On Grief, Trauma, and The Circle of Life
In memory of Dr. Julie Gard & and for anyone else out there reckoning with the above
It’s my first time back here in a while.
Life got in the way of my writing and once I got out of the flow, I found it difficult to get back into it.
But this week, something extremely difficult has happened that hopefully this newsletter will help me to process, and which has me ready to use my voice again.
I hope you will read it through till the end, but my thoughts may be a bit messy, so please bear with me.
On grief
This past Saturday, one of my vet school professors, Dr. Julie Gard, was stabbed to death in broad daylight in the park while walking her dog.
A random act of evil and violence that I can’t even begin to comprehend.
The veterinary school in Auburn, Alabama is an extremely small and tight-knit community. With each class just over 100 students, everybody knows everybody. You see the same people all day, every day for 4 years or longer.
This sort of crime just doesn’t happen there. Or at least it didn’t — until now.
Dr. Gard was truly a special person.
She was the kind of person who was doing her soul work — and you could see that radiating out of her when she taught her students.
She LOVED cows. And she could make anybody else love them too.
Some students adoringly referred to her as Bovine Barbie, with waist-length blonde hair that sometimes picked up a bit of manure while she was palpating (but she never seemed to mind).
She was a Southern woman at heart, but she was never exclusive on the basis of that Southern-ness. She didn’t dismiss me as a Yankee. She invested in me and my education just as much as the bovine-track kids from the south.
She was so joyful in her work and she was happy to share that joy with anybody and everybody who was interested, regardless of where they were from or the level of experience they had.
She helped instill the value and importance of agriculture, farm animal medicine, welfare, and public health into me.
She was brilliant and beautiful and embodied the spirit of Auburn.
But on the day she was murdered, the Auburn Spirit was centered at Jordan-Hare Stadium for a football game, and Kiesel Park was empty.
It was there that my late professor set out for a dog walk through the park, when she was randomly attacked and murdered — her body dumped in the woods — while her dog was left to watch. The assailant then stole her Ford pickup and later abandoned it on Wire Road.
It’s a shocking and horrific story that just hits way too close to home.
I can’t even count the number of times I’ve walked with my dog alone through that park.
And Wire Road?
That’s where I used to live.
My apartment was on that road. That address still comes up every time I do a credit check. It’s the primary shipping address on my American ASOS account.
How could this happen there?
This incident comes on the back of a series of other acts of violence against women in Amsterdam this summer.
Just a few weeks ago, a girl was thrown off of her electric bike, raped and murdered here — the type of story I’ve NEVER heard in my 6+ years living in this city.
Needless to say, recent events have me a bit shook, and just feeling a little less safe in the world.
Grief isn’t something new to me.
As a veterinarian, grief rears its powerful horns through the exam rooms of my clinic every day.
But in the case of my late professor, I’m experiencing a grief that I’m not quite sure how to process.
Dr. Gard and I weren’t particularly close, and I haven’t spoken to her in years. But she was someone who had an impact on the person I am and the veterinarian I became, and I feel her loss nonetheless.
I grieve her death, but I also grieve the perceived safety of the communities in which I once lived. I grieve all the women lost to random acts of violence, which seems to be increasing lately. And I grieve the safety, security, and confidence I once had walking down the street with my dog.
On trauma
As a vet and someone who focuses on the mental health of dogs, the one image I haven’t been able to shake from my mind is the image of her dog.
On the other end of the leash while their owner was brutally murdered and then disposed of in the woods. Standing over her body, barking, pleading, for anyone to come help; defenseless against the assailant. Watching his human slip away — the one he was supposed to protect.
Can you imagine the horror this poor dog witnessed and the trauma he endured?
Thankfully, the dog has been returned to the rest of the family and still has the love, comfort, and protection of home to help him heal.
But those memories don’t leave a dog — and I’m sure he’s feeling a lot less safe in the world right now as well.
Will my late professor’s dog ever enter the park again? Will he ever be able to pass a lone man on the street without lunging at his neck in defense? Will he eat? Will he sleep? Or will nightmares of the attack leave him paddling his puppy legs, sleep-running through his fear, only to wake him every night?
You see, dogs experience trauma much in the same way that humans do.
And with a bond as strong as the one that humans and dogs share, it’s not uncommon for one species to experience trauma, PTSD, or grief in the loss of the other.
There is a case I saw at a clinic in Amsterdam several years ago that has stuck with me.
The client was a single man in his late 30’s-early 40’s that came in with a new puppy.
She was a spunky, lively, loving, 3-month-old mini golden doodle puppy in a varsity jacket.
Straight away, I could see the strong connection that the two shared.
It was instant love.
But it was a love born of grief.
1.5 years prior to adopting this sporty pup, my client had another dog that suffered a terrible accident.
