All Good Things...

She died in the rain on a Monday.

Goodbye Lily…

At-home euthanasia. 

I made the phone call Sunday afternoon and cried to an answering machine -- I hope I get through this, I said. My dog has bone cancer. It's been a year. She needs you...

On the return call a woman spoke quietly with me. How old is Lily? Who is her primary vet? Is the morning good?

Oh, no. I was hoping to spend the day with her tomorrow, I said. Later in the day?

Five?

Ok.

Two women would arrive at 5 on Monday, ready to help Lily die quietly before cancer could ruin her completely. Just two weeks ago she was well enough to hike with me on our trail in the woods. The past two weeks have been an increasing struggle until several days ago, when her hip and leg blew up and she could barely drag herself off the floor.

I hung up after the call and thought: Lily had fewer than 24 hours to go.

Since her cancer diagnosis in September, 2017, I had hoped to somehow avoid the end. However, the end -- those last hours of her life and especially the last few seconds -- were a strange amazing beautiful horrible experience.

My job all day Monday was to sit with Lily. I talked, cried, smoothed her fur and held her head in my lap, made a coffee and forgot all about it. I hate cold coffee.

A jolt of nervousness fluttered through my guts when I looked at the clock. It's noon -- five more hours. It's 1 pm, then two…

Jerry came home around 3:30. More crying and laughing and remembering the Lily moments. Remember when she burst an artery in her tongue when she caught a stick … remember when she fell out of the truck on Main Street -- remember the possum?

Remember when she bit John's dog?

Lily. She has been both a demon and a queen. A beautiful, loving, but very willful dog. 

She has had a really good life, Jerry said.

Thinking of her prompt and unstoppable urge to chase deer through the woods, bound after squirrels, and charge across the street and nip at the neighbor's dog, I said, yeah who else gets to follow every impulse to the point of exhaustion? Is there a better way to spend a life?

I don't know how to say this, Jerry said. Can we talk about this?

Yeah. 

OK, what happens after they come?

Oh, they said they can take her away or we can take her to our vet.

OK, he said.

Our vet closes at 6, I said. Let me call them…

Four pm. Lily, you still have time to do this on your own before they get here, I said. Laugh-cry, laugh-cry.

She tries to stand. 

It's been a long, strange trip, Jerry said.

With fistfuls  of her fur in my fingers I haul her up. Hobbling outside into the rain she stopped at her toy. Although in past weeks our game had changed from fetch to plain catch, we were still playing.

I toss her toy. She snapped it out of the air, then flopped down just outside the front door.

4:30. I sit with her. She is half in the rain. A small roof over the front door gives me enough room to keep dry. She's hurting.

4:45. Lily, you still have 15 minutes to do this on your own before they get here.

Oh my God, Jerry said.

A little humming bird darted through hosta blooms and sipped at a feeder, despite the rain.

5 pm. Two women arrived, found us on the patio, and squatted down to meet Lily.

They would give her a sedative to calm her, help her doze.

A quick injection. We waited.

I stretched out on the cold stone beside my beautiful girl and cried. Her eyes made slow sweeps left, then right. What was she seeing? Her head got heavy. She rested next to me.

The next injection took only seconds. I watched her sides as a few last breaths blew in and out. Then Lily was still.

Stethoscope. From behind me was a quiet voice: her heart has stopped.

Lily's eyes were still open, and I hope she was watching the humming bird, rather than look at me covered in fur, tears, and rain.

Wow. How quickly life is here, then gone, I said.

As I told my brother, I got down on the ground with her, watched her get drowsy and then watched her life pass.

Sometimes something terrible is the right things to do.

We'll get her ashes back soon, and I'll scatter her in the forest along our hiking trail, all the way to the vernal pool and back.

Goodbye you beautiful girl.

She did not die frightened, alone, or in pain.

I let my family know that Lily died quietly and peacefully.

She was home with me -- comfortable, loved, and quite often speckled with my spilled morning coffee. She was a pro at lapping that up.

