Today we said goodbye to Bones, our four-year-old gerbil.  He was  good dude.  He loved it when he got a new house.  He cruised on his wheel.  All he needed to be happy was a toilet paper tube and some black oil sunflower seeds.  Bones mastered the simple life.

And though I know he was only a gerbil, I also know his death accumulates like falling snow upon the drift I carry with me.  His passing is but a whisper of bigger storms yet it brings the greater blizzards back full force.  It reminds me that loss accumulates, the weight of layer upon layer of snow builds.  It does not melt.  It births a glacier.

Glaciers sculpt the land and spawn rivers.  Loss is a force of nature, shaping me.