Bones Would Rain from the Sky Read online

  In the end, our personal philosophy is also our best protection against cruelty. When we know what we believe and who we are, we stand strong and sure about what we will and will not allow. For those in our caretaking, such soulful coherence offers them a powerful shield against cruelties large and small.

  19

  MATTERS OF THE HEART

  To love is to give hostages to fate.

  JO COUDERT

  I HAVE CLOSED THE KITCHEN DOOR to keep the other dogs out, so that I can serve Vali a special meal of pressure-cooked chicken without the need to guard against an impertinent youngster hoping for a morsel from her bowl. I have said nothing to her, and yet she stands motionless as the other dogs sweep from the room at my request. We have understood each other for a long, long time. Closing the door, I turn to her, and she looks at me with unwavering, full eyes, her tail wagging a little as I step toward the dog refrigerator and take out the food I have made just for her, my dear old friend.

  This is her favorite, and it is the best I can offer her—chickens raised here on our farm, cared for with love, grown with respect. In this now anonymous blend of bones and flesh I hope that everything good and true that helped these chickens grow to their inevitable end here in my pot is also still, somehow, magically present in this food that I serve my old friend. Watching her eat, gratefully noting that she does so with gusto, eager to nourish her old body, I see chickens sprawled in summer sunshine, white-feathered wings akimbo like sunbathing angels pausing for a moment to rest on the greenest of green grass. I see the brightness in their eyes as they catch sight of John bringing fresh food or a special treat of overripe tomatoes. I watch Vali eat, and I hope that the sunshine still lurks in that flesh. I wish those chickens were indeed angels, and that with soft tender hands, they would carry her to a place where the moment is always right to pause, sprawled in the summer sun on cool green grass.

  It’s been only four days since I picked up the phone, the veterinarian’s cool, professional voice unexpectedly filling my ear. Even as I return his greetings, I am looking at the clock and thinking, But I haven’t even begun to worry yet. In my mind, Vali is perhaps sedated and being prepped for her surgery. I have thus far kept at bay the image of her ignobly restrained on her back, legs tied with much-used cord that is held by a simple half hitch to each corner of the operating table. I have not allowed myself to imagine the first cut or the red trail that springs up in the scalpel’s path, and yet here is the veterinarian telling me that already the surgery is nearly complete, that Vali’s spleen is gone. Dumb in my surprise, I ask, “It is? Well, that’s good.”

  There’s a pause, and from years of conversations with veterinarians, I know that the absence of assurances to fill the moment means that he is trying to prepare me for what he must say next. Though the actual time is probably just a few heartbeats, I have more than enough time to imagine Vali dead, bled out, dying or beyond all repair before he continues. “It’s not good. The spleen was totally engulfed in tumors. It’s already spread to the liver, and there are many nodules of cancer scattered throughout the abdomen. We’re going to close her up.”

  So there it is. That ticking I heard all weekend as I looked into her eyes was indeed the final countdown, begun as surely as if some cosmic hand had slapped the button on the clock in a game of speed chess. All weekend, I had watched her, knowing something was wrong, unsure just what it might be. I hoped I was just imagining the discomfort I saw on her face as she shifted positions on her bed, but I thought I also heard that unmistakable sound that I knew all too well. Watching her, I had felt quite urgently that the clock of her life was speeding up, that the final bang (or whimper) was approaching at a speed I did not know or want to recognize.

  For a brief moment, I think that it might be easier if the vet had told me that Vali was dead. Such news would transport me to a sad but familiar place. But I’ve been handed a ticket to the land of grief, and yet no one can tell me just when that flight for the long trip home departs the gate. Staring blankly out the window, I listen to the vet tell me that it’s hard to say what will happen with my dog, my old friend. It seems that perhaps I should at least cry, begin grieving now with this confirmation of the final countdown. It suddenly occurs to me how ludicrous it is to have someone tell you that something is fatal. From the moment of our arrival we are moving inexorably toward our departure. Life is fatal for us all. The note regarding the fatality of Vali’s condition is really a hidden message that just puts me on notice that Death is not abroad in some distant land but present, here, in my neighborhood.

  But I don’t cry. Instead, I feel only calm relief. We have come to this point several times, this dog and I. As a puppy, she lay nearly dead in my lap, a victim of parvo, a vicious virus that had killed thousands of dogs across the country. I had whispered to her as I tended to her, “Hang in there, little one. Today is not your day. Not yet. Hang on.” With luminous eyes that seemed almost impossibly large for her face, she had stared up at me, the utter seriousness of life in her expression. And she did hang on, and that was not her day to die, just as it was not her day to die a few years later, when eight pounds of cat food stolen in a moment of canine gluttony expanded to fill her stomach nearly to bursting. “Hang on,” I had whispered again, and again she had turned that face toward me, serious, hurting and yet clearly working on holding on fiercely to her earthly connections. That was not her day, and it wasn’t her day years later when she ate an entire possum, filling her stomach so full that her heart began to labor. Despite the cautious warnings from the university vets who were unable to guarantee her survival, once again, it wasn’t her day.