Waiting For The Storm

Lightning blinds

A rocking chair, folding table, and my father, all covered in its ice 

Burn bright in my eyes as darkness takes back a tattered sky

A tearing sound

The air rips apart

We wait for the storm

Moths on the screen

Dad's summer squash piled high

"Does it smell funny?"

"What, daddy?"

"What? The air. It's ozone. The storm's not far."

"Oh!"

He tells me the sky would light up

He said thunder makes a huge growling sound and it might shake the walls

He said you could feel thunder sometimes

A breeze

Pushing plump raindrops through the screens 

Mist in my eyes

Rain clashes with the day's heat 

Broken concrete walks smell like sand

A gritty dusty smell

"It's coming," dad said

Faraway lights in the clouds moments before the magic

We wait for the storm

He taught me that some people are assholes accidentally.  My name is Jim DiMaggio, he said, and set his coffee cup aside to pace in front of the class. I was a quiet kid sitting up front and smiled as he glanced from face to face.  Bending down to speak to me, he said, I am not related to Joe DiMaggio, and I bet you don't even know who that is. Why would he think that? Does he think girls don't know about baseball? But I told him what he expected to hear. No. He also taught me the phrase, It is better to have it and not need it, than to need it and not have it. That never left my head. I am worlds away from that first day of seventh grade, but I still believe it's better to have what you need, than to find yourself in the rain without a spare tire… ------------ But some things are just impossible. Lily has bone cancer. She is slowing down. Out again in the woods today in an early spring snow, I put a hand up against the suddenly bright sky. It's sunning on our snow, Lily! Nearly six inches fell, but it deflated like cotton candy, becoming nothing under our feet. ------------- She hops along, keeping the weight off of her right rear leg. And after five months, she is getting tired. More limping. Slower to stand up. But happy, happy, happy.  I don't think Mr DiMaggio has a solution for this. One day I'll have to take Lily to the vet. A quick needle, and I am going to have to watch the lights go out of her eyes.  She doesn't know anything about death. Dogs hurt, but I don't think they sit around pondering the eternal unknown after life fades. ----------- I read back through this blog, hoping to find things I have already written about death. Maybe the dead never leave. They are still here, in a way. Hershey has been gone for two years. We were out for a coffee one Saturday when I asked, Remember how much she loved the river?  She was the best dog ever, he said. Don't talk about this, I can't talk about this. I thought I was fine, then I choked on my next sip and sat waiting for my eyes to stop leaking. My grandmother is in my head all the time. My ex boyfriend's name comes up at least once a week. I wonder how much of our thoughts are really our own.  Today the daffodils were ready to scream out in yellow, until snow fell. As I returned home tonight I told the little green bunch, Tomorrow. Bloom. Good girl, Lily. I'll love you as much as I can. You would have already been gone eight years ago when I found you sick in the woods. It is better to have had you, than to have never known.

Thoughts And Things, 2017

One of my favorite assignments for creative writing class was eavesdropping. 

I sat in a lobby or cafeteria and listened … to the kids having coffee, to professors talking about students, to Professor Keneally who loved vodka and was sleeping with a student, and often mocked beer drinkers. Where does the thirst come from, he asked. 

And I listened to the asshole behind me talking about what I guessed was cheating on his girlfriend. I told her I was running late, he said… 

I knew Karen missed class. I knew the girl with the pottery was frustrated that she had not sold much.

I walked over to see what she had. I loved pottery. My friend Maryanne's boyfriend Jason came by and said, that pottery is nice.

Not as nice as my ass, I said. 

I knew where the guy in the red shirt spent his night. She was hot, he said, we did it while her roommate waited outside. 

---------

Tim at the bar after closing was staring at long shadows cast by overturned stools. He said, I had to eavesdrop too. I wrote down anything interesting. We had to build a whole story around like, a sentence.

Did you like it?

I liked writing in prose, but this assignment wanted dialogue, he said. I was not used to writing that way.

Prose and dialogue, I said. It's the difference between, say, daydreaming and tennis.

-----------

Grabbing the scrap of paper, I read what I had overheard: He said, My ass crack was bleeding. I was wearing a thong that night.

For his birthday he wore a sparkling tiara. I loved it. His eye shadow glittered. A true daredevil.

