The photo from my friend.
Yesterday evening a friend sent me a photo of a snail she saw on her morning walk. It’s a rare but wonderful treat when a friend sees a snail wherever they are in real life, and they snap a pic and send it to me. It always feels good to be thought of. But also, it feels good to take a moment to contemplate the goings on of a small snail in some corner of the world and to see them thriving at it. When I see wild snails thrive, I can believe in Parsley’s resilience and that he is thriving too.
I was sitting on the bus feeling unwell (and discouraged about feeling unwell, yet again, despite sustained attempts at healing) and trying to decide if a migraine was coming on or if I was just feeling overly sensitive to the glaring lights above me in this nighttime bus. Then this snail arrived via text and I felt myself let out the biggest exhale of breath I didn’t know I was holding. My tense shoulders sank into their proper hanging place and I began to relax.
It was a potent reminder of how Parsley cared for me. Parsley grounded me like nothing else I’ve ever known. His slow, steady, gliding, contemplative behaviors. His long hours of slumber. His proficiency at self-care. Watching him be a snail, whether sleeping or awake, was deeply relaxing. He taught me how to better care for myself. He gave me permission to rest. He was also an integral part of my bedtime routine. The bedtime transition is a tough one for me. I have a hard time shutting down from the day, turning off the brain and all its energy. I engage in avoidance behaviors in going to bed because I don’t want to lie there in the dark with my brain racing as it so often does.
But, because Parsley was nocturnal, it was always the last task of my evening before bed to make sure he had fresh breakfast and a freshly spritzed home. The spritzing would often wake him up (if he wasn’t awake already) and he would start gliding around and maybe head for his breakfast. So I would spend time sitting by him before bed watching him wake, watching him glide, and listening to his tiny munches. I’d go to bed deeply soothed, thinking of him just feet away gliding about his snaily business, straining my ears to try to hear him munching away. On nights when I felt in need of extra emotional support, I’d put his home on the floor right near my pillow and sleep with him beside me. It was easier to hear his munches that way, which comforted me until I slept.
When Parsley left, I lost a friend, mentor, and confidant. But I also lost a healthy, grounding routine that tempered my anxiety and helped me transition into sleep. While the loss of Parsley isn’t the cause of the mental, emotional, and physical derailment I’ve experienced this summer, I certainly feel his loss more acutely as I seek balance and healing because I’m grieving the loss of a friend and teacher while simultaneously losing the practical coping tools he offered me.
For a moment, when that snail came in on my phone, I briefly felt the solace Parsley gave me; a welcome relief and distraction from my discouragement. It also had the unexpected effect of helping me to finally be able to start articulating all I lost when he went away. I woke suddenly in the pre-dawn darkness of the early morning after a restless sleep and couldn’t stop the words from forming in my mind: thoughts of losing my grandfather and of losing Parsley and how the loss of someone seems at first like one, big, solitary loss because they aren’t there anymore. But we all contain multitudes, so their single departure actually results in hundreds of smaller losses, and those are the things that truly make their absence so hard to adjust to and bear.