“Feel better, lady? Good, Gizelle! Good girl!” I told her when she managed to stand, trying not to act sad in front of her. She gave a slight wag and a pant.
“GOOD girl!” John added.
“Good Gizelle!” We chimed in together, cheering her on as we would a toddler. Our voices got higher and our breaths broke through the cold. A tear trickled down my face, but we just kept telling Gizelle how great she was and how much we loved her. We didn’t know what else to do in that moment. We were both so sad, but also just wanted to be in the backyard with her one last time. We didn’t mean to get Gizelle excited. We weren’t thinking about how stoic she was. Gizelle wagged her tail from side to side on the ice. I clapped my hands and told her she was such a good dog. Gizelle gave one last big, excited jump and then:
YELP! YELP! YELP! YELP!
Her noncancerous leg buckled, and she collapsed onto the ice. We ran to her in horror, and her whole body rumbled into a violent shudder as we helped her up. She shook it off. Then she dropped her head, embarrassed, probably ashamed that she could no longer be what she wanted to be—playmate, protector, running partner, confidante, friend. John and I also lowered our heads in shame—we should have known better. When John started crying, I was so sad, but I also knew how lucky I was that he came into our lives. I knew how much he loved Gizelle, how he came home from work every day to see her. I was so thankful to have him as dog-godparent, to have him as Gizelle’s other dad. I knew they had a special bond, too. “It’s okay, girl. It’s okay,” I whispered, rubbing her ears as quiet tears trickled down my face. That was it. It was time to go to the vet. I’d given her all of the protein, car rides, beach trips, and snuggles that I could. If it were my bucket list, I would keep writing, more, more, more adventures with Gizelle! I need Gizelle! But if this were Gizelle’s Bucket List (which I suppose it was), she would probably say, “Okay, that was a great adventure! Thank you! I love you! Now let me go, Lauren! Let it all go, Lauren.”
Let her go.
It was the only thing left to do.
Except for all those other only things left to do. We turned the heat on in the car to let it warm up. We packed her dog bowl away so we wouldn’t have to come back and look at it. I cleaned up the mountain of blankets to keep sad leftover dog hair to a minimum. I packed away her pills and her treats and I wiped nose marks off the cabinets. Each of us took turns crying. It became clear how Gizelle hadn’t just influenced my life; she had influenced theirs, too. It was a testament to what kind people they were, some of the kindest I’d ever met. Not many would volunteer to babysit someone’s gigantic, terminally ill dog. Gizelle’s life came with an unpredictable ticking timer and a pharmacy that had to be restocked with pills every two weeks, and those pills had to be wrapped perfectly in peanut butter to get the patient to swallow them. Caitlin and John did this. They were the best godparents a young dog mom could have asked for, and I said a prayer of gratitude for them as I tried to reach the car without breaking down.
I lifted Gizelle’s bum into the backseat of the car, placing my feet shoulder-width apart, tightening my abdominal muscles and bending my knees and hips into a squatting position to lift her. Three, two, one, heave! It was the last time. Whenever I did this, I always feared that I would drop her before we reached the seat, but I never did. Lifting her into the backseat always made me feel strong, motherly. I climbed in the back with her. She settled in and snuggled her head in my lap. My bottom lip quivered. As Caitlin started the car down Pleasant Street (which seemed to be much too cheerfully named) and we headed toward the vet’s office, I understood the meaning of the expression “a broken heart.” My heart hurt miserably; it felt as though someone had tied a belt around it and was pulling tightly. It was the worst feeling I’d ever felt. I collapsed my chest onto Gizelle’s head. I pinched my eyes shut.
17
Run
By the time we got to the vet, the sun was piercingly bright, beating into my eyes like bright stadium lights. “Okay, Gizelle. Go potty!” I sniffled, shuffling my feet in the grass on the lawn outside, breathing into my hands to try to keep warm. I’d never wanted to stay outside in the cold so badly.
Going inside meant that it would be over, that it already was over. Going in meant that there would be no more Lauren and Gizelle. There would only be Lauren. I loved being Lauren and Gizelle. I didn’t want to just be Lauren. A huge part of me didn’t know who that even was. Gizelle walked toward the doors. They were drawing us in like a sneaky riptide. Suddenly, I was standing inside—I didn’t even remember walking in.