Another day, another comment…

As I walked up the basement stairs and turned to enter the bar, he said, My sister's name used to be Juan Carlos. Now, it's Julia Carmen.

Reading that last note to Tim, he asked, Is that what you were scribbling down?

Yup.

When I told Jerry about it, he suggested that I start writing down things I hear and putting together a book. Three hundred sixty five days at the bar, or something like that.

-----------

Unfolding another stray thought that I wrote on a slip of paper, I read the words, The light fades for everyone eventually. 

I had not overheard that, but thought it on my own while pouring vodka and soda, rum and coke, and popped beer tops for hours. 

Lily has bone cancer. I found out in early October and those words from my vet are the first and last things I think about every day.

How are the dogs, Danny K asked. 

Well, we lost Hershey two summers ago, Bandit has arthritis, the pug had the good grace to quietly slip away in his sleep, and poor Lily has bone cancer.

I'm sorry to hear that, he said.

It's ok, I am not going to tell her, I said.

We hike each day and she chases her toy. I rub her sore leg where the cancer first showed up as a limp. I'm just going to do the things I know she likes. She'll never contemplate death. She will know discomfort one day, but not yet.

I am going to run through the forest with her and toss her rope toy until the light fades.

On a Friday when I didn’t wake up well:

 

Ripe with a pending storm, clouds stir. Wind wrenches dark streaks against a heavy sky…which does not explain why I am remembering a bitter winter morning, just two fingers poking from my gloves to shift or steer and staring through frost on the VW's windshield. The glass was ablaze with sunrise on a narrow bay road in Long Island, 1994-ish.

I was leaving at dawn, slipping from a warm bed in a corner of his messy rented room. Dirty clothes, burnt-down candles, old spaghetti-stained dishes, and piles and piles of cigarette butts. I could smell his shampoo in my hair: love love love. It went sour by summertime.

 A different girl and a different him in another place…

Lipstick smudged on the rim, she sets down her Pinot Grigio: I thought about him all day yesterday, she said. Five minutes passed and I waited another five without touching the phone, then another five and finally it was Midnight and too late to call.

 She’s a girl in a quiet corner somewhere with almost tears puddled in her eyes, dreaming about a guy. What does he feel like? Is he hungry? Is he gentle? Does he even care?

 

 

 

Things I Think In A Blink



Do I seem placid to you?



I hike through windy, bending trees, stop for coffee and watch a cardinal flash red around the bird feeder.


But it's a mess inside.


Screw you bright sunshine and randy wind. My mind, my health. How long have I got?


He stood behind us at the bar with a martini watching UConn shootin' hoops. You know, life is about three things, really, he said. Your health, your relationships, and your money.


His statement is a boulder in my head.



------



Did you see the little carrot farm she planted in her hummus? We grabbed our seats after break, passing her desk and snack, getting back to Real Estate Practices, Chapter 12.


Reaching over, I drew a frowny face on his notebook. He drew a dick in my eye.


We saw you two writing little love notes, she said.

Oh, that wasn't love, I said. That was a sad face, and notes like: my boobs hurt.


Ha! Must be pms!



She was close.

Chasing a sun setting along Saturday's horizon, Lily runs through mid-winter's slushy woods. She isn't thinking about a twinkling hot orange smudged sky. She doesn't notice horizontal sunbeams soaking snowy ground. Evening shadows loom.

Today's warm beautiful light was going out as I snagged her toy and tossed it toward gnarled Mountain Laurels. Its pink blooms each spring are a surprise.

Everything is cast in a rusted hue of dusk's magic limbo. I breathe it in. I want to keep some of that faltering color deep inside. 

A small glow in my belly. 

Sparkling eyes. 

Of course the spell pops -- just another old birthday balloon. Life isn't shining.

Where is that thrill -- the oh m'god flop in my stomach?

I'm a little girl alone in a huge bedroom. The lights are out. Ugly, slow-breathing monsters are waiting. Sometimes bad news comes creeping out from under the bed to rip away a sense that the future is a safe place. It's not.

"There's no guarantees," he said.

"You do things right. Eat healthy. Exercise. But that might get you nothing…" I said.

