grief, reprised

Today, I reprise a poem. It’s for me more than anyone who might stop by here. I need it.

In 1990, I adopted a dog I will never forget. It wasn’t because he was so smart or talented or beautiful; he was all those things. It wasn’t because I finally got to name a dog Beowulf. He was love and everything that love is supposed to be: companionship, respect, affection—all those things unconditionally.

He died of kidney disease just after my daughter was born. I could see him struggling to hang on while I carried her, and he waited for me—for us—to welcome her before he succumbed to his illness. I blogged about my calendar a while back. He sired five puppies with our other dog, Cleopatra, who is out back as I write, soothing her arthritis in a thick bed of pine needles.

We kept the first dog of the litter, Buddha, a happy, fat pup who always seemed to get there first. He was “numbah one son” around here. A few years ago, he got hit by a car while chasing a fox out of the usual safety of our park’s woods. His death was especially painful for my daughter; Buddha was her best friend. In every picture of Serena’s infancy, the dog was beneath her, below her, around her, on her. I wrote about "his death in May of '05, about the note we found tucked in his collar, his body on the side of the road: "Tried to save him."

I bring all this up not to make myself miserable, though it's doing a top-notch job, but to marvel all how easily it can resurface. Skin does not grow on top of the wounds of grief. A fragile scab covers that gash. Eventually, you learn your way around those places so that you do not dislodge its cover.

We are fortunate to be in touch with the owners of three of Cleo’s and Wulf’s puppies—not puppies anymore, but ten this past August. One, the last to go (and who almost didn’t) is our veterinarian’s dog, Timber. (Our name for him was Gunga Din.) Our neighbors adopted two, Brooksie (the girl, after Brooks Robinson) and Casey (the boy, after “Casey at the Bat”). We will always know them as Cheyenne and Rin Tin Tin, even though it has been a decade since those puppies romped and nursed in a towel-filled kiddie pool in our basement.

Robin, their owner, called me last night. I knew from the caller ID that it was not a call I wanted. Just typing these words, the tears are welling up.

Casey had been sick over the summer. Robin thought it was vertigo, and the dog had been on steroids. The last few times I saw him, I kissed him extra hard and loved him extra long. I didn’t think it was vertigo. He looked so uncomfortable, so awkward.

Casey was put to sleep on Tuesday, after a brief struggle with a brain tumor that wasn’t visible on an x-ray.

It is so easy to dislodge that scab. Even with someone else’s dog, I feel that a part of Beowulf has died again.


- - - - - -
how to lose


first you drown.
submerged
by force of shock
shock of force.
you can almost touch
a breath with your hand.
now you thrash toward it
splashless kicks to surface
but you drown.
now go limp.
the near-infinite sea
the color of deep
the smell of dark
the taste of black.
now wallow.
you and the ocean dogs
bay at moonless night
howl at sunless day
whimper as the tides shift.
you and the ocean dogs.

they say that grief is reduced
by half each year
that fresh death
goes half stale
then half again.
Ten years of halves
of halves
of halves
and you can still reach down
and touch it
still break it open
with a nail,
still crawl back inside it
grief as comfort
as old friend.

when he becomes
a phantom limb
dangling by your side
silent and painless
you will sink less
by half and half again.

but when another goes
the drowning will be deeper
the moaning will undulate
like the voice of ghosts
and you and the ocean dogs
will gnaw at every old wound.
you and the ocean dogs
will sit.

stay.