Each morning as I walk to the university, I greet my neighbors along the street with a wave or smile. There’s a young man in a wheelchair that I see often. He sits beneath the hanging baskets on the front porch. Down the road a bit further there’s a mother with a son who is young enough to call out, “I love you, mommy!” as he climbs the school bus steps. At the end of the street there was a man and his dog.
The dog was a behemoth thing, some wild mix of Mountain Dog and Mastiff and possibly Shepherd. He was a good, old-fashioned mutt. He’d lounge by the screen door beside his master’s chair, tongue out.
When I passed the house last week the dog wasn’t there anymore. The man sat on the porch alone. When I smiled and wished him a good morning, he just stared at the pillow beside him.
“You know, my dog died yesterday.”
I stopped smiling.
I listened to the order of events delivered to me in a most detached and list-like manner. First, the dog acted as though he were tired. Then, he began drinking excessive amounts of water, Next, he accidentally urinated on the carpet. Finally, less than twenty-four hours after the fatigue began, he laid his head softly in his master’s lap and took his final rest.
The man closed out his story with a remark in half-jest of how lonely the house would be for an old man with no dog.
Grief is an odd creature. It twists itself into something so naked and raw that we are ashamed to look directly at it.
I wanted to leave as the man told his story. After all, I had a schedule to stick to; people were expecting me. As I looked for an out, a memory pushed itself in, to the forefront of my consciousness.
When I was fourteen my grandmother, someone I loved more than I could possibly explain, died. Much like the man’s dog, her death came swiftly and without notice. There was no time for grief. I returned to school the day after her funeral.
No one at school had known what to say.
What does a person say?
The people from the church spoke of the comfort of Heaven.
What is one to do when they no longer believe in such a place?
Death is inevitable, for people and dogs. There aren’t many words that soothe the ache of a love forever lost and memories that only grow dimmer with time.
I wanted desperately to find the right words.
I landed on, “I hope your day gets better. Death is so hard.”
It didn’t feel remotely adequate.
I look for the man each day now. I wave and I smile, and I ask how he’s feeling. Today, I listened to his story about a storm and a fallen tree.
Perhaps one does not vanquish grief with the right words. Perhaps the victory is in listening.
