A series of strung beads...

A downy feather drifted a metre or so away in the periphery of my vision: when another floated by, I looked up, wondering. A few metres above me in a maple tree, a small songbird was clamped between the upper and lower beak of a raven. I think it was dead, the songbird. At least, I hope it was. The raven was in no hurry.

Many years ago, as a young teen, I saw our dog, Suzie, give birth to a clutch of pups. I forget how many, but the last one was born with curiously bowed legs, and a listless disposition compared to that of the ravenous, energetic blind little siblings that homed in on Suzie's teats for their drink. My father scooped up the little one with a muttered word, and disappeared into the garage. I never saw the pup again. Suzie nursed the remaining pups until they grew to the point where she couldn't be bothered, it seemed. They went to different homes and I never saw them again, although Suzie stayed with us a long time.

My father told me later that the runt of the litter was often like the one he took away--deformed, unable to grow to look after itself. The only thing to do was to kill it (did he use that word?) then and there.

Many years later, as a husband and a father, I woke up in a cottage (camp) we had rented, to find that our dog, Sheba, had killed a mouse. A little while later, she cornered another one, and, after gingerly picking it up in her mouth, she gently dropped it on the floor of the house's living room. As the mouse scurried frantically around, trying to escape, she batted it with her paw. It seemed more like a matter of curiosity to her than predatory instinct--she might well have behaved the same way with a mechanical mouse. However, she did not know her own strength, and soon broke the little creature's back. It dragged itself desperately around in circles, its hindquarters useless. I snatched the mouse up in my hand, took it outside, and killed it as quickly as I could. I had become my father, in a way, in the presence of death.

This morning, years later, Joyce and I took Sheba to her vet's appointment. Sheba is the dog equivalent of 56 years old, a little stiff in the joints of a morning, but otherwise vigourous, curious, alert, playful. She is, we are pleased to say, healthy for her age. As we went to pay for the appointment and the meds refills, I happened to glance upward level, behind the cashier. On a shelf against the wall was a small cluster of vases, very much like funerary urns, glazed, formal, rather tacky. Among them was a dog-shaped one with a detachable tail and an embossed legend "Beloved Pet". They were funerary urns, for the ashes of cremated pets. Suddenly, in the midst of proferring our credit card, I felt a welling up of feeling. My eyes brimmed. I faced Sheba's inevitable death and the grieving emptiness that will follow.

To celebrate her good health and to make some amends for taking her to the place she so fears, Joyce and I took Sheba to Boulevard Lake park for a walk. She loves this, and was happily walking and sniffing as her humans strolled along the paved pathway. Sheba kept stopping, looking askance to her left into the trees. When we looked, we couldn't see anything, although a squadron of ravens was noisily complaining therein.

Then, we looked up.

Eagles, two of them, riding the thermals upward in slow casual circles. These comprised the reason for the ravens' complaints. I gave silent thanks as we watched the eagles soar around and upward and away.

The cliche about death being a part of life is simply unadorned truth itself. There. Always. This morning, I knew in an instant that having a handful of ashes in an urn on a shelf is not the same thing as feeling Sheba's silky coat, or hearing her bark, or walking her twice a day. This any more than a jarful of ashes would be the same thing as my wife's smile, her eyes, her embrace, her caring, if she should predecease me.

I can see those eagles again, even now, in my memory. And what I will have of Sheba, certainly, is a thousand memories. There will be no urn. Instead, for the deaths I have witnessed and grieved, and for the life and joys additionally, memories like a series of strung beads.