A Dog’s Journey (32 page)

I yawned in agitation. Did no one else care about the ball?

“What is it? Why did you just pause?” Fran asked after a moment.

“I was just thinking that maybe she
won’t
tell you. She’s been more and more unresponsive, and, of course, she’s pretty much stopped eating. I guess part of me is having trouble adjusting to the idea that this is truly the end.”

“It’s hard,” Fran said, “to lose someone who has been so important in your life.”

“I didn’t think it would be,” CJ said very quietly.

“You’ve experienced loss before.”

“Oh, yes.”

I sat up, watching my girl, the ball forgotten. She reached for a fluffy piece of paper and pressed it to her eyes. “My husband, Trent, died last fall.”

They sat quietly. My girl reached down to me and I licked her hand. “That’s how I came to be exposed to hospice. Trent passed peacefully, surrounded by people who cared about him.”

There was another long, sad pause. I liked hearing Trent’s name, but there was no scent of him clinging to CJ. It was similar to when, as Max, I realized Rocky’s smells were no longer all over Trent. I knew what it meant when a smell faded away, whether it was man or dog.

It was good to be with CJ, but I was sad to think I would never see Trent again.

“Does Gloria’s disease stir up feelings about your husband?” Fran asked gently.

“Not really. This is so different. Besides, I
always
have feelings about Trent. He was the friend I could always turn to who never asked for anything for himself. I think for a long time I modeled my understanding of love based on my relationship with my mother. When I finally shook that off, Trent was waiting for me, and we had the most wonderful life together. I couldn’t have children, so it was just the two of us, but he made every day seem special. He liked to surprise me with trips—and planning a getaway when your wife needs dialysis takes some doing. But that was Trent, the most capable man I’ve ever met. He could do whatever he decided to do. Through everything that happened—and it was no picnic, with my transplant and the immunosuppressants and the trips to the emergency room—he was always my rock. Even now, I can’t really believe he’s gone.”

“He sounds very special,” Fran said. “I would have liked to have known him.”

From that day forward, my girl would come to visit Gloria and I would greet her at the door and stay by her side until she left. Sometimes CJ pulled treats out of her pocket and fed them to me without me having to do any tricks. “Such a good dog,” she would whisper.

Eddie told me I was a good dog, too, and he reinforced the sentiment with meat treats!

“‘Dog’ is ‘God’ spelled backward; you know that. That’s why you’re here, to help the nuns do God’s work. So I figure a little stew meat between us boys is the least I can give you,” Eddie said. I never knew what he was saying, but his treats were the best I’d ever had!

Just as I had once watched the baby Clarity for Ethan, I now reasoned that it was my job to take care of Gloria for CJ. I spent a lot of time in Gloria’s room even when CJ wasn’t there with her. I didn’t try to jump on Gloria’s bed, though, because the one time I tried it her eyes were filled with terror and she screamed at me.

Some people just don’t appreciate having a dog around. It’s sad to think there are people like that. I knew Gloria was that way—maybe that’s why she could never be truly happy.

Fran and CJ became friends and often ate lunch together out in the courtyard. I would lie at their feet and watch for falling crumbs.

Falling crumbs were my specialty.

“I’ve got a question for you,” CJ told Fran at one of these lunches, “but I want you to think about it before answering.”

“That’s exactly what my husband said to me when he proposed,” Fran replied. They both laughed.

I wagged at CJ’s laughter. She seemed to have so many sharp pains digging at her from inside; I could sense them from the way she’d start and gasp when she moved, or when she exhaled in a long, loud sigh as she carefully sat down. Any time she laughed, though, the pain seemed to retreat.

“Well, it’s not
that
kind of proposal,” CJ said. “What I’m thinking is that I’d like to work here at the hospice. In counseling, I mean. I see how hard it is for you and Patsy and Mona to keep up—and I’d volunteer. I really don’t need money.”

“What about your current practice?”

“I’ve been winding that down for a long time—I only work as a consultant now as it is. To tell you the truth, I’m finding it harder and harder to relate to teenagers—or maybe it’s the other way around. I tell them I identify with what they are going through and I see the skepticism in their eyes—to them, there’s little difference between being in your seventies and being a hundred years old.”

