love that book - how love (and books) help us heal after loss

My son and I got to church early on Sunday because his sister was practicing with the choir.  He and I went to our usual hang out spot - the children's library.  He pointed to a book on the shelf, Love That Dog, by Sharon Creech http://www.sharoncreech.com/books/love-that-dog. 

"I heard that's good," he said.  I sat down and started to read.  Here's the first page:  

Sept. 13

I don't want to
because boys 
don't write poetry.

Girls do.

The short novel is a series of journal/poems written to the boy's teacher.  All the entries are free verse poems.  The boy, Jack, is fighting two battles at the beginning of the book - he doesn't want to write poetry and he definitely doesn't want to write poetry about his dog who died.

I know, there are people reading this who stopped reading the blog right now because they can't even bear to think about a book about a boy whose dog died.  But I'm here to tell you, it isn't maudlin, depressing or sappy.  It is bittersweet, but more sweet than bitter. I fell in love with this book. And in fact, it was so enchanting that I brought Love That Dog straight into the church service with me and finished it all right there, tears streaming down my face and snot coming out of my nose (as I tried to discreetly wipe it with my sleeve). 

Here's what I love about the book and why I think anyone who has ever lost someone - a person or an animal - would find it meaningful and healing:

It's okay to not want to think about what we've lost.  Thinking about what we've lost is heartbreaking and overwhelming for a while, so our brains protect us by not letting us understand it all at one time.  It can be especially hard to think about the last days of someone's life if you were taking care of them when they were sick, if you felt responsible for their comfort, if you witnessed suffering.  We really want to protect ourselves from thinking about these terrible times.

Eventually, we will think about those times.  Our bodies will get tense and sick and we'll feel like we're reexperiencing those terrible times again.  If we can try to calm our bodies down while we think about it, that can help. If we maybe go and talk with someone else - a support group or counselor - this can help too.

We will always be sad about this loss, some thing will change  Life will call us to love again.  Usually it will be a surprise.  For Jack, it was a love of poetry.   And most amazing is how poetry helped Jack talk about not just the loss of his dog, but the love of his dog.

Here's an excerpt from the poem by real life poet Walter Dean Myers that inspires Jack:

Love that boy,
like a rabbit loves to run
I said I love that boy
like a rabbit loves to run
Love to call him in the morning
love to call him
"Hey there, son!"


Sometimes, you find yourself crying and crying right in the middle of church after reading a book about a boy and his dog, and you realize you're crying in grief, but also crying in wonder of love - how one boys love for his dog can feel as true and big and mysterious as all the love in the whole, wide world.