The words occur to me when I lie on the floor next to her, propped up on my elbow, watching her face for signs that tickles and scratches and gentle rubbing bring her respite, never mind happiness. But by the time I get home, its only the cloud of sadness I can remember, knowing that the peace I want for her can only come in one way, and that nothing afterwards will be the same.
A snooze is always cozier when you can get your nose tucked under the blankets.
And for the record, the only way Katey would ever show any interest in a bone is if it was a donut.
Her motto: More ear scratches, please!
Her favorite treat: Walker’s Shortbread
She got plenty of both, today.
Katey’s day was spent enveloped in the radiator’s cozy glow, dreaming of whatever bliss can be chased from a down comforter spread over her favorite mat, perhaps in her mind’s eye, or muscles’ memory, taking the long way home.
I’ve been giving Christmas a fair chance. No one can say I haven’t. The mantle is decorated with the sequinned balls in clear glass goblets. The tree is piney, with icicles and red feathered birds. A choir of penguins in red scarves are poised on the bookshelf, waiting for a wooly German Santa to conduct them in a carol. All along, I’ve been planning to spend Christmas morning making pictures with my Christmas gee-gaws and enjoying a world that is invisible to me unless I am looking through a lens.
Above, however, you do not see any of the jolly, clever, Kitsch-massy photos I took this morning, and expected to add to the blog tonight. Instead, the news is Katey. Tonight I learned through the opaque signals and vagaries of texts between ex-spouses that Katey girl has, unbeknownst to me, been sporting walnut sized tumors on her neck for 10 days now, and “isn’t doing very well.”
I can’t even begin to write about my visit with Katey; my tiredness and emotion are still too tangled up with the warm living talcum of her fur, and the sweetly rotted odor from her jowls, both lingering on my hands. It isn’t our last visit, yet; of course, I was crying. But Katey, I meant what I whispered in your radar ears while you pretended you were asleep so I would keep scratching them – “Oh, we had FUN!“
The thing with Christmas is you never know, a frosty butterfly might flutter past a magical tree that preserves the whipped cream memories of snow days past. Or maybe its only a dream….sleep tight, my dears!
Home waits across the River, beyond the Battlefield of Snowballs, past the Covered Bridge and Skating Pond. Home, where a Tree stands sentinel, dressed in solitary green, its lights brightening against the night’s darkest skies. See the candles in the windows? Here, take Mamma’s hand, take Daddy’s hand, we are almost there.
circa 1979
How many hours did I lie on the long couch in Pat Read’s home on Christmas night, turning over in my mind the riddle of the bubbling lights on the Christmas tree, their little columns of glass and red liquid poking up here and there among the green boughs, singing with tiny circles of air which rose again and again from nowhere, an infinite procession as hypnotic as the reflections of taillights and headlights rolling rhythmically across the cold backseat windows as we rode in the dark of Christmas Eve, mile after mile, until the slippery red and white beads of light finally chased my thoughts away, and I slept wedged between the hard door handle and my sister’s shoulder, awakening at last to stumble drowsily from the snowy driveway into Aunt Patty’s bright kitchen, in Christmastime, Indiana, where all these faces waited just for me.
As much fun as they bring their humans, dogs themselves endure a lot of boredom. And as much as your dog clearly loves you, don’t kid yourself: she would, indeed, love you ten times more if you would never stop throwing that ball until one of you is dead, and both of you know which one that would be. Still, we feel no qualms about raising their hopes with our tail-revving voices and euphoria inducing ear scratchings and mystifying pockets that might, oh please oh please, just might be filled with liver and peanut butter.
This time, though, I feel as fraudulent as the Wizard of Oz, my black bag full of tricks too shamefully superficial to help the really Brave and Meek one get back her very Self. This time, Glinda ain’t coming. Nothing will be the same again for Katey, stuck here in Kansas with all of us who have lost something we can never get back, and can make nothing from that loss except accommodation.
She is more beautiful than ever, I think.
The fentanyl patch affixed to Katey’s shaved pink rump ran out of juice in the dark of Sunday morning, less than 24 hours into her first day home. (Fentanyl is one of the most potent opioids ever invented; I learned all about it on “Burn Notice,” when Michael cons a heroin dealer into using it to boost the value of his inventory. Try and keep up, people.)
If you have never heard a dog you love crying, then let me assure you, it is an experience you never want. Ever. Craig and his mom endured the haunting sound of aches for which there are no words, from 2 a.m. until 5 a.m., as Katey searched for a way to get away from the pain, rising on three legs, only to lie down, then stand again, over and over. Finally, the vet on call increased the dose of another opiate she was discharged with, but by then her humans were beyond sleep.
Katey was her usual pettable self when I arrived, alerting her radar ears at the clink of cereal bowls and rustle of bread wrappers from the kitchen; she knows food when she hears it. Whatever lingers from the restless painful phantoms that visited before dawn is not more powerful, in her present moment, than chicken thighs in broth followed by cuddles.
Craig will recover, too, although he could be forgiven if it takes something stronger than chicken thighs.
what is beautiful remains 