| Updated
August 26 2004 |
Tosser's
Obituary
Click on Tosser's photo for
a better view
Tosser,
died between 2.30 am and 6.30 am Wednesday ,
August 25, 2004 in
Melbourne, Australia.
She was with me. It was very quick. She was about
13 years old. I will bring her ashes back to
East Swanzey
and bury her next to Flap who was the old Geese Company
dog right before Tosser. They will live always at
the top of the hill looking out onto the gentle
New Hampshire
hills where they
lived.
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For
You, Toss.
She died at the end of the Ozzie winter
In the new warm earlys of Spring
She sat for a morning in her basket
As if asleep
As if burrowing into her sweet, sweet dreams
Waiting to wake with a yawn and a time for a run
look
I wish
And I wish
I
loved you, not as well as many, and not as
badly as some
I will see your white furry smiling self
Your waiting for me to come back look
Your insistent pushing to go explore
Always
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For
those of you who never knew Tosser she went to
prisons all over the USA, travelled to Romania
to the prison TCs many times and finally to Australia
. Saul Hewish, who I worked with for so long,
and I rescued her from the pound. The first day
we went to see her she seemed so fragile and
lost. The next day we went and she was the belle
of their office!
She was a working dog who went
to prisons for 11 years . When there was nothing
happening she slept under the old prison tables. But when a prisoner, in the
middle of our dramatherapy work, started to dive into himself, she would magically
come out and be there for him to touch and go even deeper into what he felt.
She was mysterious in her skills.
She last worked in Australia, with some prison
officers. She charmed them all. Over the years she
worked with so many people, and many told her their
hardest stories. She listened.
One time a young violent guy shouted “come
here!” to her. He told
me that he had a dog that would eat her. She didn't come over. I said to him-“ Sit
quietly ,man. Wait. She'll come to you”. After a while, when the guy
had got very quiet and still, there came that little gentle white fur ball
and sat down right by him. He talked to her. Later this distressed young man
did some great work with us.
Mihaela Sasarman, the director of Transcena, and
I were walking in Bucharest with Tosser. A woman came and took her and talked
to her very intensely. Mihaela
said the woman spoke to Tosser intimately as if she were her old dog .She was
crying. You see, Ceaucescu forbad people to take their old dogs into the new
concrete apartments.
She helped me survive many a boring moment in conferences.
Tosser,
if she were here this minute would sit so patiently.
We are, after all, doing the work.
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For more info on the cutting edge of Theatre
and Drama
Therapy,
contact Artistic Director John
Bergman at: Macflap@aol.com or macflap@optusnet.com.au
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