"You were talking in your sleep."

"Oh, what did I say?"

"Flash cards."

"Flash cards? So stupid."

Lily and I head for home. "Lily, why did I say flash cards?" 

Can't Go On

He broke my heart when I was 18

There was no argument

no moving out

no goodbye

he just went to her house

was wrapped in her arms

her legs

and never left

 

How many times did I have to get drunk and stand outside their bedroom window at 3 am to believe it?

 

 

Will you write me a love note?

His question was shy, so I said yes.

 

Grabbing a pen and stretch of register tape, I scratched out:

 

With bad music

thundering in a messy bar…

there was this guy

he wanted my attention so badly he could taste the frothy cold Budweiser on his lips

god, that was delicious

 

Is And Isn’t

Glistening with sunrise are leaves dampened by rainfall in the small hours…1, 2, 3…hitting my windshield in little spits...

September 1, 1:45 am: Driving home from the bar. Hershey, where are you?

I'll look in the misplaced shadows where a little bit of her might linger and blend in the forest's dips and hollows.

She keeps afloat and aflutter that cluster of swallowtail butterflies overhead. She’s a whispered breeze. Hershey?

I have been seeing her in my head non-stop since I found her Monday, aware with a glance that she was gone. Less dead than free, she had shed her cancer on the basement floor. Her lifeless body was just a tumble of discarded clothes, but I cried anyway.

Where does life go? I can’t believe that Mother Nature, who coaxes life from frozen ground each spring, would waste the loving energy squeezed inside a dog’s short life. Be free girly.

The vet called today. Her remains are ready. We can bring Hershey home.

Sunset

Days end

petals fall

sunrises descend

life and death and up and down 

but you can love forever

ask a dog

Monday, August 29. Hershey won't see the Witch hazel bloom.

She's gone. She left behind just a small pool of blood on a beautiful day while late summer shrub roses bloomed by the mailbox. A new tennis ball was a few feet away.

With a mug of fresh coffee halfway to my lips, I went downstairs where she had stretched out on the floor. She was huffing that morning from discomfort, I thought.

I found her resting in her favorite spot with her sore belly against cool basement tile. Another step and I saw blood around her head. Looking back  at yesterday, I now see how still things were -- I had stepped inside a photograph of something that had come, click, then gone.

Gone. 

I crouched down and rested my head on hers. With a day's perspective I realize that I also saw something unexpected:

Jerry and I were on the patio Tuesday and he was sitting in his spot where he would toss the ball for Hershey.

It's not the same, he said.

Looking at a straggly strawberry plant in a pot, I said, there are strawberries.

She liked to eat them, he said.

You know, maybe this is strange, I said, but yesterday when I found her, I felt peaceful.

-------------------

She was hurting Monday and for the first time in 11 years, she chose to stay home as I grabbed Lily's leash and laced my hiking boots. I gave her a last glance before leaving. She sat still. Not coming.

She died quietly, maybe while I was out with the other dogs, or maybe she died while listening to feet shuffling overhead after I returned, made coffee, and fed everyone before checking on her. 

-------------

I sat petting her, looking at her beautiful brown eyes and wondering how close I was to being with her for her last breath. Reaching up I snagged my coffee off the counter and got back on the floor with Hershey.  I told her little, happy things. 

My coffee is delicious, Hershey; that rose bush bloomed again. 

I just sat for a few minutes before walking next-door where my friend Tim was at work.

Tim?

Did the dog die?

Struggling to speak, I asked, would you help me move her before Jerry gets home?

I wanted her outside in the breezy, sunny day with life surrounding her. 

I cut some fresh wildflowers and hydrangea blooms. They made a pretty bouquet that I stuffed in an empty wine bottle and placed it next to her.

---------------

Driving her body to the vet, Jerry said, she was in her favorite spot.

Yes, and left alone there, with the basement to herself. No Lily there to bully her out of her spot.

I had put my head next to hers and checked her final view through the skylight…drifting clouds, tree shadows, blue sky. A beautiful day to die.

 

She left that hurting body behind.
 

A Walk In The Woods

A conversation around 6 am, Friday, August 26:

She dropped her pills.

