Honoring canine high spirits
UNBEARABLE LIGHTNESS (15)
After Mom died in our hometown in upstate New York, far from the mountains of Colorado, I published a holiday essay about her death and our grief in the editorial columns of the newspaper where I worked as a writer and editor. Death is an inscrutable mystery, and to me it was still a new Rubik’s Cube. One of my conclusions was that even with parents—those folks who potty-train and teach us about fun and danger and who walk life’s trails with us daily for most of our first 20 years—it’s the smallest elements of our lives together that we most remember when they’re gone. As Mom was ill, and letting go of who else in life she might have longed to be, some of her strongest secret passions being expressed were for ice cream, group travel and Willie Nelson singing “Hey Good Looking” on the phonograph near the bed.
When, like Cinderella, Mom, a city girl to her core, eventually dropped that warm slipper on the cold floor of the hospital, sadly, there was no royal coach waiting to carry her to a castle and happy-ever-afterness in the fairy-tale sense. The notion of heaven above does comfort many believers, and surely if there is such a safe haven, she’s there with her feet up, no longer ironing socks and underwear. Besides her slipper, a clasp purse came home with us. It held those weathered glasses and, if I recall, a tissue or two.
Meanwhile, her lifeless body did not come home, but was swept away to a funeral home to be prepared for final viewing and interment. No autopsy was ordered. Contacted by men in suits about the particulars of that last viewing, we smiled to describe how she wore her lipstick a little excessively. After the trauma of her final day, these were mostly the small effects that came to rest where her body and spirit had been that morning. The loss of her presence in our world was too big for words, and the wind beat furiously against the cold windows in the dining room where her bed had held sway.
In an emotional sense, the haunting drama around the death of a loved one is not dissimilar whether the patient is a person or a long loved dog. Any chance to be more gracious, giving, and involved, even less judgmental or enmeshed, are over. Although we brought Duke’s deadweight body home in the back seat of the car to be buried on our property, my husband discreetly lifted him from the car and struggled to load him into the frozen earth the next morning alone. It was mid-December, and he didn’t tell me what he was up too until it was over. I was not feeling well and did not protest, having never felt quite one with burial plots.
Many people say their last goodbyes in treatment rooms—even lobbies—of clinics where pets are euthanized. They leave for home feeling blank and helpless, with a leash and collar they no longer know what to do with. After Mom died, Dad and I sat in silence before retiring, with the slipper and other small effects around us. The sense of loss was overwhelming. Mom had fully gone missing.
You may know, when there is a terminal diagnosis and it is cogently conveyed, that a person’s or an animal’s death is coming, but what is there to do about it anyway? Whether one lives in denial or in expanded awareness, it’s hard to wrap your head around the starkness of the physical separation already starting.
In my faith evolution, despite such trying circumstances, we emphasize that where love lives, there is no real separation, even with death. It’s not a concept embraced by everyone who grieves. While I accept it as truth and derive comfort from it as a spiritual principle, presented at its simplest, it can sound empty to people who have felt abandoned for decades and have been unable to move on from their sense of loss and violation.
In A Course of Miracles teachings, there also is the leveling notion that there can be no order of difficulty in miracles; well, I’d add that in death and loss, it’s similar … no one can really know the nooks and crannies, or the timeline, of another person’s grief recovery process. You go on to celebrate the young and the new, remembering in the hidden corners those who imprinted themselves on your heart.
And life goes on. Memory endures, but its plasticity might surprise you. In case you haven’t experienced soulful loss yet in your young life, the thing to get about it is this: It is often the smallest elements on your daily “to do” list that really are most important, for they contain the essence of life and love, the DNA of peaceful caring.
Love rules the universe, in all of its humblest elements.
Duke’s small plaque connects us.
HELLO FROM THE OTHER SIDE (16)
We see Duke this morning at the dog park. It is comforting to be together again. There he is, gazing placidly back at Raven, Mac and I from the plaque we’d purchased and inscribed for the park’s marble wall of remembrance. It is a couple of rows down from the marker honoring our friend Gerre’s Boston Rose, one down from King Lucky, left of Starry and Murphy, a row above Seamus and Jenni, two rows above Rockie. Well more than a dozen remembrances have been added since his face made its appearance. Some of these dogs were buddies he had romped with in the dog park proper—outside the memorial’s iron gates, with the sign in front ironically and emphatically inscribed: No dogs.
That warning presumably means to keep out the living, breathing (and defecating) varieties. For all of the unconditional love our dogs extend to us, many barriers to inclusion in human facilities and activities seem to trace, for whatever reasons, to a lack of universally embraced sanitary disposal options for canine wastes. When we can put a man on the moon, go figure. Hopefully energies applied in this field eventually will prevail.
