Chronicle of a Grief Foretold
At nine o’clock on a Monday morning — long after city commuters have rushed to their gridlock positions — our cabin is flooded with sunshine and my Cairn terrier is still snoring. She’ll stir in the next hour or so, move to her pad on the porch and watch hikers on their way to the trails, trails she can no longer maneuver.
Despite a year filled with masks, vaccines and isolation, and devoid of movies, restaurants and shops, we haven’t outrun death — it simply entered our lives in a different guise. My old dog, Buddy, has been diagnosed with lymphoma.
When the vet first said the word cancer we went into overdrive, bombing the asymptomatic lump with unpronounceable drugs. But almost 17, Buddy’s too old to endure chemo, prednisone made her sick and pills to tamp anxiety led to her panicking. Overnight, she changed from old to terminal.
We turned to alternative therapies. In the small mountain town where we live, a neighbor, a Reiki Master, moved her business at the start of covid to a studio behind her house and offered healing with a forest view. The studio was dark and cool and Buddy fell peacefully asleep on the massage table during every soothing session but the tumor still grew.
For her seeming anxiety — roaming the house panting at night — I sought out the city’s marijuana dispensary, sat awkwardly among local stoners and waited my turn to score CBD dog treats. But in addition to costing much more than a full lid of grass in the Sixties, they brought on dementia-like behavior which Buddy’d never exhibited before. She clearly wasn’t enjoying the trip.
Finally, we embraced Joseph Campbell. Follow your bliss, he said, and for a terrier that is terra firma. For 15 years we hiked daily in the mountains of Colorado and Arizona, chasing chipmunks, bunnies and squirrels and jackrabbits the size of Yoda. Last summer the hikes were modified to slower treks on shorter trails. This year she’s content to approach the trailhead, sniff the signatures of other dogs, then return to our paved street. It’s a dead-end loop that on good days is the perfect distance; on not-so-good days there’s the Buddy buggy. Think jogging stroller for dogs, with three wheels, a canopy and a pocket for needed supplies. Like a dogged marathoner, she always intends to finish the loop, but when her stride slows and her panting increases, she consents to a ride. Weaned off all the drugs, she’s comfortable again.
Now we wait.
That may sound grim but it’s not. Every day we set off from our house on a street that dead-ends at a trail, turn left onto another that also abuts the forest, then right onto a road that brings us around to our home. That circle spans 50-plus houses with 50-plus dogs and innumerable humans as kind as Mr. Rogers’ neighbors. There’s the trio of seniors who hail Buddy from their driveways and coddle her like grandmothers, and another woman who coos baby talk though Buddy can’t hear anymore. There’s the young woman who works from home and bakes her healthy treats and the octogenarian who offers a box of “Buddy Biscuits” she spotted at a store.
Farther along, at the house with the impressive garden, Buddy dallies among the flowers as if she’s heard the saying and the family never objects. Instead, they give her socks designed as Mary Janes and sneakers for her worn, sore paws — dress and casual wear, which every girl needs.
We’re joined along the route by the dogs that roam free — Popeye, Ziggy, Jondy, and Toby — then summoned by Princess Leia and Rey, who hang over their picket fence. In her buggy, she’s greeted like a celebrity on a float and approached by quizzical toddlers.
Often after our walks, we’ll drive the mile to my daughter’s house. She’s been toiling since the spring to magically create a suburban lawn in a semi-arid landscape. She invites Buddy to roll in the cool, soft grass that conjures her Colorado puppyhood, lolling alongside my granddog and grandson, her favorite boy.
I googled lymphoma in dogs when we first got the news and read that, if left untreated, life expectancy was four to six weeks. On “Talks at Google,” Dr. Lissa Rankin, author of “Mind Over Medicine,” told the story of Stamatis Moraitis, a Greek war veteran who came to the United States after World War II. Years later, when diagnosed with lung cancer and given nine months to live, he opted against treatment and moved back to the island of Ikaria in the Aegean Sea. There, among extended family, he took up gardening, revived a small vineyard, drank the wine with old friends and returned to his childhood church. Still alive decades later, he attempted to contact his former physicians to get some questions answered but learned he’d outlived them all. He was 98 at the time of Rankin’s lecture.
An African proverb says that it takes a village to raise a child. And apparently, a village to see him through to the end, to celebrate a life and prepare for its passing. A rite sorely missed in the isolating COVID deaths and the thousands of delayed memorials.
Buddy keeps on keeping on. Evidently the best cure is the kindness of strangers. Stamatis Moraitis’s record is safe but six months after her diagnosis she’s still completing the loop. She’s eating well again, sleeps heavier than a teen and doesn’t behave like a being about to pass on to another plane. When she does move on though, it will be easier to let her go, to release her like a helium balloon escaping a small child’s grasp, floating away to her next incarnation. Which I doubt will be as good.