No, she didn’t. I don’t see anything.

On the floor, right there.

There is nothing on the floor.

Why are you being like this?

 

Jerry’s morning was probably peaceful until I stomped into it. Why was I up after just 4 hours of sleep anyway?

I had stuffed a few pills into a lump of burger meat and fed it to Hershey, who knows by now that I am stuffing pills…

Around 11 am I see a small white pill on the kitchen floor, right where it must have fallen at 6 am. Oh.

She is sore today. She was stretched out on her bed that is now next to where I sleep and can reach her during the night. She wagged as I stepped over her, but stayed on the floor. She is slowing down quickly.

In the woods on our trail an hour later: She loves the cool forest floor and its early autumn leaves. Today I stand on the rise and wait while she sashays along, approaching a grove of Hemlock that opens on a ridge near a vernal pool. One of her favorite places to swim, the pool is filled now with ferns — a hollow that swells with rainwater and runoff from the rocky cliff above. In late autumn and early to mid spring, her tail wags in its shallows, tossing sprays of water left and right.

Hershey likes to sit in the Witch hazel’s thin shade, small branches overhead casting stripes on her face, waiting for the pool to fill.

 

It's just a cancer dance now as I watch and wait and stuff her burger meat.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Here And Now

Thursday, August 25: I was 20 years old on a bus to Albany that would spit me out into a frigid day. Later as we ducked down to sneak in a window of your apartment – you had no keys yet – I hit my head hard on the window frame. Staring at some ugly yellow fresh paint on walls that would soon be your kitchen, my eyes watered. My forehead stung.

That memory pops into my mind occasionally as one of those things that I’ll just never forget. This thought interrupted my morning coffee today, 24 years later, as I stood in my kitchen looking at my beautiful sick chocolate lab. Hershey woke up wagging, but slow. She barked as I opened the patio door. Up the steps, behind the house, and into the woods…

Wednesday, August 24: She’s asleep on my feet under the dining room table. It’s 3 am and I am flipping pages. Where did I leave off? The last chapter… Fifty pages to go and I wonder if I will get to the end before 4. Normally I read downstairs, keeping the billowing laundry pile company, but Hershey is hurting and wants be near me. She tried coming downstairs but Lily was an asshole about it. I relocated camp to the dining room, gave her some Tramedol, gave myself some wine, and we both enjoyed an hour without Lily licking Hershey’s oozing side.

 

I read, sip, pet her with my foot. Wag, thump, thump. I stare at my rippling reflection in the imperfect window glass. Darkness outside. Billowing…the word drags my mind away.

Have you ever seen a ship's sails billowing? A lazy wind shaping fabric. A redirection...

I rubbed my foot along her back again. Felt her warmth, and listened to her breathe.  

I have only here and only now -- a tiny dining room with Hershey under the table, my feet warm.

 

 

 

Day By Day

Saturday, August 20: She found a quiet space on the forest floor between shadows. Dropping her tennis ball and looking across our trail, Hershey waited on the stony rise. Around her were gnarled Witch hazel trees that bloom in October -- a surprising yellow grove sprinkling the understory. Maybe she will see it this year. With September just days away, she may walk beneath that bright burst amid otherwise falling leaves, but the cancer is moving faster than the seasons.

Sunday, August 21: Hershey in late August is a gift. Splash, and she is happy in the lake again.

Tuesday evening, August 23. She's slow and uncomfortable, but still wagging.

Wednesday, August 24. A cool morning in the forest through speckled sunlight and yellowed leaves, she shuffles. She sits between cedar trees swishing her tail, panting, ears perked. Hershey likes that spot and always stares down the slope. I don't know what she's looking at, but she's been looking there for years. 

One big pain pill this morning to soften the day. Still wagging, but her sides have weeping sores.

She is slowing down step by step and seeks our comfort -- sleeping on the bedroom floor instead of the plush pillow we bought her. So restless in the small, dark hours, Hershey brushes her snout against a hand that I left dangling off the bed. She catches stray moonlight in her eyes and I find her, sparkling. Hi Hershey! 