“I’m here with Gizelle . . . I have to . . . We have to . . . It’s . . . It’s time . . .” I choked on the words. My cries sounded like hiccups now, like short little whimpers. A man in blue scrubs handed me a box of tissues and didn’t ask questions, just shook his head in sympathy. “I’m so sorry, dear. Hi, Gizelle. Follow me,” he said softly, leading us into a dimly lit room with a big black CD player and a soft gray couch. Gizelle limped slowly behind.
It was the saddest make-believe living room ever. I wondered how many hearts had broken in that room. There was a curtain over the door to give us privacy, and thick blankets on the floor for Gizelle. But Gizelle, oddly determined, limped to the corner of the room to lie down. She watched the door. I wondered if she was already on her way out then. I wondered if she was trying to get a head start. I brought a bone for her to enjoy. She looked at it but didn’t chew it. It sat like an accessory, a prop, next to her. She almost seemed too distinguished to stoop to chewing a dog bone, beyond canine, beyond human, in fact. She just lay there, with her head up and her eyes on the door. I called her over to the blankets.
The three of us crowded around her. My face was smeared with tears and snot. I looked over at the CD player, feeling guilty for not bringing her theme song, Whitney Houston’s version of “I’m Every Woman,” or Stevie Wonder’s “For Once in My Life.” I wondered what other kinds of songs or noises had played on that CD player in this pretend living room. The silence felt right, in any case. I sat and held Gizelle’s paw, rubbing it softly with my thumb. “It’s okay, girl. It’s okay, girl” I repeated, unsure who I was speaking to—myself or my dog.
Then the vets started to put on what I can only describe as a very well-rehearsed and thoughtful performance. They began to enter and exit the room with a carefully choreographed series of questions and explanations, always sincere yet so calm. I could tell they had done this hundreds of times, which was comforting. It seemed as though they began and ended every sentence with “I’m so sorry,” which I never got tired of hearing. I was sorry, too.
They asked if we wanted to give Gizelle a sedative so she could fall asleep—not the death thing yet, just sleep—and then we wouldn’t have to worry about her stressing and hiding in the corner when they came in with “the syringe.” “I’m so sorry.” There were decisions that I was not prepared to make: what to do with Gizelle’s body, what kind of urn I wanted, did I want an expensive private cremation or was I okay with a group one? “I’m so sorry.” But I couldn’t answer their questions. All I could think about was soaking up these last few minutes with Gizelle. So they let me check a box saying that they would call me in a few days to talk about it. “I’m so sorry.”
I sat on the floor next to Gizelle, rubbed her ears, and marveled above all her beauty. Even in the horribly sad end of her life, when she was crippled with pain, she was still my brave, jowled, magnificent, big-boned, curvy gentle giant—my Tyrannosaurus rex, Jumanji, Smartcar, Beowulf, Bear, Gorilla, Tiger, Holy Shit, AHHHHH!!!, King Kong, Cujo, GIRL YOU CRAZY. My pretty brindle, daughter of Dozer, once scared of the sound of wrapping paper but then brave enough to move to New York City. My therapist, my BFF, my confidante, and the noble keeper of every secret my nineteen to twenty-five-year-old self ever could have had, so thank goodness she was so big. I know I will love again, but never will I love anything the way I loved my 160-pound puppy.
The vet gave her the sedative and wrapped her
paw in a hot-pink bandage. I couldn’t help but be pleased at the color. “This isn’t it yet,” she promised. “Gizelle will fall into a nice little nap right now. She’ll just drift to sleep, and then I’ll do the rest. I’m so sorry, guys.”
I nodded my head okay. One of my hands rested on the floor next to Gizelle’s paw, and the other I kept on her head, stroking her softly. I watched her get very sleepy. Her breaths started to slow and her whole body began to look heavier, impossible as that is to imagine, as though she were sinking into the floor. Her eyelids began to flutter. Just as I thought she would fall asleep and never move again, she picked up that big head of hers and placed it on the palm of my hand, and there it stayed, some part of her always having to touch some part of me. I unraveled. My whimpering turned to tears and I wept. I was holding her whole, big heavy head in my single hand, the weight of it pressing against my fingertips. “It’s okay, Lauren. It’s okay,” I bet she’d say. I could feel her breath in my palm, moistening my hand. Her breathing got slower until I could only feel a light wave of hot air in my fingertips, disappearing but then reappearing again like the ocean to the shore.
