I’ve been trying for months not to have to write this. It’s become obvious that I’ve needed to, if only to try to get the recurring thought it describes out of my mind, where it has come up at odd and frequent intervals, usually just as I almost drift off to sleep.
I’m posting it here because I’m not sure what else to do with it. Those readers who are impatient with grief still warm after five whole months are warned to go read something else.
February 3, 2007, approximately 12:10 p.m.
Cold hardwood presses into me, my hip,
my sternum, a cramp of rib and back,
face down on hardwood floor. An hour ago
you looked hard into my eyes, searching
it seemed, but for what? My presence there?
A stroke of reassurance? For release?
You met my gaze and held it, lingering
but fervent, and I told myself you knew
and understood, a fable I concocted
to steel myself.
I could not make the call.
In that small detail I failed you today.
I could not move, could manage nothing but
a panicked stare at Becky, weakness in
a moment we’d anticipated. Your
brave attempts to elevate yourself,
to rise, to join us, they enfeebled me
and I sat next to you tear-mired
as Becky got the phone. Craning your neck,
you stretched your strong front legs out leisurely,
as if it was any of ten thousand
late mornings passed lazing around the house,
waiting for me to fetch the leash. She made
the call. We had an hour to wait. An hour
to say what must be said to you. Nothing.
There was nothing I could say to you
but this embrace, this gaze, this abject fear
of grief, this sense of water running through
cupped fingers.
Hardwood presses into me
on this fragment of floor from which my eyes
will turn away for months to come. You meet
my gaze again and hold it. Nothing said.
Nothing more could possibly be said
that I won’t say a thousand times a day
for months.
He’s at the door.
I think you know
why he has come; it seems like you accept
the fact of his arrival gratefully
and calm, placid, only the slightest flinch
at needle’s blessed entry into vein.
It all went perfectly, you know. It all
went perfectly, your life with us, and now
it will end perfectly, with all of us
together, nothing to regret at all
save all of it. Though we will long survive
this happy end with amputated hearts,
it all went perfectly.
There are two drugs;
the first to make you sleep anesthetized
against the possibility of some
discomfort from the second, which will stop
that deep and steady beating that I have
heard so many times muffled by fur,
my head reclined against your laboring ribs
your groan hard to decipher. Discontent
with my intrusion? Happiness? The pack’s
deep-rooted thigmotropic moan let loose?
I do not know. Nor will I ever know
whether — in this ache-interval between
the first drug and the last, when into calm
and trembling sleep you ease, your lips at work,
even your back, useless legs at work, and he
looks up at me from stethoscope and vial
to tell me you are dreaming, probably —
whether he’s guessed the truth about your dream,
and if that last unconscious dreaming thought
contains a broad and sun-lit grassy field,
a perfect sky, and if after these past
few hobbled years, with dogged glee
at last, your bright strong legs hold you again,
and, with a final joyous look at us,
you run away for good.
Beautiful Zeke. Run painlessly, for all time, for joy.
For his people, there’s the world after - and much more than five month’s grief in the end of the life of a profound love.
Empathy for you and Becky.
Gladness you and Zeke found each other, and loved so well.
I’m glad you could share this. It has the beauty of necessity.
Damn it, Chris, I have work to do, and it’s much more difficult to do teary-eyed.
5 months is a drop of spit in the creek - thanks for putting this out and letting me share it even in a distant way - if it brings tears to my eyes for your grief and my own, I can imagine how much more intensely you are feeling this loss. Blessings to you and Becky - Zeke already had / has the blessing of you two as his family.
Tears and tears and it is good to cry. a wonderful
tribute to a Zeke. it touches me again, and i can
grieve losses.
“with dogged glee
at last, your bright strong legs hold you again,
and, with a final joyous look at us,
you run away for good. “
You got me this time, Chris. What a beautiful image. Bright strong legs, indeed.
And as in medias res said, 5 months is nothing. Thank you for posting this.
Sravana, remembering little Geno, little Baron, not-so-little Zack, big Aggie, big Maude, and other little and big K9s who have passed on…
Made me cry. Again. Thank you for posting this and for sharing with us.
tears, i mean cheers to you, zeke.
and my bunny girl, too.
perfection - a grief observed is a grief shared and lightened. hugs from PA - connie
it won’t be enough, but remembering is what we get to keep. xoxo
It’s been more than a year for me, and I haven’t been able to write the analogous words; I wonder now if I’ll ever be able to, or even want to. I know what you mean about the haunting before sleep. Hope it helped to write this down - beautifully, sadly, brokenly - and share it with us.
Apart from taking such good, sensible care of my dying brother, the best thing the hospice did for me, after my weeks of struggling against tyrannical doctors who, against his wishes and mine, kept him on a respirator when he had fatal cancer of the lungs, was to say after he breathed his last breath, “We will send you our grief newsletter every month for eighteen months.”
I laughed at the ridiculous conjunction of the words “grief” and “newsletter,” but my grief was no laughing matter. And here was the hospice telling me, once a month for eighteen months, that I wasn’t crazy, that not only I but other people, too, were profoundly addled by prolonged suffering and sorrow and profoundly needed prolonged support.
Grief takes as long as it takes. Our capacity for it is commensurate with our potential for joy. It is part of what makes us decent enough to live on ourselves afterward. Your friends out here in electronland hold you in our embrace.
IME, the only thing that works is tincture of time,and damn but it works so slowly.
A saturated heart needs its release and for this reason (among many others) I hope you will cherish your heart more and concern yourself less with impatient people who have the audacity to find fault with your grief. (How strange that they do!)
As painful as these memories are you’ll be grateful one day that you wrote them down. I wish I’d kept better track. Now I find myself straining to remember details I couldn’t know would be important to me.
You rescued Zeke twice. Dog’s best friend, you are.
Keep writing it down, Chris. We’ve got your back.
Tears.
Write about it as long as you need to.
Anyone who says otherwise has no heart, no soul.
I hope it helps a little that we are here for you.
I too could read about Zeke every day.
It truly does, stinger. I don’t think you all have any idea how much.