It's easy to make statements like "All the dogs of my childhood are dead" when you didn't have one of your own. Our pets fell on the "set piece" side - a parakeet and an ever-rotating cast of characters in the fish tank. As a kid, the death of the longer-living fish sometimes gave me pause (we buried our red-fin shark that lives for five years in the backyard), but even the Blueberry's death earned little more than "By the way, the bird died" from my mom.
But now that time has nearly run out on Dixie, our family dog which joined the household during my freshman year of college (that's one great vote of confidence for me), I don't look at those words so objectively anymore.
Half-blind and somewhat deaf, the sores and moles which sprouted beneath her fur in recent years evolved into fast-growing cancer cells. Her own cells cannot keep pace, and eventually the cancer will win.
You can say "She's 16 years old and had a good life" in a vacuum, but not when I get picture e-mailed from the home office in Atlanta. One showed her placidly staring at the camera, the pain pill she refused to swallow sitting between her paws. Look at a further, and there lies a green and yellow dressing on her rear to keep her from biting at the killer cells.
But I'll save the tributes for later. There's nothing fair if eulogizing humans or pets before their last breath.
Given her name, I doubt I'll be able to handle a certain song by The Band in the next few months. That forbidden list also includes Fred Eaglesmith's "He's a Good Dog" and the episode of Futurama about Fry's long-lost dog, Seymour, which is quite possibly the saddest tale ever animated.
For now, let Dixie's days be treat-filled, and her nights full of dreams revisiting her berserker runs through the house after baths.
1 comment:
you really are a phenominal writer. i am at your whim with every letter scribed. i am so sorry for your dog's lament. that is a terrible way to go whether you are an amoeba or a blue whale. i find myself often wishing to either die in my sleep or while hang gliding... but, godwilling, not before seeing a few more decades unravel. as for dogs, life isn't as long as a human's nor as brief as a mayfly's; but their absolute presence in every moment they are here is a gifted lesson to the ones who love and are loved by them.
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