Cherished (22 page)

And then he's in the kitchen all the time, where his food and water are, on the cool quarry-tile floor. People always said to me,
You'll know when it's time
, and I never believed it — not with this dog, who wanted so much to stay in the world. I was terrified that his body would fail him, would refuse to go another step, an awful sprawl beneath him, and he'd be
looking at me in a confusion and panic, just wanting to live.

Dr. Kaiser says, “Call me any time, I'll come to the house. You'll know when it's time.”

Arden seems nervous, his breathing's hard. In pain, I think. The Triumph goes unfinished. He falls, and I try to reach beneath him and lift up those crumpled hindquarters, and he cries out terribly.

There's a Friday morning when I wake up and hear him crying before I've even walked into the kitchen, and there he is, sprawled on the floor in a puddle of urine and feces he's been trying to drag himself out of, completely helpless. And the look on his face — well, I know what it means, beyond any doubt.

I clean him up and call Dr. Kaiser, who understands the situation but can't come till Sunday. Certainly, it's better for us that we have a little time. I think it'll be all right; we can take care of him. What I'd imagined I wouldn't be able to stand was the feeling that Arden would still want to live, that he'd have every intention of going on no matter how helpless his body: hell on earth. But that isn't the case; what was entirely plain to me in his face that morning was that he was through, that he'd welcome an exit.

Once I've made the call, Arden seems to lighten, to change, as if he knows the path is clear. He still can't move, but he seems at ease, distraction giving way to that old, clear gaze, his tension evaporating. It's as if there's an element of relief for Paul and me, what we've so long known was coming is here at last, and Arden must feel it, too.

And now we give him the warmest and lightest weekend we can. He seems to relax utterly. We spend time brushing and stroking him. We cuddle him up and talk. He sleeps in the garden, his last night, in the cool air under the stars, and Sunday morning has grilled chicken for breakfast, and he's sprawled sleepily on the gravel by the gate when Dr. Kaiser comes. My sense, for whatever it's worth, is that he knows perfectly well where we've arrived. Does he give one little growl at the vet, as if for old times' sake? As if it were his duty, and he'd be some other dog if he didn't?

This is unmitigatedly awful and not so at all; I remind myself this is exactly what I'd want, for someone to love me enough not to allow me to live in pain when I don't want to; that it's part of our work — this is what Dr. Kaiser has said to us — part of our stewardship, seeing Arden out of the world.

I have my face down against that smooth muzzle, the ears that still smell, as they have all his life, of corn muffins. Paul's holding him from the other side, so that we can both be in his gaze. We each speak to him quietly. First, there's a shot to relax him, to make sure the second shot will work, and I don't think he even feels it. And then we ease him out of that worn-out body with a kiss, and he's gone like a whisper, the easiest breath.

W
E'D LONG PLANNED TO BURY HIM IN THE GARDEN,
near where Beau lies, in his favorite spot under the forsythia. But when it came to it, truly we couldn't do it. Wasn't Arden a dog who always really just wanted to be with us anyway? Leave it to Beau for commingling with all things wild; Arden preferred his human company. So, we let the vet take his body to be cremated, down Cape someplace, his ashes to be returned in a few days.
Dr. Kaiser lifts him — still a serious bulk, though he looks so light now — and then, oh! what empties out my heart all over again, how his neck lolls like a loose flower on a stem. Just like Wally's; how, after months and months of rigidity, the gradual paralysis afflicting his nervous system and muscles and pulling his head tightly to one side — and then, suddenly, in death, that tightness released as if it had never been there. Who knew that Arden had been holding his neck with all that tension? He'd worked so hard, old soldier, to hold himself upright, to will his uncooperating hips to the next step, the next position. I'm remembering the tension in his shoulders, the way those muscles worked overtime, to compensate. And now, all effort released, the neck just floats.

The vet sets his sweet body in the back of the black pickup truck. I can't help it, I have to rearrange his head and neck so he looks comfortable, even though I know it's absurd. The vet understands my gesture, and we thank him for all he's done for us, and then he drives away.

W
E TRY OUR BEST.
A good end
, we tell ourselves,
a fine end, the best we could do.
We talk about Mr. Arden and the stories of his days, and then we don't, for a while, and we each allow ourselves to weep — usually one at a time, because somehow doing it together just seems too much for us to take.
A long life
, we say,
a fine life, and not nearly enough
.

Sometimes the house is so empty we can hardly bear it, and then sometimes it seems like no one's gone — isn't Arden in one of his favored spots, watching us? Won't he, in a moment, come around the door? He's an absence and a presence both — the way he will be, to a greater or lesser degree, for years to come.

We keep collecting his hair in its little dark puffs from the floor.

Paul finds an empty can of Triumph in the recycling bin, and we put the hair in there, on the mantel.

We make a memorial ad, as people in our small town like to do, to tell the community about the passing of loved dogs, and take it down to the newspaper office. The fellow who takes our ad has an old dog, too. We bring a photo of Arden on the beach, and his name and dates, and a stanza from the most unabashed elegy for a dog I know, Robinson Jeffers's “The Housedog's Grave,” in which an English bulldog named Haig speaks from his grave, outside the window of the house where he'd lived:

I've changed my ways a little, I cannot now

Run with you in the evenings along the shore,

Except in a kind of dream, and you, if you dream a moment,

You see me there.

