When the House Felt Suddenly Singular and Still

Terra in the sunlight

younger days

Okay. I’m going to take a deep breath here, talk a little more about the dog, and try really hard to move on.  I realize that this is not the end of the world, that Terra had a pretty good life, and that when you begin a relationship with a dog, you do so with the implicit understanding that you will one day face this loss.

But it’s still so new.

On the first night, I was stunned by my solitude. The wind was howling and a great moon glared into my room, and I sat up and realized that I was completely alone. For so long there had always been that other presence, my little canine friend, even when Monte was away. Now the house felt singular and still.

But the first thing I did when I got up the next morning was turn reflexively towards her little bed, as I have done every morning for most of the years we have been in this house. How strange it was to find her gone.

And no one followed me down the stairs to check out the day. And no one cares which room I walk into or studies all my movements and knows what experience each portends and is ever at the ready, shoving in front of me to get to the door, down the stairs, up the stairs, always at my heels.

“You’re going to be disappointed,” I would tell her, “there is absolutely nothing exciting about to happen.”

But she wasn’t disappointed.

Because everything was exciting.

The sounds are gone, too. All that scratching and shaking and jingling of tags. She didn’t bark much, only to express her indignation if we tried to leave without her, or excited yelps and monkey noises from the back of the truck when we headed to the beach. 

She could sing, though, by request.

Lately she had taken to lying in the sun by the door. Maybe the warmth of the tiles felt good on her poor tired bones. And yet, just a couple of weeks ago she astounded me by leaping across the cattle guard to chase away some cows. Just for a moment she was young again.

Maybe some of her behaviors were universal dog antics. I never had a dog before so I wouldn’t know.  I’m remembering those sudden bursts of playfulness, the frisky adorableness she was prone to now and then even near the end. I’m remembering, too, how she would tilt her head and tune in to wavelengths of life that eluded us entirely, somehow aware of a deer far up on a hilltop or a fox out in the orchard, even when she was old and deaf and inside the house. And the way she would roll around in celebratory bliss after eating – was that even normal?

Ah, the joys that the world held! The wonderful tastes and aromas of cow shit and coyote scat and whatever the sea washed up.  The pleasures of being vigorously towel-dried by the god man. Leftover chicken tossed by food lady into a bowl.

And yet, there was something inscrutable about her always. We were not the sort who blurred the line between human and canine, anthropomorphizing her behaviors, imagining that we always understood. No, Terra adored us in dog terms entirely, and she kept a bit of wildness and mystery. When I looked into her eyes I saw a calm acceptance of me, no further meaning, which is not to diminish her complexity.

She was an autonomous being, spurred on by callings I could never know, on a trajectory all her own even in her devotion. I respected her otherness.

But she was a glutton for affection. Give her a scratch behind the ear and she’d roll onto her back for a full-body massage. Why did I always quit so soon? I was forever on my way to something else. It must have been important; I wonder what it was.I hope she knew I was with her at the end.

This morning Monte walked to the well without her. That was one of her favorite jobs, walking with him on that narrow trail, always in the lead, her tail up in the air, little big shot that she was. 

And now at night we look at each other and no one says, “Did you take the dog out?” and no one has to overcome that sleepy inertia and go outside where the night is as startling as cold water and the sky is ablaze with the milky light of a billion stars and you might have missed it all.

Maybe when we mourn our dog we also mourn a bit of ourselves.

I remember our very first glimpse of Terra behind the fence at the humane society shelter. She kept jumping up with a boing to check us out. She had a little red patch over her eye in those days that turned white as the years passed. Was it so very long ago?  We look a lot younger, ourselves, in the pictures. Maybe a dog, knowing nothing of mortality, provides the undeniable proof of our own. We observe the progression from puppy to old age, and on some level we know it is just an accelerated version of the standard program, though the end still stuns, even in its mundane inevitability.

Here at the Ranch we know each other’s dogs. They gather with us at summertime barbecues, join us for walks, play at the beach. They are distinct characters in our little community. I am glad to live in a place where people understand that when your dog dies it really is a big deal, and if I still can’t talk about it without a crack in my voice, nobody thinks that it’s weird. 

Terra was well-known for her sweet disposition, and I was touched by the calls and emails I received when word got out.  Even former students remembered her fondly from the days when I used to bring her to school. Dibblee reminded me of an epic walk we did in the backcountry long ago with Terra and his faithful dog Buddy. He sent me a poem by Robinson Jeffers that said, among other things, ‘a little dog would get tired, living so long’ and I pretty much lost it right there.

Richard sent a haiku:Love without limit/Each day's adventure renewed/Life without regret.

And I guess that’s Terra in seventeen syllables.

I promise I won't keep this up. It's just that I never knew I’d miss my little friend so much. I have known the death of dearly loved siblings, a father who meant everything to me, and friends who were still young. If someone had told me I would be this broken up about a dog, I doubt that I would have believed it.

But loss is loss and there it is. It’s a familiar sort of pain, really, and none of us can avoid it, for even if you stopped yourself from loving, something you thought was constant would collapse beneath your feet, something you were holding onto tightly would be wrested away from you, something you believed was ordinary would change and be gone.  It’s the way of the world.

After awhile, despite your heavy heart, you will bear witness to something beautiful and remember that life goes on. Like that century plant in magnificent blossom, shining like a torchlight in the early morning sun.

It’s a humbling privilege to have shared a bond with an animal. It changes you. Enlarges you, I think.

So my wish is that all of you who have known this bond will do something sweet and gentle and loving for Terra or your own dear friend, some small secret thing that honors the lessons we learn from dogs: how light we feel when we don't hold grudges; how good it is to be regularly nudged away from our own self-absorption; how lovely life can be when we see the adventure in every new moment no matter what just happened. May we remember, too,  that the way to greet the ones we love is with exuberance, and the way to receive affection is with joyful acceptance.