In comparison, the death of my two dogs a year ago had left me distraught for a long time. I miss the squirrels no doubt, but their death has not somehow really wounded me. It seems the deaths scattered in the landscape of memory work differently upon the consciousness than those concentrated in it at a site. The concentration attracts you and makes you dwell on it. You cannot simply plunge into and then quickly escape the awareness of death the way you may if you happen to occasionally visit a graveyard or attend a cremation.
Concentrated death is slowly overwhelming.
You begin to abide in it, a migrant to the country of death. The sights and sounds of the familiar country no longer assail the senses. The vision begins to adjust to the virat, the divine-cosmic. I have a faint memory of some illustrations in my school textbooks. Hamlet's encounter enacting itself across ages and civilizations.