“We normally discourage any volunteer relationships with the hospice by family members until a year after the guest has passed.”

“I know; you said that. That’s why I want you to think about it—I believe an exception could be made for me. I know very, very well what it’s like to lie in bed and feel horrible—I do it three times a week. And certainly what I’m going through with Gloria gives me tremendous insight into how families feel.”

“How is your mother?”

“She’s … It won’t be much longer.”

“You’ve been a good daughter, CJ.”

“Yeah, well, maybe under the circumstances. Not sure Gloria will agree, or would ever have agreed. So will you think about it?”

“Of course. I’ll talk to the director and to the nuns about it, too. It’s really up to them, you know. The rest of us are just employees.”

About a week after that, I was sitting at CJ’s feet in Gloria’s room when I felt a change come over Gloria. I could hear that her breathing was getting lighter and lighter, and then it would stop, and then she’d take a couple of deep breaths. With each cycle, though, the breathing was weaker, the exhalations more gentle.

She was passing.

I jumped up on the chair next to her and looked at her face. Her eyes were closed, her mouth open, her hands clutched across her chest. I glanced back at CJ, who was asleep. I knew she would want to be awake, so I barked, a single, sharp yip that sounded very loud in the silent room.

My girl awoke with a start. “What is it, Toby?” She stood and came over to stand beside me. I lifted my nose and licked her fingers. “Oh,” she said. After a moment, she reached down and clutched Gloria’s hand in hers. I saw tears falling from her eyes and could feel the sad pain in her. We stood like that for several minutes.

“Good-bye, Mom,” CJ finally said. “I love you.”

When Gloria took her last breath and faded away, CJ went back to her chair and sat down. I jumped into her lap and curled up and she held me, rocking softly. I did what I could for her, being with her as she grieved.

At the end of that day, I walked with CJ and Fran to the front doors.

“I’ll see you at the service,” Fran said. They hugged. “Are you sure you’re okay to go home alone?”

“I’m okay. To tell you the truth, it’s actually a relief to have it over with.”

“I know.”

CJ looked down at me and I wagged. She knelt, wincing a little as she did so, then gathered me to her.

“You’re such an amazing dog, Toby. What you do for everyone, comforting them and guiding them at the end—you’re just a miracle, an angel dog.”

I wagged—“angel dog” was something like “doodle dog,” another name that meant I was good and I was loved.

“Thank you so, so much, Toby. You be a good dog. I love you.”

CJ stood, smiled at Fran, and walked out into the night.

CJ didn’t come back the next day, nor the next. More days went by, until I no longer rushed over to the sliding doors when they gasped open—my girl, it seemed, didn’t need me right now.

That was just how things were. I would rather have gone with CJ wherever she was, but my job now was to take care of and love everyone in my building and to be with people as they left this life. And also to Sit for Eddie so that he would feed me chicken.

I knew that if CJ needed me, she could find me, just as she always had done before.

In the meantime, all I could do was wait.

THIRTY-ONE

And then one day, when the brown leaves outside scuttled before the wind so loudly I could hear them from everywhere in the building, my girl walked in the door. I was wary as she came up the sidewalk because I wasn’t sure it was her—there was an odd hitch to her walk, a limp, and the bulky coat across her shoulders hid her frail thinness. But when the door whooshed open and the blustery wind blew her wonderful scent into my face I scampered across the floor and right up to her. I was careful not to jump up, fearing I might knock her over, but my tail wagged with joy and I closed my eyes when her hand came down to stroke me.

“Hello, Toby, did you miss me?”

Fran walked up and embraced her and CJ put some things on a desk in one of the rooms, and from that day forward we lived life backward from the way we had always lived it before. Now CJ left at night and didn’t return until morning, instead of leaving in the morning and not coming back until night. She never took me to the room with the couches, but I could smell that she was still going there on a regular basis.

CJ moved through the building, visiting people in the rooms and talking to them and sometimes hugging them. I was always at her heels, but when she left at night there was often someone who needed me on their bed, so I would lie there with them, and sometimes their family members would hold me.

