A Sign of Death

I noticed spider webs building up in my front yard the last week. Not your normal, two-dimensional, easy-to-wipe-away webs. Thick webs. Sticky webs. I should know. I tried to remove two of them the other day. They looked like thick hammocks spun with web. If normal webs are like a thin bedsheet, these ones were like a thick blanket, meant to last. A wall of web so thick, the coming fall storms couldn’t even knock these out of place.

And sticky! These webs are comically sticky. I used a broken branch to try to swipe the webs off my fence, and the branch didn’t fare well. It got stuck in the web. Whatever spiders made these webs, they are military grade. 

After a bit of effort, I felt a tinge of satisfaction once I had removed the sticky webs. Sorry spiders, please make your home and insect buffet elsewhere. 

But within a day or two, the webs were back, and not only that, but they had multiplied. There were now four along my squared in fence in the front yard. And two more had been spun on my front deck on the second floor. 

I looked over at my neighbour’s yards. No webs. Really? I looked further up and down the street. Nada. My house, the house of webs. 

I knew there must be a message with all this when I saw a big spider in my hallway this morning. I cross the line at spiders in my house. I don’t kill them. But I trap them in an upside down glass, slide in a piece of paper to cover their exit, then toss them back outside. 

What is the message, then? The webs, the spiders?… I gaze over at my aged dog, sleeping gracefully on the floor of the deck beside me. I sense the word death. For the last month or two, I have been wondering if it’s close to the end of her time in this world. Could it be here sooner than I think?

I Google ‘spiritual meaning of spiders’ to see if my inner knowing aligns with the majority of woo signs out there on the internet. Every page refers to something in a positive light, like rebirths, weaving magic, and creativity. I’m usually the glass half full gal, ever an optimist, seeing the light in everything. But this time, I was hoping for a clear sign toward death. I think I remember reading about spiders being about death in a book a while back. Maybe even one of my spirit animal oracle decks had a chapter on this. Maybe it doesn’t matter. 

A few hours later, I take my dog to her appointment at the vet. For the past week, she’s had a very inflamed shoulder that isn’t getting any better. She favours the injured leg, and seems bothered by it, hobbling and hopping, especially at the end of even short walks. We thought she would receive some pain meds from the vet and be sent back home. It turns out it might be something that would lean us toward making the decision to put her down. She’s a few weeks shy of 15 years old. She’s an old gal. She’s had a great life. But that doesn’t make any of this easier. 

Are the spider webs here to show me the way? To show her the way? To bring sticky webs of grief? 

My sense from my intuition is that this is it, we are very nearly ending our time with her, and it makes my eyes leak from way back behind my sockets. Like an old, rusty hose connected to a part of my body that doesn’t allow for flow often. But when these old tears do need to flow, it works, somehow. But it hurts more than normal tears. 

‘Come on, Dee, she’s not even dead yet,’ some rational part of me says to myself. ‘Get it together.’ But I also know this is my way, to grieve with the perceived loss before it actually happens. Once the loved one is gone, there’s relief, and feelings of love more than anything else. 

The only thing I can do right now is to let those aching tears flow when they want to, spend time with my aging dog, hope that her pain meds work for her the next few days, and see what comes our way. Maybe she will show me the way.