The vet pulled out the syringe. “She won’t feel any pain. But before I do anything, I want to warn you, there’s no telling what may happen when she passes. Her bowels may move, she may urinate, she may shake a little bit. She won’t feel any pain, though. I’ll insert the needle, and in about twelve seconds it will stop her heart. I’m so sorry. It will be okay. Okay?” I nodded yes, my face pinched in pain. Gizelle’s head rested in my hand. It was hard to believe I’d ever agree to stop Gizelle’s sensitive heart. That didn’t seem okay at all.
The vet inserted the needle with one hand and held her stethoscope to Gizelle’s chest, actively listening to her heartbeat. I wanted to imagine the mastiff heartbeat sounded like a deep, noble drum. Part of me wished I could hear what the vet could hear. The sound of a heart stopping, the sound of our adventure ending. Those twelve seconds felt like an eternity. My entire adult life ran before my eyes in a series of freeze frames. The newspaper stretched across the steering wheel in Mom’s Murano. Happier times with Mom, sneaking off and buying a giant puppy. The soccer goal with Fatty attached flying across the field. Our first Manhattan apartment with the sloped floor. Steaming Times Square poos. “Splish Splash, I Was Takin’ a Bath” on the back patio of Rio. Walking the runway in Tompkins Square Park. Vino tasting with Conner. Dancing. Cuddling. Road trips. Running.
I watched the liquid in the tiny syringe run into Gizelle’s massive body, and as it went in and her life faded out, she took some of the twenty-five-year-old me with her. The hot moisture coming out of Gizelle’s nose slowed, and her head grew heavier, uninhabited by spirit, fragile in my hand. Its weight pressed my knuckles to the floor. And then it stopped. Her heart stopped.
The room went silent.
“Okay, it’s done. Take your time,” the vet whispered, pressing her lips into a line. She slowly moved her stethoscope into her pocket, bowed her head, and reached out to touch Gizelle one last time. I carefully slid my hand out from under Gizelle’s head. I couldn’t believe how immediately empty that room felt. One second her head was alive, breathing, on my hand, and the next second it wasn’t. And the departure, the grand exit of her presence, was so strong and significant, it was as if she’d Tasmanian Devil-ed out of there, pouncing out of the fake living room, through the vet’s office, sprinting wildly through the front doors and on to her next adventure. Her spirit’s exit was so strong that when I looked back at her massive physical body on the floor, I knew Gizelle wasn’t in it. Where did she go? I wondered. It was kind of like when you just had something in your hands, but then you set it down and you couldn’t recall where you’d put it, but you knew it was there, somewhere. You knew it didn’t vanish into a nothing. Gizelle didn’t turn into a nothing. I felt her run away; I really did. “Please take your time.” The vet repeated as she stood in the doorway. She didn’t even have to say she was sorry this time. I wanted out of the room. Gizelle was not in that room anymore. So I quickly got up and left, tears running down my face again. I turned and took one last glance at her big empty body as the door closed behind me.
* * *
I hadn’t exactly made a plan for my afternoon. My bus was leaving in four hours to go back to Manhattan. It was hard to be in the house, because that only reminded me of Gizelle. Caitlin and John eventually went to work. John was so heartbroken that he said he needed to do something to keep busy. Caitlin took me to get a coffee at Lil’s. We sat in the window quietly together, trying to process what had happened.
Then she had to go to work, too. I was left on my own. I tried to go for a walk into downtown Portsmouth, but the cold wind was so strong it felt like it was electrocuting my face. I started walking across the World War I Memorial Bridge from Kittery to Portsmouth, and about a third of the way across I realized I couldn’t do it. I didn’t want to be around anyone else, or myself, for that matter, so I turned around. I needed to be in the presence of something bigger than myself, my grief. So I drove to New Castle, New Hampshire, to find the ocean.
I had driven this route with Gizelle a couple of times before. When I arrived, I saw a black-and-white lighthouse to my left, and another run-down, old brown lighthouse out in the water in front of me. The sky was blue, like Genie-from-Aladdin blue. I stood on some rocks above the beach. There were hardly waves, just the slightest ripple, and no boats or birds in sight. Everything was still. You’d think maybe I would have been done crying by now, that maybe I’d be still for a moment. But oh, no, no, no.
