Doggie Heaven
My dog died today. Unless you have had a family pet that you grew up with for a number of years (in our case, 14), it is hard to understand how devastating this can be. It's not just a pet - they become part of the family. Mac received Christmas presents - usually bones which he devoured promptly - and even was known to "give" gifts in the sense that my dad would buy cards with dogs on them and sign them "Love, Mac." We've been through his entire life with him - the good and bad. Learning how to swim, moving across the country, getting a rusty fishhook stuck in his lip, stepping on his own tongue while trying to lick water off the deck, playmates next door and across the street in the form of a lot of Golden Retrievers... We probably have enough pictures of my dog to fill several albums. He's been another child, a friend, a companion, a teacher (though no Lassie), but most of all he's one of us.
He was very old. For the past few months it has only been a matter of time, and Saturday morning when he fell off the deck and hurt himself so bad he could no longer walk, we knew the time had come. I got the call from my mom, and when I talked to my dad he said they were waiting until today.
Knowing this, of course, has proven chaotic on my emotions. When I got back into Ithaca from Boston last night, as exhausted as I was I could not sleep and instead cried at my own loss. I know it's for the best, but it doesn't make it any easier.
But I still have my life to live and a ton of things I need to do. (Life does not accomodate grieving these days). I picked up a book on my bedside table in order to read until I was too tired to be upset anymore. The book is Anna Quindlen's "Thinking Out Loud", a collection of op-eds she wrote for the NY Times in the past. I opened the books to where I left off, and this is the next article she had written:
Mr. Smith Goes to Heaven - April 7, 1991
Jason Oliver C. Smith, a big dumb guy who was tan, died March 30 of lung cancer and old age. He was thirteen years old and lived in New Jersey, Pennsylvania, and the back section of the minivan, behind the kids' seat.
He was the son of somebody or other, but it was probably somebody with a name like Champion Snowfall's Big Brown Bear or Lancelot Smith of Sunnybrook. No one knew what the C. stood for, although there was speculation that, like Harry S. Truman's middle initial, it was an attempt to seem more dignified than he really was. He was called Mr. Smith only when he was reprimanded for eating the coffee cake off the kitchen counter and when he went to Washington.
He was born a golden retriever, although he never appeared in a Ralph Lauren ad, never gamboled through a field of daisies and high grass by the side of a slim woman with a picture hat in a television commercia. for feminine-hygiene products.
He appeared in only one music video, Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star, and fogged up the camera lens by licking it.
His pedigree was a source of some discomfort for his people, who acquired him just at that time when everyone who had been born between the years 1950 and 1955 and who had a four-wheel-drive vehicle and 2.2 children was acquiring a retriever. They were concerned lest other people think he was a status symbol. Luckily his behavior belied such a thing, and it was with great pride that they occasionally heard people say, "Gee, he acts just like a schnauzer."
With his passing, his people took stock of the relationship between man and animal and considered that people acquired dogs for the purposes of keeping in touch with their distant ancestors and of learning to remove hair from napped fabrics. People who wish to salute the free and independent side of their evolutionary character acquire cats. People who wish to pay homage to their servile and salivating roots own dogs.
(A friend and mourner recalled that, growing up, she believed cat and dog were the same animal, but that cats were the females and dogs the males. This is entirely credible.)
By human standards, Jason was a great success professionally. He was servile to the point of embarrassment, and was incapable of looking anyone in the eye for more than a few seconds, with the exception of insects. He frequently licked babies, and only an hour before he died he assiduously marked the trunk of a maple tree.
He was well known for his guilty expression, and on those occasions when he had rifled through the garbage it was not uncommon for him to look as though he deserved the death penalty.
His career as a retriever coincided with a period of cataclysmic change. The New York City dog-waste statute, commonly known as the pooper-scooper law, was enacted the year he was born. Late in life the animal rights movement swirled around him, and his master routinely threatened to make him into a coat.
His last illness came on the eve of the recent decision that stringent regulations governing pit bulls were discriminatory because they were breed-specific, and he seemed pleased when My Life as a Dog was critically acclaimed, although it was a little hard to tell since he was exhausted that week from treeing squirrels.
He lived in the city for most of his life, but he never wore a little plaid coat or a leather collar with fake gemstones, and he was never walked by a professional.
Although he began to visit the country only in middle age, he was able to find and flush quail, rabbits, and other small game. Nevertheless, he remained utterly incapable of getting within twenty feet of any of them.
At the time of his death his license was current and he had had all of his shots.
He is survived by two adults, three children, a cat named Daisy who drove him nuts, and his lifelong companion, Pudgy, whose spaying he always regretted, as well as a host of fleas, who have gone elsewhere, probably to Pudgy.
At the combined family Easter Egg Hunt/Memorial Service held in his honor, he was remembered by one of the children as "a really smart dog."
Unfortunately this was inaccurate.
Burial was behind the barn. A monument made of a piece of slate that had fallen from the roof was erected, bearing his name, a lopsided heart, and the initials of his people.
He will be missed by all, except Daisy.
He never bit anyone, which is more than you can say for most of us.
posted by EL @ 10:27 AM
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