All Pinked Out

As some of you know, we have been in the process of downsizing here at the humble kennel. Downsizing is turning out to be a really long, and sometimes painful exercise in letting go of the past.

One of the things that we have held on to has been the ashes of three of our children. Tobias, Clifford and Emily. Two of their siblings,  who were named Murphy and Edward, are buried in Coquitlam under a rhubarb patch. I hope that the patch is still there. If someone has dug it up in the past 19 years they might have had a big surprise. Ed was the biggest standard poodle you have ever seen. Talk about a difficult labour. Anyway, he filled up a whole Peak Freen cookie box.

Senor and I  picked a day and committed ourselves to take the kids to one of their favourite spots on the island. They each loved the beach but for different reasons , and we had to accommodate what we assumed were the wishes of both .  Clifford was afraid of water (as well as vacuum cleaners and anything that made much of a noise) Emily was truly a water dog and looked for any excuse to dive in, and Toby had no preference as he had never been to Vancouver Island except in an urn. You see, Toby died 25 years ago and we have been carting his ashes around all of that time. Talk about not being able to let go.

We decided upon Jordan River as the location for the service. We required  a spot where Senor could access the water,  and which  also  provided logs as Clifford loved to log jump. The  beach should be private enough so that Clifford’s ashes, which were going to be buried under a log, probably would not be disturbed.

On Saturday morning we loaded a small shovel for me to dig a spot for Clifford, crocs so that senor could wade out into the water with Emily, three urns, and loaded them into the black hearse aka Honda CRV. We find the perfect location and the interment began. There was no music or readings.  Neither Senor nor I could get Toby out of the bag from the urn(always a problem child as many of you know)  In the course of 25 years it turns out that the ashes were rock solid and we had to make a decision, and just throw urn and all into the chuck. So keep that in mind if you are hanging onto the ashes of canine or of a  human! ( I personally think that is a pretty big responsibility to be given to a dog to take care of a human’s ashes). Tip from Poodela: at least shake the urn up once in a while. Play some good samba music.

After we said our goodbyes we headed on down the road to locate a venue  for the conventional post service luncheon. Not far from Jordan River we discovered a lovely bakery/cafe in the middle of nowhere. Actually it was in  the hamlet of Shirley. The Shirley Delicious had a long line out the door, and after quite the wait we found out why! The lunch was a delicious and we intend to go back even if we are not on a mission to bury someone.

So, one more downsizing task taken care of. Check.