But then a strange thing happened. Cleo’s mood changed. At first, as we had fallen into a pattern of comfort, it was hard to say where exactly it happened. But we detected little things. On the weekend—the time we did have with her and when we often liked to take long walks on the bike path along the beach—Cleo was lethargic and would constantly try to pull on the leash back toward the house. She was sleeping longer and more frequently. She ate next to nothing, uninterested even in the treats or Greenies that we offered her. When I attempted to instigate her to play, jumping in front of her or intoning my voice in the way she always reacted to, she just stared at me passively.
A week into this mystery, the revelation came to Candice. “Where’s Mocha?”
We stared outside of our window into the neighbor’s yard and saw no trace of him. We could even see into their house from ours and there too there was no sign of the crazy guy. It soon became clear that being the terrible neighbors that we were, we had failed to notice that Mocha was no more. When I sheepishly asked our neighbor what happened, he informed me with tears in his eyes that Mocha had passed away about ten days prior from a congenital defect. He died peacefully and painlessly overnight, our neighbor advised, kindly intimating that perhaps that was the reason we hadn’t noticed.
I offered my condolences and retreated back to the house, where Candice sat with Cleo in her lap, stroking her gently. Not familiar with doggy depression, I immediately consulted the experts (the Internet) to see what I could find. Sure enough, Cleo had all the telltale signs.
Like humans, dogs mourn the loss of loved ones. In fact, in some ways, dogs can mourn even more intensely and certainly in more concentration than humans. Maybe it’s because they do not bear the same burdens that we humans do. They don’t have to worry about getting to work on time, returning home for dinner with the kids, maintaining a marriage, or paying the rent. They can immerse themselves in their emotion, let it seep straight through them. If you’ve ever been around a depressed dog—the way Cleo was after her buddy Mocha died—then you can physically see just how encompassing the emotions can be. Cleo sagged. Her ears, her tail, her eyes—anything that could play victim to gravity did. Her whole being drooped as if in solidarity with her mood.
Equally remarkable, however, was how Cleo emerged from her gloominess. A few days later—about two weeks in total after Mocha’s death—Candice and I awoke to Cleo standing over us. The moment she saw my eyes open, her tail wagged furiously. I tried to turn over and go back to sleep, but it was too late. Cleo was a master of seizing that moment. Once she knew you were up, you were up. She leaped to the floor, scrambling to the side of the bed, growling at me anxiously.
“All right, Cleo, okay,” I said, swinging my legs over the side of the bed. Now it was on—she knew where we were headed. For a walk. She barked excitedly, her tail in overdrive.
Candice sat up in bed staring down at her with a big smile.
“What?” I asked her, rubbing the sleep from my eyes.
“Nothing,” Candice said, shaking her head. “Except that Cleo’s back.”
Sure enough, Cleo was back. Once more as we walked around the block, Cleo yanked and pulled me every few steps toward some curious item—a can or bottle, a french fry, a chewed-up piece of gum—so that she could inspect it as the most fascinating thing on planet Earth. When we encountered other early risers, Cleo was back in her fine form, alternatively begging for treats and tangling her leash with other dogs’.
I wondered what had happened. How had Cleo transitioned from her sad self back to her normal playful one? I watched closely as we neared the house, curious to see if there would be any acknowledgment of Mocha or his home. Sure enough, as we got to the gate, Cleo made a beeline to the fence that separated our house from Mocha’s. She pressed her nose at the base of it. This was the spot where on the opposite side Mocha would do the same—the two of them exchanging a little signal or acknowledgment to the other one. This time, of course, there was no Mocha on the other side, but watching Cleo, you would have never known it. Her tailed wagged as she sniffed hard once or twice. Then suddenly, she jerked up and pulled away, leading me back into the house and on to our routine.
