LOGAN LYNN // SOFTCORE

  

Logan Lynn: Farewell, Sweet Creature

(Originally Published on The Huffington Post on 5/30/2012)

My beloved teacup Pomeranian friend and longtime companion Dutch passed away this weekend and I wasn’t there for it. Instead, I was hours away in the Oregon desert eating brunch and shopping. It could be argued that he is gone now because I was away, though everyone around me keeps telling me not to go down that road. The truth is, he was old and fragile. This was going to happen someday, and I already knew this. Hell, I wrote about it here months ago… but his passing is still shocking and sudden and seemingly avoidable, which was evidently enough to make me go completely nuts for a minute. I’m coming back down to planet earth now, slowly but surely, but have not managed to stop crying since the news came. I am in a state of pure grief unlike any I have ever met before.

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I collapsed into a puddle version of myself when I heard the news. Dutch had endured a series of seizures following an accidental bad reaction to his insulin dosage, and by the time he got to the hospital and they had him stabilized, it was too late. His sweet body just couldn’t handle it. He died in the arms of our friends who were watching him for the weekend, happy and loved, with a smile on his face. My partner and I came back from our vacation and went to say our goodbyes on Sunday afternoon at the hospital. They walked us into a private room and brought him to us wrapped in a blanket. It looked like he was sleeping, but once I had him in my arms it was clear that this was not the case. His skin was cold, his limbs stiff. His eyes were open just enough for me to see that he was not there. I held him close to my chest for what seemed like an eternity, kissed his face and body, and cried from a place inside myself which had not been found before this moment. I told him how sorry I was, how much we loved him, and thanked him for loving me all these years. Aleks held him, too, and we wept together. Our sweet creature, no longer in the room with us, running the show. Read the rest of this entry »

Logan Lynn: The Final Frontier – A Small, Wooden Commentary on Love and Death

(Originally Published on The Huffington Post on 4/6/2012)

I don’t do well with death. My coping skills are still lacking around anything related to loss in general, actually — but death, I just… can’t. It’s been this way since I was a boy. The idea that everyone I have ever loved will someday be taken from me (or I from them) terrifies me and is a concept I have largely refused to look at for as long as I can remember. Death, in my personal psychology, as in life, is the final frontier.

This week when I got the call from my broken-hearted mother that her sweet sister, who had fallen ill with a mysterious condition a few months ago, was being moved from hospital to hospice, I was overcome with sorrow. My usually manageable, small, wooden feelings about death and loss were suddenly made large, alive and uncontrollable. What I am most afraid of was here, once again, greeting me head-on in the living room. I turned back into the terrified child version of myself that lives inside me while my mother and I cried on the phone together. During the really hard parts I tried not to hear what she was saying, and instead focused on the sound of my own sobbing. It didn’t work. I took in every painful word.

My brain absorbs news like this in slow motion. It hits me in tearful waves, fades to the background, then jumps out again at the strangest times. I feel a deep connection to this planet by way of my family and the love we all share for each other, and I am sad that some of that love might be moving to another part of the universe. I’m selfish in this way. I want to keep all of you close forever. Anything else just seems too cruel to imagine and, well…This has been my reality for three days now.

A few years ago I was given a book called To Bless the Space Between Us, by John O’Donohue. I have pulled it out a few times over the years when I can’t find ways of relating to the world, and it has helped me form thoughts around some of the stuff I’m just no good at thinking about. This week was one of those times. In a passage about death from the book, O’Donohue writes:

“From the moment you were born,
Your death has walked beside you.
Though it seldom shows its face,
You still feel its empty touch,
When fear invades your life,
Or what you love is lost
Or inner damage is incurred.

Yet when destiny draws you
Into these spaces of poverty,
And your heart stays generous
Until some door opens into the light,
You are quietly befriending your death;
So that you will have no need to fear
When your time comes to turn and leave.

That the silent presence of your death
Would call your life to attention,
Wake you up to how scarce your time is
And to the urgency to become free
And equal to the call of your destiny.

That you would gather yourself
And decide carefully
How you now can live
The life you would love
To look back on
From your deathbed.”
Read the rest of this entry »


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