  I know that there is a day not too distant when Vali will die, just as there is a day when I will die. In passing, I feel a pang of curiosity about my own death that becomes a singsong litany from high school journalism class—who? what? where? why? when? how? I realize the question of who has been answered, and doubt that the others can be, or at least not in advance. But to the best of my knowledge, for both Vali and me, today is not that day.

  As she finishes the chicken (sun-drenched angel food?), thunder rumbles and the lights over the kitchen sink flicker. Though once she might have turned an anxious ear to the storm that is breaking violently, old age has its benefits, and my beautiful old friend’s deafness is at least for the moment a blessing. She eats in peace while I anxiously consider the sheets of rain that have hidden the barn, the trees—in fact, the whole world outside. This old farmhouse has seen a lot of storms in its hundredplus years, and evidently borne them all fairly well, so I relax into the security (though undoubtedly false) that we’re safe within while the storm rages without.

  Vali’s shaved belly is nearly hidden at this angle, and with a habitual eye, I consider her weight and coat and body. She needs to gain weight—the cancer has consumed calories like some evil boarder who has raided the refrigerator unseen—but her coat is soft, shiny, good to the touch. I admire the cleanness of her limbs and cannot help noting that though some arthritis is evident in the stiffness of her back, she is still a sound dog with four good legs, well built with a body that could easily carry her many more years. But I know that within that beautiful body there rages another storm that will destroy her from the inside out. Just as this old house keeps me safe within from the storm without, no beauty of Vali’s earthly house can protect her from the cancer within.

  Lightning flashes nearby, and the thunder that follows a startled heartbeat later is a rifle crack that makes me catch my breath. Too close for comfort, I think, and step to look out the window. The barn is fine, and cattle graze without any apparent alarm. Noticing my concern, Vali turns to me with a slight question in her eyes. I smile at her and run my hand across her head and down her back. She never breaks eye contact with me, and for a long moment, we look at each other without blinking. Her eyes seem terribly full, reminding me of the look I’ve seen in people unable to speak but still needing to communicate. “I’m glad you’re still here,” I
tell her. She gazes back at me as if to say, “Yes, I am here.” But I get the distinct sensation that there is much more she still needs to tell me, much more that I need to hear.

  Today, this old house will not fall down. Someday it will. Today, my old dog still trots beside me as we head to the barn to bring John his raincoat and check on the pig who has hurt her leg. Someday soon, I think, Vali will walk beside me only in spirit. Today is not the day, and I am grateful that today is all I ever have. Funny, I think, walking along next to my old dog. It was a puppy who taught me that.

  APPOINTMENT IN SAMARA

  Six weeks old, the puppies were sassy, chubby miniatures of the adult German Shepherds they would become. In honor of their Alaskan father, they carried Alaskan names—Sitka, Juneau, Willow, Aleyeska, Dalton, Kiska, McKinley. To them, the veterinarian’s office was an exciting frontier ripe for exploration. I prided myself on breeding good dogs, healthy dogs, beautiful companions that lived long, happy lives. One after another I set them on the examining table, confident in their glowing health and fine character. One by one, they squirmed, kissed the vet and showed no signs of any problems. Then my veterinarian looked up from listening to McKinley’s heart, his eyes troubled. “He’s got a murmur.”

  This was not an innocent murmur that would be outgrown. Ultrasound examination revealed a fatal flaw in the formation of the heart, a flaw that could not be corrected and that in all likelihood would result in sudden, unpredictable death sometime before the puppy’s second birthday; chances were good he would not live to see his first. Euthanasia was an option. Faced with a grim prognosis, I considered how much future grief I would be spared by putting the puppy down now, before he blossomed into who he would be. But I knew that in sparing myself the grief of losing a young dog, I would also be trading away something unknown but also immeasurable. I was not willing to make that trade.

  In any relationship, there is one inescapable reality: To love anything is to risk loss. And a relationship with an animal carries a double-edged sword. While we enjoy the unconditional love of our animals, we know that odds are better than good that even if they enjoy a long and healthy life, we will outlive them. We accept this reality and the eventual tide of grief that accompanies it because in the moments between our first reaching out to an animal and when we finally let go, what we receive are riches beyond measure. Yet, as we do for our own lives, we hinge our daily sanity on the fragile belief that our animals will be granted full, long lives, that the inevitable is years away. Marcel Proust wrote, “We say that the hour of death cannot be forecast, but when we say this we imagine that hour as placed in an obscure and distant future. It never occurs to us that it has any connection with the day already begun or that death could arrive this same afternoon, this afternoon which is so certain and which has every hour filled in advance.” Years are measured out to us in seconds, and thus it seems when looking forward that the end is a long way away. Looking back, we know it was a very brief time indeed.