Back inside, life went on for us—Cleo, Candice, and me. Soon Candice and I were back at work, focused on what we had to get done, and Cleo likewise back to her antics and routine. Still, I liked to think that Mocha didn’t just disappear from Cleo’s consciousness, and her ritualized tribute of him every time we returned from our subsequent walks seemed to affirm that. But it did appear that in her own way Cleo had dealt with her grief over the loss of her friend, endured it, and in some ways resolved it so that she could move on.
Even in the death of a friend, Cleo appeared to have brought that same clarity of emotion. Her engagement with the world and all of her emotions tied into it came with an ease and effortlessness that was truly admirable. In honoring death, she’d found new life and we had our lovable, feisty, and crazy Cleo back.
IT’S RARE, IF EVER, that death is expected. Even in cases when it arrives with some warning, a doctor’s diagnosis or some odd premonition, death almost always requires a denouement and reflection. After returning from brunch, I brewed a pot of coffee while Papa and I sat in the backyard watching Cleo and Krishu skip around the small plastic playhouse we had recently constructed. The two of them could spend hours in such activity, Krishu chasing Cleo in circles while she wagged her tail, always maintaining a safe enough distance so that she wouldn’t risk actually being caught by him. As he was still not fully in control of his own body, Cleo was wise enough to ensure that she never literally fell into his clutches. But this time, as they went around the far corner of the elevated rock platform where our gardeners had just planted some new fruit trees, Cleo suddenly stopped. Something in the bushes had distracted her. She skipped off the path, poking her head into leaves, and suddenly the tone of her bark changed. I knew something was wrong. I leaped from my chair, rushing over to where the two of them stood. Pulling Krishu back and picking him up, I peered toward where Cleo had been rustling.
“What is it, Cleo?”
As she backed away, I could finally see it. The body of a dead bird lay on the ground, just slightly concealed by some leaves. The moment I seemed to see and acknowledge it, Krishu did too.
Papa lingered behind us. “What?”
I pointed to the bird and Papa surveyed it.
“Oh.”
We stood there for a quiet beat. It was Krishu who broke the silence. “Papa—what happened?”
What happened was among the first noun-verb constructions Krishu had managed to pull off.
“If you think about it, it’s the quintessential question to all of existence,” Papa would later remark. “The cosmos is an exquisite ribbon of synchronistic happenings. It happened.”
This was likely Krishu’s first brush with death. Only in Kung Fu Panda had he encountered the notion, but when Master Oogway kicked it, he did it with considerable pomp and pageantry, his body quickly disappearing in a swirl of shimmering golden rose petals. No one needed to question what happened next.
I pulled Krishu back, ordered Cleo away as well. Papa, however, loitered, staring at the lifeless bird as if with a fascination that moved him.
“Let him see it,” Papa called back to me. “ ‘Death is an undiscovered country from whose bourn no traveler returns.’ ”
“That’s creepy,” I said.
“That’s Shakespeare,” he replied.
“Papa, he’s two.”
“Death stalks us all. Never too early to encounter it.”
Krishu stared at the carcass, confused. Death was literally not part of his vocabulary, neither in language nor conception, really. I could see the wheels turning as he tried to process what he was witness to. At last I swept him from his feet and took him inside.
Later that evening, sometime after I had convinced my father that it was rather macabre to quote Shakespeare on death to his two-year-old grandson, P
apa and I sat in the living room watching the news.
Cleo lay on my lap, her eyes blankly fixed on the flashing lights of the television. I always wondered what exactly shot through her brain as she consumed the sights and sounds of the television. Presumably she was neither a fan of Anderson Cooper nor a critic of Bill O’Reilly the way I was. And yet, she gazed at the TV with a fixed stare that rivaled the very best poker players. Whether she was emotionally swayed—saddened or enraged—by news of another suicide bombing on the streets of Kabul was anyone’s guess.
“Cleo is not victim to the hallucination of social conditioning. She is not held hostage by the same rules and rituals that signify how we should celebrate life or commemorate death.”
“You mean she’s not fooled by the Matrix?” I nodded back to him.
“What?” Papa looked at me confused.
“Nothing.” I shook my head.