People were often in pain when they talked to CJ, whether they were lying in bed or standing next to it, but usually after a quiet conversation I could feel their pain lessen a little. Often someone in the family would reach for me, and it was my job to let them hug me for as long and as hard as they needed to, even if it made me uncomfortable.

“Good dog,” CJ would say. “Good dog, Toby.”

Often Fran or Patsy would be in the room with CJ, and they said the same thing. “Good dog, Toby.”

I was glad to be a good dog.

CJ was in pain, too—I could sense it, could see how it slowed her down. Hugging me made her feel a little better, too.

One family was very sad because a woman who was lying in bed was suffering and had a strong metallic tang to her breath. There was a man her age and three children who were the age CJ had been when I was Molly. When one of the children picked me up and put me in bed with the woman I did Be Still.

“Dawn,” CJ said to the oldest of these children, a girl taller than CJ and with long, light hair that smelled of flowery soap and whose hands carried with them the strong scent of apples. “Would you join me for a cup of coffee?”

I felt some alarm go through Dawn. She looked at her mother, who was sleeping, unaware of my presence next to her, then up at the man, her father, who nodded. “Go ahead, honey.”

I could feel something like guilt stirring in Dawn as she reluctantly left her mother’s side. I decided that whatever was happening, CJ needed me more to be with her and Dawn than with the woman in the bed. Moving as carefully as possible, I eased onto the floor and silently padded down the hall after my girl.

“Hey, you want something to eat? A banana, maybe?” CJ asked.

“Sure,” the girl said. I soon smelled the pungent, sweet smell of a new fruit mingling with the apples on the girl’s hands as they made chewing noises. I lay down at their feet under the table.

“It must be hard to be the oldest. Your sisters look up to you; I can tell,” CJ said.

“Yeah.”

“Do you want to talk about it?”

“Not really.”

“How’s your dad doing?”

“He’s … I don’t know. He keeps saying we have to fight. But Mom…”

“She’s not fighting anymore,” CJ said softly after a moment.

“Yeah.”

“Must be very stressful.”

“Uh-huh.”

They sat for a little while.

“What are your comfort foods?” CJ asked.

“Peanut butter,” Dawn replied with a wry laugh. “Oh, and you know those lasagnas you can heat up?”

“Eating helps with the stress,” CJ said.

Dawn was quiet.

“And then when you’ve eaten too much?” CJ asked quietly.

A jolt of alarm went through Dawn. She sat up in her chair. “What do you mean?”

“When I was in high school I had this problem. I could always make myself feel better by eating,” CJ said. “But with every bite I’d be hating myself because I already felt fat and I knew I was just putting on pounds—I could practically feel my butt getting bigger. So then I got rid of what I ate.”

When Dawn spoke I could hear the tremor her heartbeat put in her voice. “How?”

“You know how, Dawn,” CJ replied.

Dawn inhaled sharply.

“My eyes had little bits of blood in them all the time. Just like yours,” CJ said. “Sometimes my cheeks were as swollen as yours, too.”

“I have to go.”

“Sit with me for just a bit longer, would you?” CJ asked.

Dawn shuffled her feet. I could tell that she was afraid.

“These aren’t my own teeth, you know,” CJ continued. “I lost them when I was young, from all the acidity—people my age often have implants, but I had them in college.”

“Are you going to tell my dad?” Dawn asked.

“Does your mom know?” CJ replied.

“She … I think she does, but she never said anything to me. And now…”

“I know. Dawn, there’s a program.…”

“No!” Dawn said sharply. She pushed her chair back from the table.

“I know how you feel. How awful it is to have this secret, how it can make you hate yourself.”

“I want to get back to my mother’s room.”

They both stood. I eased to my feet, yawning anxiously. CJ was not as tense as Dawn, but strong feelings were running through both of them.

“I’m on your side, Dawn,” CJ said. “In the coming days and weeks, any time you feel that urge, that uncontrollable need, I want you to call me. Will you do that?”

“Will you promise not to tell my dad?”

“Only if I know for sure you’re not going to hurt yourself, honey.”

“Then you’re
not
on my side,” Dawn blurted. She turned and walked away much more rapidly than my girl could move.