I call it the Days Of Redlessness. An extraordinary experience.

I’m grateful for the reporter in me; I can step back and see it is a compelling story, and step back a bit from seeing me.

A significant chunk of my life is missing. I am out of myself, dropping things, forgetting things, I have little to say, I am tired in a way that comes from deep inside of me.

My world, so carefully constructed in recent years, seems upside down.

I woke up this morning and started crying, much to my surprise. I suddenly realized that Red is no longer sitting by the side of the bed, waiting for me to get up.

He is no longer watching me while I get dressed.

He is no longer sitting by the door when I leave.

He is no longer out with me to control the sheep. He is no longer coming to the Mansion this afternoon for my therapy work.

He is not driving with me to Bishop Maginn on Wednesday to visit the school. He is not lying on the floor next to me while I write. And he will never do any of those things again.

He will no longer be right beside me when I walk. Or when hospice calls and asks us to come see a dying patient.

Wow. I was as prepared for it as I could be, but of course, you can’t completely prepare for it.

Grieving is a part shock, part trauma, part emptiness, and loss. It is a black hole to fall into and spin and spin.

It is also a space to cross. I see the other side and believe in it. My struggles with fear and depression taught me that there is another side, always. That is where the light is. When you’re in a deep hole, you can’t see the light. You have to trust that it is there.

Red’s death is a challenge for me to use all the things I’ve learned, all the tools I’ve acquired, all the strength and perspective and truth I have fought so hard to have. You can’t control life, but you can learn from it, you can grow, change, become aware, and face the truth about yourself.

I will feel it, not succumb to it.

Red reached far beyond my own humble life and work. At the pharmacy today, a stranger came up and gave me an enormous hug. “Sorry about Red,” she said, “what a great life he had,” and she walked away. Another woman, a friend, came up and started crying.

“But especially he loved to run in the dim twilight of the summer midnights,” wrote Jack London in Call Of The Wild, which I have been reading to Red over his grave.

“...listening to the subdued and sleepy murmurs of the forest, reading signs and sounds as a man may read a book, and seeking for the mysterious something that called — called, waking or sleeping, at all times, for him to come.”

I’ve had more than 2,000 messages of love and support since Red died. Thank you.

When I stood next to the bed this morning, Maria asked me if I was all right. I told her that I was crying, and she started crying. Neither one of us asked the other what the matter was.

It was about Red. She misses him too, of course, he was so much a part of our life together.

I miss Red; he was my companion for more than seven years. He was a grounding force for me, a volatile and restless man.

He was steady when I was unnerved; he was calm when I was angry, he was constant when I was uncertain, he was focused when I was in pieces, loved when I was not.

I stood at his grave this morning and told him, “listen, good boy, I’m okay, I can take it from here. Rest up and go and do this again, to some other lucky soul.”

I knew from the first he was a Spirit Dog; he came when he was needed, he would leave when he was done.

A shaman told me spirit dogs go off to a beautiful space by a clean stream of water when they leave; they go there to rest until they are ready to enter another life. They take the form of blue lights while they wait. They don’t need a rainbow bridge to stand on while they wait for me, they go on to enter another life, just as I will go on to another dog.

That was always the deal, the unwritten contract we had, our understanding.

I never really thought he was mine, Red is just one of those dogs that belong to everybody, I was just his steward for awhile. We can’t own them.

Nobody likes to lose a dog. So many of love their dogs just as much as I loved Red.

But Redlessness can be overwhelming until I get used to it.

And I am proud of Red; he did so much good. Even in death, he reached beyond his life and managed to get Ipads for every teacher at the Bishop Maginn School. I want you good people to know that I now have enough money to buy the extra Ipads we needed beyond the beautiful gift of $4,000 Sue gave last week in honor of Red.

What a fitting honor for such a glorious spirit. He gives and gives, even in death.

I haven’t totaled the cost or the donations – some are still coming – yet, but I know it’s enough. If there is an overage, it will all go to help Bishop Maginn in the coming months, they need so much, and they are so deserving, especially now, as compassion and refugees are under such a sustained attack, a new and ugly hysteria, not the first in America, not the last.

People are messaging me to ask if they can still contribute to the school to the school and me to honor Red. Of course, you can, the need is bottomless, you can send it to me via Paypal, [email protected], or by check, Jon Katz, Bishop Maginn Work, P.O. Box 205, Cambridge, N.Y., 1286.

The biggest donation was Sue’s; it was $4,000, the smallest donation was $3 in crumpled $1 bills from Sarah Anne in Boone County. “I am proud to honor Red; I am giving what I can.”

From the letters, I see that Red has brought many people to the cause of this embattled school, working so hard to do so much good. So many people relate to the school and want to help, mentioned Bishop Maginn in their messages.

I see that Red is a big part of that. He took it to another level.

What a great honor this week has been for him.

Every penny of donations honoring Red will go to deepen and continue that work. We hope to help shore up the school’s security in small but effective ways; we hope to sponsor a new dance troupe at the school, help purchase some urgently needed textbooks,  buy a keyboard for the choir, we intend to make sure every child has shoes and clothes for the winter.

If you can and wish, you may certainly honor him in this way.

I will make sure this work is done correctly and well; we have no middlemen or administrators.

Speaking for me, Red’s death was an earthquake, it rattled every single part of my life, inside the farmhouse and out, in my study and at the dentist. Red was welcome at any doctor’s office I visited. He was a witness to everything in my life, every drive to the post office, every shopping trek, every radio show that I did, every podcast we recorded.

It’s time for me to grieve, to move forward, to practice what I preach, to share my process and progress, from the tears to the healing. And I will honor that as well. I will be fine, I will heal up and open my heart to the next chapter.

I had to laugh, a friend told me of a great Lab breeder near New York City, she has a litter of Yellow Lab puppies coming next month. Maria and I shook our heads. Are we doing this already? I’m always ready to think about it, I said, but I’m not prepared to do it.

Not until I can get up in the morning and not feel as if I’m about to fall into a vast and empty canyon.