He continued undeterred. “One of Cleo’s greatest attributes is precisely her ‘dogginess.’ She’s not burdened by the angst of being human, the self-doubt, the ambition, the guilt, the nagging feeling that there is a greater dharma to her existence or her demise.
“Even with death, she does not evaluate. She reacts.”
I told Papa about Cleo and Mocha, the seeming depression that she endured in the aftermath of her friend’s death, and how she seemed, suddenly, to snap out of it.
“Mourning is a process.” Papa tapped his fingers on the couch. “Its various stages include denial, anger, frustration, resignation, acceptance, surrender—and hopefully, if all of the above have been resolved—healing.
“Most people get so distracted by their lives and all their obligations that they are not able to make it through the process. And hence they never fully recover from the loss of a loved one. They become emotionally frayed, strands of unresolved grief and loss that linger and line their daily existence.”
The silence sat between us.
“I think what’s unique about Cleo is that she’s fully in touch with her feelings, not distracted by all the other obligations that we are. When Mocha left her, she took the time to endure the process, to navigate the stages of her own emotions and arrive at her own healing. There’s a wisdom in that.” Papa nodded.
“Knowing the right way to deal with the right circumstance at the right time,” I offered.
Papa smiled. “Exactly.”
“Part of our discomfort with death is that it is a reminder to all of us of the impermanence of our own lives. For most people, their own mortality is their greatest fear and the death of a loved one is also the death of a small part of the self.
“Cleo—dogs in general—are intensely loyal to their owners. But they also have a great sense of self. They recognize the boundary between themselves and others, even at an emotional level if not a fully conscious and intellectual one. It’s actually a beautiful thing, because it allows them to be bonded with people, highly intuitive of the emotional climate around them, but also in touch with their own senses. It’s quite fantastic, actually—something to aspire to.”
“What about you, Papa?” I interrupted him as he marveled at Cleo’s emotional intelligence once more. “Are you healed from Daddy’s death?”
Papa paused, thinking to himself. Death is indeed complicated.
He exhaled heavily, a swell of emotion forming in his eyes. “I’m doing the best that I can.”
Chapter Eight
What’s the one thing I should teach Krishu?
The one and only thing that is truly important is that he should be himself. Being in touch with one’s self and comfortable with who you are enables a person to radiate simple unaffected humanity. There is nothing more lovable or more charming or more evolutionary than not having to put on a social mask. That simple unaffected humanity or comfort with your own identity allows a person to behave spontaneously and effortlessly and meet the challenges of life with joyfulness, courage, and confidence no matter what comes their way.
IT HAD BEEN A WHILE SINCE WE’D HEARD FROM MY mother. Considering that pretty much all of my life we’d spoken several times a day, I was oddly comforted by the silence. To me it meant that there was nothing significant for her to report, that Nana’s recovery must have been on track. That all changed when I got a call from my father.
“Have you spoken to your mother?”
“No,” I replied. “Not for a few days. Why?”
Pause.
“I can’t reach her.”
He sounded uneasy. I knew this tone well, especially as it related to my father being able to reach my mother. For a man who spent so much time traveling by himself to far-off places, it was a curious irony. Papa liked to know my mother’s whereabouts and grew paranoid when he went more than two hours without speaking to her, even when he didn’t have anything in particular to say.
Yes, two hours, the duration of your average movie. This very issue has been a significant one in my parents’ marriage. My mother loves to see movies and my father hates not being able to speak to her whenever he wants to. And yet, despite this overwhelming challenge, they persevere.
“I’m sure everything’s fine,” I reassured Papa. “I mean . . . if it wasn’t, then she would have called.”
“Yeah,” he agreed. “You’re right.”
But as I hung up the phone, I was the uneasy one. I tried my mom on her cell but predictably it went unanswered. I went to sleep that night with a bad feeling in the pit of my stomach. Sure enough, about an hour later, just after midnight, the phone rang. It was my mother.
“Is everything okay?” I asked, before she could even really say anything.