To be realistic, these challenges aren’t minor. The figures involved can be as imposing as some of the largest breeds. As pressures mounted for closure of another popular off-leash dog park to the north, Denver Post reports asserted a mountain of poop had been picked up over days for pet owners who had failed to do it themselves. Comments about the state of affairs were not polite and patient, but noisy and contentious, with shame and blame flying vigorously back and forth.
A lot about dog park management isn’t easy. An argument could be made that the more adamant some pet owners are about careful habits, the less they tend to use dog parks—often for fear of such behavioral and health issues as flash attacks or lapping up water from a common bowl. On the other side are folks whose chief oversight ethic involves freedom of movement and association. But mind you, dog parks are places where, along with fun and frolicking, issues of life and death occur as well. They happen here and in caring neighborhoods, homes, shelters and veterinarian offices.
We first visit Duke’s memorial marker more than nine months after his death. That day Raven, still anxious and depressed from the loss of her companion, pauses briefly in her march to the exit gate to wait for whatever I am doing. “Duke is finally up,” I inform her, but she doesn’t comprehend. She pauses, then sits restlessly nearby as I lift the black arm to the memorial’s contemplation area and enter. On the metal marker I examine the impression of Duke’s face close up and touch the velvety folds of his jowls one more time … so he knows we are still with him and never meant him harm.
The plaque reads this way:
We miss you every day …
DUKE GOULD
Circa 2004-2015
… but know your spirit romps here in your favorite spot of heaven.
Emotional gratification is swift, as quick as it was after we had first posted the news of Duke’s diagnosis. We have been checking the memorial wall daily for a month or more since approving the final proof of his marker. Normally I might call or write to check on the process, but appreciation bolsters our patience for these parks managers and supporters who have labored tirelessly in creating Duke’s special heaven on earth. One of the most accessible volunteer leaders had succumbed himself after a brief illness, so I know these folks have their own heartaches. They will get to it in time, and do it well. And so they did.
How fitting, too, that Duke finally is memorialized in fall, along with our mom, who, like Duke, died in the dying time of year
… before the social swirl of the winter holidays. It was in mid-October when Duke started showing signs of lameness. Seeing him now, less than a year later, memorialized alongside his own, drives home again that for me heaven and hell are here and now. This is his heaven, and we are with him. Although I smile and nod when I view artist renderings of dogs crossing over the bridge to eternity—and we expect to be reunited with all of our beloveds—this modest marker is enough to bring some sense of closure for me after gradually coming to terms with his loss. It is comforting to know, as well, that his remains are close by as we complete our daily outdoor rounds and head for home.
So this is how it ends. Here, in the rosy rustle of late autumn, Duke’s big spirit is aligned with nature. We think he must be proud of himself, having exceeded expectations for a shelter dog whose personal history, before we met, was lost with his puppy collar.
EPILOGUE
Not much about dog care is not contentious, so I hope readers are gentle in dissecting all of the mistakes we have made over the years in caring for our loyal canines. So forgiving are dogs, no confessional is needed to wash away our sins of commission or omission. Duke wouldn’t give it another thought; neither would Vincent or Curly Willow. They’d just enjoy a hearty bark session and wag their tails before sacking out in front of the dog door.
You may recall us wondering, in Chapter 3, whether cancer’s wackiness had gained entry to our home in such nefarious backdoor fashion. We may never know for sure. Hopefully you will find some relevance in our tale of losing Duke and regaining appreciation for life and health. I can only add that within a year of Duke’s diagnosis—and the reflection it stirred—we both were seeing a dermatologist regularly, which could end up saving us years of life.
Decades ago, between jobs—this was in my thirties, after Mom had disappeared from my world and, in close succession, my uterine tumor had revealed itself—I recall noticing that walking the dogs was becoming the most peaceful part of my day. I had always worked long hours, so I enjoyed this early morning ritual. And with the dogs on leashes, I was sniffing out bigger change. When next I decided to choose a new home out west for something far more than a job, Vincent was ready for the ride.
And somehow it all worked out, the large changes with the small. Duke and I met long after Vincent was gone, when we were seeking a big presence in our empty nest. He was that, a happy warrior, and we aged well together for many years. Gazing now at his memorial plaque, we can feel that the veil is thin in this place.
And while these connections may once have seemed random, over time, for us, they have transcended the purely rational. They are love bonds, special connections that bear heeding, spur learning and offer healing.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Peg Stomierowski Gould, MBA, RScP, LMT, a career writer/editor from upstate New York, moved west to Colorado, then Alaska, where she renewed her love of nature and photography on the stunning Kenai Peninsula. She is licensed both as a massage therapist and a spiritual advisor. Peg and her husband, Todd, raised a family with a diversity of pets in Manitou Springs, CO; they also enjoy working on their log home near Homer, AK. Peg's work appeared daily for decades in newspapers in New York and Colorado, and later for years in Alaska Business Monthly. She also has freelanced for Vocational Biographies, American News Service, Colorado Springs Health, Women’s Edition and several businesses and nonprofits.
Hound Dog Blues Page 6