I howled into the ocean. A heavy cry. A cry that sounded like the hardest breathing after I had just finished running sprints on bleachers and couldn’t catch my breath. I closed my eyes tightly. The subzero winds hit my face and I wondered how I had any more tears left. I held my eyes shut, and for a while I didn’t breathe. I squeezed my arms around my body. I was feeling so many emotions at once: pain and anger, grief and confusion. But then I felt a sensation I cannot describe in any other way except that when I closed my eyes, I could actually see Gizelle as though she were in front of me, running. She was running as fast as she could, faster than I’d ever seen her run. She was free: her tongue flailing out of her mouth, her mouth open so wide you could see her pretty white teeth. She was in a field of purple flowers. My eyes opened to a squint and my body released its tension. I had stopped crying. I don’t know when I had stopped crying, but I had. I took a breath. I could breathe.
My bus wasn’t leaving to go back to Manhattan for another few hours. My rental car was packed with my things, and I wondered what to do next. The thought of another lobster roll or one more doughnut at Congdon’s kind of made me want to throw up. I wasn’t hungry. I wasn’t thirsty. I didn’t want to talk to anyone. I didn’t want to write. I didn’t want to do anything. How would I start my next chapter, Gizelle-less? And when I looked out into the quiet ocean, it was clear: I needed to go back to the thing I knew how to do best, the thing that came naturally to me, the only thing engrained in my body that made me feel most like myself. I got back in the car.
I drove down the coast to find a place to park. There was still dog hair in my cup holder, and I kept checking in my rearview mirror for Gizelle in the backseat. But there was no Gizelle, only evidence of our adventures in the cup holder. I kept driving. I parked in a vacant motel parking lot, threw on another pair of leggings and a jacket, and laced up my running shoes. When I got out, I was the only person in the empty parking lot. It was horribly cold, but a sunny cold. I didn’t realize it then, but alone by the beach that day, I’d gotten what I’d asked for. I was traveling by myself. Totally on my own. Somewhere on the New England coast over a thousand miles away from Tennessee and three hundred miles from Manhattan. And Gizelle had brought me here. Is this what you wanted, girl? I thought. Looking down at my Asics, knowing exactly what she wanted.
I ran.
I ran down to the empty beach, and the cold air went straigh
t through my double leggings and my gloves. It was so cold, it hurt. But it was a hurt that canceled out the hurt of my heart for a moment. It was like the cold wind was going to pierce my skin and rush into my ears and down into my lungs and blow away the sadness and pain. I told myself I would run a mile. A mile wasn’t much. Sure, the wind stung my face, the cold air squeezed more tears from my dry eyes, and the sand slipped beneath my feet. But if I could run a mile, what else could I do?
I thought about what it takes to run the last mile of a marathon, your twenty-sixth mile, when you are really tired and you don’t want to keep going. You aren’t really sure if you will make it, but you keep putting one foot in front of the other, and you have to believe you can because the moment you think you can’t, you won’t. And once you make up your mind that you’re going to do it, that you’re going to keep running even though it’s hard, that’s when the magic happens. That’s when it’s almost as if some supreme backup power swoops in and says, Here, I’m going to run this mile for you. And next thing you know you are sprinting, you are sprinting when you never could have imagined it humanly possible to sprint, faster than you ever thought you would go. It’s magic.
I felt something similar on the beach that day. Running a mile even though it was hard. Running a mile when I was devastated. Running a mile to prove to myself that I could keep going, even when things weren’t easy. And that’s when magic happened. As I reached the end of my run on the empty beach that day, I looked down at my feet and there in the sand was a trail of very big paw prints.
EPILOGUE
Carry It with You
6BC Garden on East Sixth Street
After Gizelle died, Caitlin came to visit Rebecca and me in our new apartment on Avenue C in the East Village. It was the end of January—cold and dreary in Manhattan. We bundled ourselves into matching coats (never let it be said that we weren’t all grateful for my time at the Gap) and walked to a cozy French restaurant called Lucien that transports you to the 7th Arrondissement for the evening. It started to snow as we walked across Fourth Street. Gentle snowflakes drifted from the winter sky and seemed to disappear just before touching the ground. They floated around us as we talked about how much we missed Gizelle, how she always looked so pretty with her brindle coat against the snow.
Gizelle's Bucket List Page 16