“Nana’s back in the hospital,” she answered.
I didn’t know how to respond.
“He wasn’t feeling well, couldn’t get out of bed, and became disoriented. It may just be dehydration, but . . .” Her voice trailed off.
“But what!?” I wanted to blurt out, but didn’t, sensing my mom didn’t want to say anything further.
“They’re doing some tests,” she said. “I wanted to know what we’re dealing with before I called, but it may take a few days.”
She was stressed. She was unsure what she was dealing with and it had formed a thick fog of angst around her.
I wanted to say something reassuring, but couldn’t find the words.
We chatted for a few minutes, me sharing stories about the milestones Krishu had passed, Mom updating me on our relatives in India. But I could tell she was weary. It wasn’t just the ambiguity of Nana’s health. It was being away from home, from her grandkids, who had become her lifeline in recent years. From Papa too. She asked how he was doing.
“Good.” I nodded as I said it, as if she could see me from the other side of the planet. There wasn’t much point to saying anything more. She could be half a world away, as she was, and still know exactly how Papa was doing.
Mom said she’d call as soon as she had any news on Nana’s condition. She told me to give a big kiss to Krishu, and then she said good night. I rolled back over and gave my sleeping boy that kiss right then and there. But I couldn’t sleep. In fact, I tossed and turned all night, which would prove to be a very bad thing, considering what was waiting for me.
MORNING LOG 8/1/09
Dog wakes up at 4:46 a.m.
Baby wakes up at 4:47 a.m.
Baby pees on bedroom floor.
Dog shits on playroom floor.
Baby pees on bathroom floor.
Baby and dog fight over sausage.
Dog wins.
Baby cries.
Papa (Deepak) wakes up and decides to walk to Starbucks.
Baby pees on living room floor.
Dog sleeps.
Baby wants Mama.
Papa (Gotham) exhausted.
AS THE FATHER of an infant, I had discovered that Monday mornings had become the new Friday nights. No longer was there any other part of the week that I looked forward to more than Monday at nine a.m., when our wonderful nanny arrived
to take Krishu off our hands. After weekends spent in the never-ending routine of entertaining the boy, cleaning up after the boy, and cleaning up the boy, I anticipated the Monday morning reprieve like an eleventh-hour phone call from the governor.
I was not alone in this. On Monday mornings I’d detect in Candice a distinctive spring in her step, a renewed energy to get out the door and to the office as soon as she possibly could. Which explains why, when the perfect storm hit us that August morning, no amount of lollipops (Krishu’s kryptonite) could stave off my own personal Lex Luthorian doomsday. The prior night, our nanny had called to say she wasn’t feeling well and was unlikely to be able to come to work. Being that it was the infamous summer of H1N1, we urged her to stay away. Candice, meanwhile, was summoned to the hospital at four in the morning to consult on a patient who had been involved in a car accident. That left me to manage Monday morning on my own. Cue the apocalypse.
I had always rationalized that I’d pick up this “parenting thing” when, you know, I became a parent. The way I looked at it, so far so good. Both Cleo and Krishu were alive and seemingly well. If nothing else, I took great pride in this approach because it contrasted so starkly with my wife’s more regimented philosophy. In other words, I got to be the good guy, a role I thought I played pretty well and which gave me great self-esteem, even if it made my wife occasionally hate me. The downside was that she got to revel in moments when she knew her strict approach wasn’t available to counterbalance my more laissez-faire technique. She knew better than anyone that, left on our own, especially at key times when both Krishu and Cleo craved her rituals and a consistent routine, a mother of a meltdown would occur. And I’d have to take my medicine.
Meanwhile, Papa’s presence over the past weeks had added a new energy to the mix. Cleo, in particular, regarded him with a mixture of warmth and suspicion. On the one hand, Papa was another person to bully for treats, to take her for walks, and to study like the seasoned anthropologist she had become. Because Papa wasn’t necessarily wise to her ways, she could manipulate him, thereby exploiting this weakness in the household.
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