Tremaine L. Loadholt / Scattered Words : Poems for Jernee Timid Loadholt

What does true love and belief look like? Tremaine Loadholt is the one writer I can think of who can answer that question. True love and belief looks like the relationship she had with Jernee Timid Loadholt, her 17 year old family member in a dogs body.

For all of us who follow Tremaine’s writing over the years – we are the lucky ones. The other lucky one was Jernee, who for as long as I have known Tremaine, has been the light of her life and knew it. When she began to ail, we all hoped against hope somehow she would not be taken but in the end her age did catch up with her and despite all efforts, Tremaine knew she had to big goodbye. Because of Tremaine’s writing of Jernee all these years, we all felt the loss, not as palpably but I remember writing to Tremaine the day Jernee was going to be put to sleep and I was crying as I did.

“Is there a name for people

who are not longer whole

without the pets they spent

nearly two decades becoming

one with?” (Sometimes, I just need Poetry).

It says a lot about how much animals can impact lives, including the lives of those around us, who understand they are family and the loss is incalculable and akin to losing another human being. Jernee’s life will never be forgotten and this is where Scattered Words comes into its own. To say this is a eulogy isn’t sufficient. This is a testament to love. It is also filled with light and love, because Tremaine knows, Jernee is waiting for her and not far away.

From the first page where there is an image of Tremaine with Jernee, and it says, “hello rainbow bridge / treat my baby with kindness / she deserves it all” to the last image, which is more of a portrait of Jernee, there is grief and loss and love and hope all wound together in this brave and honest homage and reflection of a life well spent.

It isn’t fair that we only had 17 years with Jernee, but one thing I know is, every one of those years was filled with meaning and the bond between them, inseparable. I remember seeing the photos of Jernee after she died, and also leading up to it, and it opened wounds in me I had forgotten I had. This is not a bad thing, it is a necessary thing. We do feel. We have pain. To pretend otherwise is foolish. I like that about Tremaine, she is unflinching in her examination of what is real.

These poems were written after Jernee’s death and during her life. They are sometimes terribly sad, but for any pet-owner, animal-lover or really, person capable of understanding the bonds we forge, this is a book we wish we all had someone write about our life. I felt choked up reading the first poem ‘Erasing Jernee on paper but not from my heart’ because I still have my cat’s name on my Chewy’s account and he has been dead for five years. So I know how hard it is to remove that name, to click ‘Jernee Timid has passed away.’

There is something about putting a loved animal to sleep that haunted me afterward, not because I thought I’d done something wrong, but just being there, when they die, it stays with you and it should do, you should feel that pain, even as you want to erase it. I think these poems are brave because they refuse to erase the feelings, they share them, not in a suffocating way at all but in a way that reminds us of what matters and how we cannot flinch when the hard decisions come, because they always do.

“I could not have prepared myself for

erasure of this magnitude

Jernee’s not here, but she is.

Jernee’s not here, but she is.”

Tremaine says that “I remember the / best part of my life / no longer exists.” And she doesn’t mean there will not be happiness again, but she acknowledges that all those 17 years spent together, the joy and sharing, mean there is always going to be a large cavern where Jernee should be. On the other hand, there is always hope in Tremaine’s writing and she is mindful to admit she is holding on, despite this loss. I thought it was interesting in the poem ‘Smelling Death’ that she talked of the other dogs possibly smelling Jernee’s impending death. I truly believe this is possible, even with humans, and it’s part of that horror and mystery to life and death, we often don’t examine.

“He’d been greeting her death,

and I just didn’t want to

believe it.”

This opens up the subject of death to wider discourse, in the poem ‘Is Everything Still Ours?’ Tremaine talks of whether she should ‘continue to say “our”’ and how the adjustment to go from “our” to “my” is one of the hardest elements of any loss. She also knows that she shouldn’t “rush the pain away. / I shouldn’t try to kick it out before its time.” These may seem obvious, but we forget so often, and being reminded through this collection of love reminders is a very gentle way of accepting those messages we don’t want to accept.

Jernee was a lifeline at times for Tremaine, and she’s unashamed to admit that, such as the poem Ten: A Senryu (for Jernee’s 10^th Birthday) where she says:

“She keeps me from feeling down

when life becomes blue.”

Again, it’s the little things that mean the most, how small pawprints in our souls can truly make that kind of difference. I have read many poetry collections to lost pets and loved animals, this is among the finest of them, for its pure heart and acknowledgement that “you will forever be the best gift / I’ve ever had. (With Honor). I warn you, you will not leave this book without tears, but even as my chest heaved and I was reminded of my own losses and felt for my friends, I left feeling hopeful, because if anyone can be remembered with this much love, there just has to be hope.

“God gifted me with peace in living form

and I will never forget her; not ever.”

You can purchase this book on Lulu here: https://www.lulu.com/shop/tremaine-loadholt/scattered-words/hardcover/product-95j44yn.html?page=1&pageSize=4