  Though we may not be comfortable with thinking about it, we are all aware at some level that for every living being, a life clock is ticking. Watching a talk show, I saw an actual clock that could be set to a specific time; second by second it would count down to that final appointment. The creators of this clock showed how a person’s birth date, current age and some information from actuarial tables could be used to estimate how much time was left in that life. A fifty-five-year-old man might, according to statistics, have only seventeen years remaining to him, barring unforeseen illness or accidents. This clock would begin the count, relentless second after second. Most members of the audience found this an extremely disturbing idea. The creators were quick to point out that the intention behind this clock was not to underline death’s ever quickening approach, but rather to provide an opportunity for living with a fullness of choice and awareness. With such a vivid reminder, people could discard the meaningless in their lives and trade the valuable seconds for what mattered intensely to them.

  Depending on our age, experience, religious or spiritual beliefs, each of us keeps the concept of death a certain distance from our daily awareness. For each of us, experiences ranging from the “near misses” of serious illness or minor traffic accidents to actual losses bring the concept a little closer, at least for a while. Each of these experiences offer us an opportunity to examine our feelings and to learn something valuable. We may turn away from the lesson at hand or we may choose to learn; neither approach forestalls the inevitable.

  There is an old Sufi tale of a merchant in Baghdad whose servant returns from the marketplace trembling and pale. The servant had been jostled in the marketplace, and when he turned to see who had bumped him, he saw Death, who looked at him and made a threatening gesture. The servant begs the merchant to loan him a horse so that he might go to the distant city of Samara, where Death will not be able to find him. The merchant agrees, and the servant gallops away.

  Later that day, the merchant also sees Death in the market, and asks him, “Why did you make a threatening gesture to my servant when you saw him this morning?”

  “I did not threaten him,” Death said. “That gesture was only my start of surprise. I was astonished to see him here in Baghdad, because I have an appointment with him tonight in Samara.”

  It seems a sad but straightforward tale: Caring breeder discovers fatal flaw, keeps puppy, life goes on. In reality, it was more complicated than that. I had planned to keep McKinley’s sister Sitka. Could I raise two puppies and do them both justice? Would Sitka or McKinley suffer from more attention paid to the other? What-ifs raced through my head, and I sought advice from a close friend. Of all that she said to me, nothing struck me as forcibly as this: “McKinley’s lessons to you will be matters of the heart, on many levels.” It began with my listening to what my heart told me was right. A few days later, Sitka was on her way to her new home, and I began my journey with McKinley, aware that we were moving toward an appointment in Samara.

  WITH DEATH ON MY SHOULDER

  As I thought, and told those who cared to listen, keeping this puppy was the responsible thing to do. I would, I bravely announced, love him till he died, and until that day, offer him a full life. On the surface, I was matter-of-fact, pragmatic. After all, as I said repeatedly, the truth is no one knows when the final moment will arrive. Yet in my heart, these brave words fell empty and hollow, floating on a sea of fears. McKinley would nap, and I would find myself anxiously watching his rib cage for movement:. If I heard him whimper in another room, my heart would race, slowing only when I could assure myself that he was fine. On the mornings I awoke before he did, I sat up to see his body stretched out in the corner of the bedroom. Was he alive? Had he died in his sleep? Though I did not make a sound, McKinley would raise his head as if woken by my fears and look at me with sleepy eyes: “I am still here.”

  “It’s so hard to allow myself to fully love you, knowing you will die so soon,” I told him one afternoon as he raced across the yard to me, full of a puppy’s seemingly eternal energy and joy. He sat, staring at me, and in my head, I clearly heard his reply. “But we all die.”

  “Yes,” I agreed, watching the dogs playing around me, “but these other dogs won’t die soon.”

  His answer came quickly, an arrow to my heart: “You don’t know that.” With that, he turned away and went on with the business of life.

  In The Road Less Traveled, Scott Peck wrote, “If we are unwilling to fully face the fearsome presence of death on our left shoulder, we deprive ourselves of its counsel and cannot possibly live or love with clarity. When we shy away from death, the ever changing nature of things, we inevitably shy away from life.”

  One of my students had a wonderful young dog named Clancy who developed a malignant mass (oddly, on her left shoulder). Though chemotherapy offered some slim hope, the veterinarian warned my student that Clancy had perhaps only six months left to live. He recommended avoiding stress (which included, he felt, obedience school), and suggested
that Clancy be made as comfortable as possible. Distraught, Anne told me she would not be coming back to class; she planned to spend as much time as possible at home with Clancy until she died. About a month later, she called again. Clancy was increasingly bored, and was depressed when Monday night rolled around and no one got ready to take her to training class. What should she do?

  I asked what Clancy’s physical condition was. Her answer neatly summed up canine reality: “Obviously, no one told Clancy that she has cancer and is going to die. She gets up every day wagging her tail and does the best she can.” And so Clancy returned to class. Some nights, she lay on the sidelines, unable to fully participate but watching the class with great interest, her characteristic grin letting us all know she was having a wonderful time. On those nights, we included her in the down stays—it was all she could do, but she did it well. We would fuss over her, telling her she had the finest down stay of any dog in class, and she responded with a proud, thumping tail. Other nights, Clancy was her old self and performed with precision and style. Always, she entered the room with joyful anticipation, willing to bring her best efforts to the moment.