Our beloved dog, Misza, passed away on November 14, 2023. The same day, in 1905, that Rasputin first met Tsar Nicholas II of Russia and changed the destiny of Europe forever. She was with us for nearly fourteen years.
Our sadness and emptiness led to unresolvable existential questions, and a reflection on our own underlying fear of entropy.
How to say goodbye and give her back to eternity without fear of forgetting? Death is the state of being where that person exists only in the minds of those left behind.
In the waning days of winter, we made a pilgrimage, carrying a white porcelain urn with a pattern of blue forget-me-nots imprinted upon it. Inside, the remains of our beautiful dog. Our last trip together, to Portmeirion: Clough Williams-Ellis’s Baroque fantasy made real in painted domes and towers. And there, as we looked out from the observatory tower, over the windswept estuary, we said goodbye, and so did she, disappearing over the sand, into the wind.