He had a ground-floor art studio that he would leave the doors open to in the summer and the dog would sit at the front door and watch the world go by.
When my client was focused on some art he was creating, he didn’t notice the dog had chased something into the street.
My client heard a car racing down the road and turned his head and saw his dog standing in the middle of the street and screamed her name. Just in the moment before the car hit her, she turned her head back to look at him. And then she was gone.
He told me that he still hadn’t gotten the image out of his head.
For the entire year, he had nightmares and flashbacks, he stopped seeing friends, stopped creating.
He saw a therapist and was diagnosed with PTSD.
The interesting thing about trauma and grief is that it doesn’t stop with those directly affected. It oozes out of those present at the scene and touches everyone in their orbit.
This is why I always find it so crazy when people suggest that veterinarians don’t care, or that they’re just in it for the money, or some similar BS.
Can you not see that we carry your grief too?
My client told me the story of his dog getting hit by a car in such detail that I felt like I was there.
I carried the image of that dog’s last moment, looking back at her owner, all the way home with me that evening. And when I arrived home, I wept.
To this day it is the only new puppy appointment that I’ve wept after.
And I carry it with me STILL, as evidenced by the fact that I’m thinking about it and sharing it with you now, years later.
Stories of the grief and trauma exit through your lips and find place in our hearts.
We carry the stories of hundreds of families like this — like that of my client and my late professor — and we package them up, and hold onto them so you no longer have to.
So you can move on to the next stage in the grieving process, or focus on ushering in the joy that comes with a new puppy.
Which brings me to my final thought:
The circle of life
In the same week that my vet school professor was murdered, my best friend from vet school gave birth to her first child.
A much-welcomed beautiful little miracle of a girl, who arrived following a year+ of multiple miscarriages, scares of infertility, and the risks associated with a geriatric pregnancy.
What a strange and complex thing it is for a community to hold both of these stories simultaneously.
Similar to the feelings experienced by my client with his new puppy.
Life and death, grief and joy, love and loss. A complex swirl of emotions.
The circle of life.
But as we all come to learn, the yin and the yang exist only through each other.
You can’t have one without the other.
There is senseless evil and horror and loss in this world but there is also love. There is also joy. There is also life. There are new beginnings, and smiling babies, and puppies in varsity jackets.
And maybe the knowledge of this is how we move on.
—
For my late professor, for the dogs grieving the loss of their people, for the people grieving the loss of their dogs, and for the veterinarians out there carrying the grief of us all.
Sending love, thanks, and peace,
- Dr. Sami
A handwritten note left with flowers at the entrance to Kiesel Park read, “always an example, forever an inspiration.” And I don’t think I could have put it any better. Rest Peacefully, Dr. Gard.
Thank you for sharing this (awful!!) story. I’m so grateful for good vets and good dogs. My life would be immeasurably worse without them both.
Deep gratitude for expressing such a heartfelt tribute regarding your professor Dr. Gard. This is a profound and senseless tragedy which will continue to be felt within the Auburn community, the campus of Auburn University, the Auburn University School of Veterinary Medicine, Dr.Gard's dear family, friends, her vet students and her dear traumatized dog for a very long time. I extend my sincere love, sympathy and comfort to all.
Choosing to process the overwhelming grief of this tragedy by expressing your thoughts and feelings required reflection and courage. Thank you.
At the same time, you also inadvertently implemented a ripple effect out into the cosmos of veterinary professionals; we are are often unseen and unheard. I can personally relate as a retired licensed veterinary nurse/technician RVN/LVT- Alabama with over 25 years experience, specializing in both large and small animal medicine. I was born and raised in a community only an hour from Auburn- I felt your words deeply.
Unfortunately, as you mentioned, we are often dealt with a multitude of tragedies along with the untimely deaths of our patients, often on a daily basis. It's the 'nature of the beast' to practice veterinary medicine. Although Dr. Bard was retired, the animals still needed her, the community still needed her, we still needed here advocating for them; her companion dog still needed her-the bovine community.... they all still needed her presence in this world.
Dr. Gard chose a profession where it required sheer guts and determination in order to advocate for animals -for all creatures both great and small. We choose to be committed to an animals overall well- being, to seek and obtain our education and earn our privilege to stand and take the Hippocratic oath; failures and deaths will never cease to be utterly devastating to us though we may appear stoic and insensitive, we are not.
As you mentioned, I also have never forgotten those tragedies and failures in clinic or standing in a barn past midnight only to lose the battle of attempting to restore life.
So thank you, your words created a thread of light and love out into the wotld, a glimmer of hope and acknowledgement of the significance of the very process of grief while also prompting us to reflect on the great contributions of Dr. Gard and all veterinary professionals around the world.