I am still stroking his warm ear when the vet says, “He’s gone.” For a second, I can’t breathe. I have spent more hours over the last ten years with Carl than with my family. He never went to work or school or slept over at a friend’s house. Christian was in diapers when we got Carl; he’s in junior high now. Eliza was in grade school; now she’s in college. It seems as though Carl has been with me my whole life. That big black dog is in every family scene I can recall. I’ve stepped around him a thousand times while cooking, run hundreds of miles at his side, and kept my feet warm for eleven winters on his belly as he slept under my desk. I change my mind. I want him back. This is not a good lesson. It is a really, really bad lesson. I feel like a moose kicked me in the chest.
I have written so many obituaries and been to so many funerals that I thought I understood. I thought there was some order in the universe that made each death happen for a reason. I know that from dust we come and to dust we will return and there’s not a damn thing we can do about it. I honestly do. And I knew Carl was dying—I planned his death, right down to where we would bury him. Despite all of that, losing this good old dog has undone me. “I know,” I think, “but I am not resigned.” I can’t get the lines from Edna St. Vincent Millay’s “Dirge Without Music” out of my head. “I am not resigned to the shutting away of loving hearts in the hard ground. / So it is, and so it will be, for so it has been time out of mind.” Yes, I do know. “But I do not approve. And I am not resigned.”
It’s as if my wise old dog knew I needed this lesson, knew in his big bones that I didn’t really get it. It has taken this dog’s death to connect me to all the people whose obituaries I’ve written, and to their grieving friends and families. I have wished that, after every single obituary, I’d known the person better, that I’d asked them one more question while they were living, said thank you one more time, smiled another hello in the grocery store, or invited them over for dinner. Now, one awful burial service comes right back at me. A young man had died in a car wreck. At the cemetery, his sister threw herself on the casket before they lowered it into the ground and yelled, “No” long and loud. At the time, I thought someone should have stopped her, gently pulled her back. She was making a scene. Didn’t she know this is how it is with life? We die. Now suddenly I understand. Sure she knew, but she did not approve. Before I can think any further about that, I see my children following me through the windows and look away. I know they are all crying, too, and I don’t want to make it worse. I don’t want to talk to them right now. I’m afraid of what I might say.
Chip pays the vet and thanks her. “We should be able to do this for people,” she says. “It’s so much better than a painful, messy death.” Maybe, I think, but maybe not. The chant inside my head gets louder. “I know. But I do not approve. And I am not resigned.” When she leaves, we wrap Carl up in the quilt and carry him to the grave that Chip dug yesterday. He starts to fill it in, then stops. He’s crying now. Seeing us both so helpless, Christian runs outside and takes the shovel. In a minute, his sisters arrive with more shovels from the shed. They are still in their pajamas. We don’t say a word as we pile sand and gravel over Carl.
I don’t think my family realizes that my reaction to events can change their perception of them. I don’t think they know how much power I have to make a moment good or bad. But I do. So instead of falling on my knees and wailing for Good Dog Carl and all the souls departed from this little town, I turn to the one thing that is both great and good. I stand by the grave and clearly read a few words from the Book of Common Prayer, thanking God for giving us Good Dog Carl, a companion and friend. When I finish, I look up at my family, all crumpled with grief, all trying so hard to take care of one another, and I feel a rush of love. Chip holds out his hand and I take it and we all walk back in the house. Christian speaks first. He asks if I’ll cook some bacon for breakfast. Then J.J. says she wants waffles with strawberries.
I say yes to both.
I am still not resigned, and I still do not approve. But I do know that this is what it means to be human, to be a mother and a wife and an obituary writer in Haines, Alaska. This is my life, and I am grateful.
If You Lived Here, I'd Know Your Name Page 25