Wouldn't you know that the most misanthropic of poets would write the warmest of elegies for his dog? I email the poem to people who've known Arden, to tell them he's gone. I cut out the last words, and put them on the table where I write, next to a photograph of Arden in the deep green of the summer garden:
I am not lonely. I am not afraid. I am still yours.

They help a bit, those lines.

Paul and I are strangely unanchored. We take ourselves out for strolls to the bay, go across town to look at the marsh, amble back, noticing the gardens and the new shops. We stop for coffee. We sit a long time, on the bench in front of the coffee bar. No hurry. This feels strange to me, unfamiliar. For sixteen years, there has been someone at home, waiting to go for a walk.

M
y cat Stuart with the failing kidneys had to be put to sleep while I was working on this book. In the past it always seemed that my animals died suddenly with no forewarning — in accidents, or in emergency races to the vet where they were put to sleep quickly to end their pain; there was never any planning to it. But last December I spent a day knowing that Stuart's hours were numbered: his veterinarian, Bob Goldman, was coming to the house that evening to put him to sleep. I had no options — he had stopped eating, wouldn't drink water, and this most meticulous of cats had begun to wet his bed. He was peeing blood.

To have the end of Stuart's life scheduled was a huge blessing of course — a compassionate, skilled doctor was coming to our house to ease Stuart out of pain in his own little bed right next to my computer, in the company of people who loved him, as well as of his sister, Charlotte — a cat who might not have exactly loved him but was his flesh and blood after all. (I have to admit that Stuart had a long history of being abusive to his sister, beating her up on
occasion and trying to ignore her the rest of the time. They were never friends, never groomed one another or curled up together.)

In spite of how sick he was the final day, Stuart, ever the bon vivant, made trips down to the kitchen and out into the courtyard. This caused me to second-guess myself. He looked so beautiful! How could a creature still so gorgeous be dying? I cried, wrote in my journal, drank ginger tea, Googled end-of-life issues for cats on the Internet, and emailed back and forth with the vet.

Had I planned an execution? That's how it felt. I didn't want to endure this huge wave of grief bearing down on me. I got angry. Wait a minute: My cat is just going to disappear? Be
gone
? This warm, sweet body next to my computer will
vanish
? How can you wrap your mind around something like this?

It was raining outside, but then it cleared to a magnificent sunset. Which made everything worse.
Give me a sign
, I begged Stuart. I realized I was waiting for him to be almost dead before the vet came, but he didn't look almost dead. Did I have the right to play God? And then suddenly Stuart lowered himself down on my computer and made a sound I'd never heard him make before — half groan, half growl. An exhausted, end-of-the-road sound, loud and final.

C
LASSICAL MUSIC PLAYED,
and the lights in my office were dim, when Bob Goldman arrived at seven that night. He petted Stuart and talked to him for a while, then gave him a sedative to relax him. With the music playing, the soft lighting, all of us petting Stuart and whispering to him, the feeling in the room was calm and sweet, like some kind of low-key celebration or church service. Bob gave Stuart another shot and he began to sleep soundly, but his strong heart kept beating. It was almost an hour before Stuart was finally gone — peaceful in his bed on my desk, and astonishingly, his sister, who had watched the events of the past hour, was curled up next to him.

A
ND NOW FIVE MONTHS LATER,
Charlotte is living out her final days. I know it's close to the end; she eats very little and no longer leaves my office. But she seems peaceful and content, spoiled with small bites of baby food and constant attention, exuding a patience and dignity that you never see in younger cats, no matter how adorable they are. And I think: maybe death is not so fearful a thing. Is this what we can learn from our animals when they navigate their passage out of this world with such acceptance and grace?

When I pet Charlotte, her fur feels warm from the sun pouring in the window and she smells of baby food. She purrs.

C
ECILIA
M
ANGUERRA
B
RAINARD
is the author of seven books, including the novels
Magdalena
and
When the Rainbow Goddess Wept
. She is the recipient of several awards, including a California Arts Council Fellowship in Fiction, and teaches creative writing at the UCLA Extension Writers' Program. Cecilia managed her cat's Facebook account (Kiki D'Rose), which was linked from her blog, Cbrainard.
blogspot.com.

M
AY-LEE
C
HAI
is the author of seven books, including her award-winning memoir,
Hapa Girl
, and most recently the novel
Dragon Chica
. She is the recipient of an NEA Grant, a Literature Fellowship in Prose. Her short stories and essays have been published in the United States and abroad, including in
Seventeen
,
Missouri Review
,
North American Review
, and the
Jakarta Post Weekender
magazine.

M
ICHAEL
C
HITWOOD'S
poetry and fiction have appeared in the
Atlantic Monthly
,
Poetry
, the
New Republic
,
Virginia Quarterly Review
, and numerous other journals. He has published six books of poems, including
Gospel Road Going
and
Spill
, both of which were awarded the Roanoke-Chowan Award for Poetry. He has also published collections of essays and short stories. His latest book is
Poor-Mouth Jubilee
, published by Tupelo Press in 2010. He teaches at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.