Hershey

It's a beautiful time to die

rose of Sharon and bishop's lace abloom

trees' silhouettes against a raspberry sunset

and a cancer creeping quickly through her

no more incisions and carving it out

no more Tramadol and rest

playtime

her stitches are out 

waiting on the patio is a green tennis ball 

and a rippling lake warmed by early August's lazy days is a minute's walk away

be happy for the rest of your short forever Hershey and swim and play and wag your tail at everything

we're with you pretty girlie

Wind's yellin at us.
Don't worry, she said. Won't hurt if we don't listen.
Sounds angry, like its claws are hungry?
Can't hurt with our eyes shut; nothins real here, long as you don't stare too long.
Dawn is coming.
Flowers rise.
Moons ebb and fade. Like everything.
Cold wind tore words across cold ground
piling light snow in peaks and hollows
scrawling lyrics in fat snowfall and barren streaks.
Everything, nothing.

Fragments 

A lingering scent of last night’s cigarette smoke in my truck reminds me of you.

In college on a Saturday driving on empty winter streets in a summer tourist town. Smoking and talking, you stuffed another butt into the overflowing ashtray.

Oh, one more will fit, you said.

On another day and on another road I knew you were leaving.

You were talking about a friend of a friend and how she colored her hair.

How she hated her stick legs.

How she didn’t eat for a week, you said, because she was mad at you.

A trail of your cigarette smoke slipped out my bedroom window. A cottage on a dirt road near the water. Waves splashing on a frozen beach in February when you said, Let’s see other people.

Did you like her bottle-dyed hair and her stick legs and her bullshit? Because you traded me for them.

I was the last to leave our little rental. I remember coffee in the kitchen with you — chipped Formica, green curtains, and not enough milk.

I remember running out of heating oil in December and washing your long hair. I warmed water on the stove and carried it upstairs. You were naked in a blue tile bathtub.

You left me for a girl with purple hair.

Of Things That Fade And Remain

She was a dahlia at noon

as red as a love poem

facing the sun

he was a midnight stone 

stuck in silence where her shadow grew

---------------

Dreams are funny things.

Monday: I am at once sunk neck-deep in a rain puddle, driving, unaware of my destination, late for work, and alone in what was once a busy bar, so I walked away. 

About that summer flower and sad rock above, what can I do about those two?

A Monday Night

Laughter in my heart is you
Pain in my laughter is you
Dead in dried leaves chasing the breeze, is you.
---------

Where one year goes, another comes.
You played music and sang along, folding warm clothes from the dryer.

I hit my head on the shelf and cried, chopping carrots for your soup.

Did You Hear Something?

I dreamt it wasn’t a dream

i shouted your name

but you were dancing

she swung in your arms

her sugar lips glistened

where yours had been

screw you

--------------

Rain, the forest, and random thoughts:

Seasons drift past. Winter was hell, then spring struggled to break it. Daylight lingered. Warmth at last.

I listened last night to early summer’s faint rain and watched the dogs sleep. It’s true, that she swung in your arms once, and I turned around and poured myself a shot, right there on the edge of jumping into a dark hole where I would forget your name.

Wednesday night’s rain tapped away and again I remember waking, wondering what was real. Coral quince blooms and honeysuckle soaking the air — I believe in these ephemeral things. Like vernal pools and I love yous and puddles caught by the sun, they linger and are lost.

From the crooked horizon rose a hawk, solitary and free. That’s the way things should be. Wild things were rearranging themselves after the timid rainfall. Wood frogs bustled beneath damp leaves.

I thought about an old forgotten cottage boarded up on the forest’s fringes, aching for sunlight. It’s coming. Almost. Soon I’ll tear those boards free. And soon I’ll stop being a bare-minimum girl. I'll throw away these overused clothes in which I stew, growing so sick of myself. For a large part of the last decade I’ve sat at night gorging on books and red wine, getting nowhere but hungover. There is so much more than that.

 

Hello?

My friend
What you have is not whole

Sunrise is blinding and long
Days grow strange without sleep

Winter's ice coats a Christmas tree
Love me?

Life is just a pebble
Throw it

I awake wondering...