Love Dogs

dispatch #105

Monday . . .

This is the third Monday in a row that has brought us a storm. The regular groundhog day ceremony was cancelled which somehow strikes me as hilarious. The sky is grey – no shadows can be seen so spring should be along soon. Maniacal laughter here.

I like February 2^nd. Imbolc, St. Brigid’s Day, Groundhog Day, the day that quivers exactly between the winter solstice and the spring equinox – a day of where the thought of spring is like the first time you notice a bit of lust for someone – nah! There’s nothing there. But? - just the tiniest spark way down deep that you don’t even quite believe.

Bella is lying on her bed – this will be her last full day. She can’t get up anymore and so Ron has been carrying her outside, down the deck stairs. She will eat the soft food I make for her, not the kibble and she wagged her tail when Sherri came in this morning for a visit. How can this little sparky being not exist?

I feel like I’ve been schooled on death in the last few years. An intensive immersion course on the different ways beings approach their final days. Bella reminds me of one of my friends who died last year – quite stoic and still interested in what interested her during her lively years. Not so much sad as troubled. Is their a point to this? Very hard to say. My first teacher of death fought it like a tiger – she, who had a life of suffering, couldn’t believe it was happening to her, and did not go gentle into that night. If death was going to take her there’d be no help from her in the process. My next two chose death together. They were calm and rational, their faith strong, their love transcendent. The hardest death for me to witness was that of my closest pal and that was not just my attachment – it was her bewilderment – the victim not just of death but of the disease that steals awareness. Maybe at some point I recognized her personality when she refused to eat anymore – that could have been the strong rebellious woman I knew. Fuck this shit, she would have said. The one who Bella presently reminds me of was aware right up to the end. She didn’t think it would take so long and be so uncomfortable but she was willing to take death on – to work with it and to use her immense curiosity to penetrate what was happening.

And now we have this cheerful biddable beast, who has been a huge part of our lives for thirteen years, who, as far as I know, isn’t aware of mortality. Is that true? Or do they just reason that there is no point thinking about something that happens whether you consider it or not.

I can do the Buddhist practice of tonglen for her now though. I don’t know why I haven’t. I shall do that for her today and I’m going to draw her today too. I have thousands of sketches of Bella. Maybe I’ll see if I can actually do some studies and do a painting of her for Ron down the road. We’ll see.

That’s it for today.

Tuesday . . .

The lovely vet came this morning. She was kind and competent and Bella licked her hand in forgiveness before she did what she came to do. It was so much better in every way than taking Bella to the vet’s office. The very kind man who owns the pet crematorium came this afternoon and then that was it.

We know she had a good life. We know it is the price of love. But oh boy it is so tough.

Wednesday . . .

I imagined that this would be difficult but I woefully underestimated the level of it. It turns out absolutely everything in our day to day life is infused with Bella-ness. When we get up in the morning we let her out before lighting the fire or making the coffee. Then we feed her, and even before those two tasks we hug her and kiss her and talk to her about her night. And so it goes all day long. I’m outside walking with her shortly after 8 am. Her ears (all of this pre-illness) perk up when I put my socks on. She’s going to see Sherri and Bob and Joan! When we get to the end of the road she’ll get a ‘turnaround treat’ from Sherri. When I come in Ron will ask us who we’ve seen. If I’m doing my strength training Bella likes to curl up on my yoga mat. And so it goes. All day. And the evening ritual is the one that had us crying last night. We boths spend a few minutes with the girl who will already be in her bed. Today Ron went out to do something with the car tires and he came in later saying he felt guilty being out there without her. She always supervised his snow clearing and in the summer was keen (a little too keen) to help in the garden. If it is too hot or raining she curls up under the canoes that lie on sawhorses in the back of the yard. At about three Ron would take her for her afternoon walk and if it was really glorious and not the weekend they might go to High Head. When we ate our evening meal she’d come and look at us just in case we forgot she had her meal right after ours. When Ron cooked he loved to give her bits of potato or what we called the ‘lettuce bone’ the main rib of the romaine, which she would very carefully take out to the deck to chew as no bones were eaten in the house. I would hear him out in the kitchen, the music going and he giving her little bits of this and that. At around 8:30 in the evening she’d get up and stretch and look at him until he took her out to do the evening patrol.

That’s all I can write today.

Thursday . . .

I know that the piercing quality of this missing her will abate some as the days go by. Knowing that doesn’t seem to help though.

This morning I walked with Sherri through the woods down to the benches where we can sit and look out the bay. I’ve been needing to walk more than our gal wanted to these last months and it was a perfect day to do it – the sun so shiny on the snow, the sea so calm and beautiful, ducks and loons and then blue jays flying overhead and the trees. What my soul needed.

I remembered that after 9/11, a year before I met Ron, I would feel overwhelmed by the news and take Hoagy down to the Dingle park. I would look at the ducks and call out to them “Ducks at war!” and they would blessedly ignore me. They knew nothing of the nonsense of humans. What a relief. I should try yelling at them “Ducks insist on the release of Epstein files!” Or “Ducks demand ICE disbanded!”

It was good to remember that nature is one of the few things that give me some peace. It will be nice next week to walk on a beach in the Caribbean, swim in warm water, snorkel and see fancy coloured fish, be surrounded by folks who don’t know we are wounded.

Another healing thing is poetry. I’m doing a special practice for a friend who died two weeks ago. I just sit and meditate and talk to the person who died for 49 days to help them through the bardo. This friend and I shared a deep love of poetry and so I often read to him - Rumi is a favourite.

Love Dogs - Rumi (Coleman Barks)

One night a man was crying,
“Allah, Allah!”
His lips grew sweet with the praising,
until a cynic said,
“So! I have heard you
calling out, but have you ever
gotten any response?”
The man had no answer for that.
He quit praying and fell into a confused sleep.
He dreamed he saw Khidr, the guide of souls,
in a thick, green foliage,
“Why did you stop praising?”
“Because I’ve never heard anything back.”
“This longing you express
is the return message.”
The grief you cry out from
draws you toward union.
Your pure sadness that wants help
is the secret cup.
Listen to the moan of a dog for its master.
That whining is the connection.
There are love dogs no one knows the names of.
Give your life to be one of them.

Dear readers,

I’ll put a dispatch in the chute in case I can’t get on to write a proper one, or decide I don’t need to. We’ll be back the following week and I can get at releasing Little Birds and buy seeds for our garden and like that.

Thanks to so many of you for responding to the piece I wrote about Bella. People have been kind on all fronts – neighbours, friends, and strangers alike.

Let me know you were here if you can. It helps me greatly.