Church of the Dog (15 page)

It’s been so hard to see Earl trapped inside that body, that body that had turned on him, turned on us; the body I had loved; the body that gave me Sam. I think of how he suffered for weeks now—weeks where every moment was agony, where every day was torture. And though you’d think I might, I don’t exactly feel relief. Relief isn’t quite accurate. Maybe release is.

I try to reconcile the conflict between my attachment to Earl and my gladness not to watch him suffer anymore. But there is no reconciliation; all the fragmented parts of my broken heart cry out different things.

I stare at him and try to etch it in my mind so I won’t forget anything, and then I think, Why? Why do I want so hard to remember him dead? So I try to remember him alive, to remember every detail of the nights we danced recently, every detail of the day we met, every detail about our wedding, of birthday parties, of Christmases. But the more I try to remember, the more the memories run from me. And as the fear of being unable to remember washes over me, I am able to remember even less.

I know I am supposed to call someone, but I want to make sure that he is so dead that no one could possibly revive him and make him suffer more.

I stare and I stare, and after a while the body doesn’t look like Earl to me anymore. It just looks like a body, ashen and empty and more and more unfamiliar as each moment passes. And with each moment that passes, I feel him slip further and further away.

I know that in reality I said my good-byes, but before I leave the room, I say again, “Thank you, Earl. From the bottom of my heart, thank you.”

And then as I walk away from him, walk down the hall toward the stairs, it seems real and no longer like a strange dream. It seems real like a kick in the stomach, real like having to call someone to take the only body my body has ever loved, real like severing, real like thunderstorms of sad tears, storms that rack my body and shake the house.

winter

Grandma is in terrible shape. She hasn’t eaten for days. I look at her, so fragile, and realize she is all that remains of my family.

Mara draws Grandma a bath in the old claw-foot tub and pours a drop of rose oil in it. “When you grieve for him, it’s really important to picture white light around him. We’ll be back in twenty minutes. Please wait for us to return before you get out. I don’t want you to fall.” She leaves Grandma alone in the bathroom.

“She needs to scream and howl,” Mara says to me, “but I know she won’t do it with us in the house. Would you like to go for a walk or a ride, or if you like, we could just hang out at the Church of the Dog?”

I don’t remember much about our ride except the warmth and smell of the horse as we rode bareback and the eerie sound of my grandmother screaming in the distance.

Sometimes I think I’ll surely die of heartbreak, and then there are moments when Earl’s departure doesn’t seem real to me. I appreciate these moments of detachment and watching the time like I could take or leave it. I appreciate these moments like other people might appreciate a trip to the Bahamas.

Isabel Moloney caught me during one of these moments today when she dropped a Jell-O off for us. When she left, I had to laugh a little. Once, before Earl left the church, Isabel asked for his help with some household repair, and he saw her kitchen. Suffice it to say, Isabel wasn’t much of a housekeeper— cats on the counter and such. That didn’t sit well with Earl. Said he knew where their paws had been. Anyway, after that, Earl wouldn’t eat anything she brought to the church potlucks that I dragged him to.

So when Isabel dropped her Jell-O by, well, Daniel and I knew what we had to do. He turned on the garbage disposal, and I called up to the sky, “This one’s for you, Earl!” as I dumped it in the sink. Then Daniel gave me a high-five, and we laughed for a minute, something between a laugh and a cry, really.

Sure was thoughtful of Isabel, though, wasn’t it?

The last time I was here was a few days after my parents’ funeral. We drove up to the church. Grandpa dropped off Grandma and me and then went to park the car. Grandma paused to look at the church before starting up the path, holding my hand.

I didn’t budge. She gave my hand a little tug. "C’mon,” she said.

“No!”
I stammered, more afraid than angry. She looked at me for a minute, her fatigue obvious. “We need to turn to God right now.”

But as far as I was concerned, that church wasn’t God. That church was a building I sat in for what seemed like forever, looking at two boxes containing what was left of my parents. I wasn’t about to go back in there.
“No!”
I told her again, more freaked out and more adamant.

“We are going to church,” she told me firmly and started up the walk holding my hand again.

“No!”
I screamed and broke free. I ran. I ran wildly and blindly for two blocks and then across Main Street, over the bridge that goes to the school yard, around the fence, and down to the creek, where I hid under the bridge. Maybe I blacked out, maybe I fell asleep, or maybe I just don’t remember those ten hours.

What I do remember is a police officer named Dawson shining his light on me. "C’mon out, son,” he said in a low, gentle voice. Turns out some kids had noticed me there and told when someone asked if they had seen me.

“I’m not your son! You’re not my dad! My dad is dead! My parents are dead!” I screamed at him. He looked down, and I screamed at him again, “They’re dead!”

“I know,” he said quietly. “They were my friends.”

“How could they die? I need them! I need them!” I told him, bewildered and confused.

“I know,” he said and exhaled loudly, “but your grandparents will take good care of you.”

“But I need
them
,” I cried. “I need them! Don’t they know I need them?” I started sobbing and wedged myself higher in the space between the creek slope and the footbridge.

I heard footsteps running over the bridge and then saw Grandma and Grandpa squatting beside the officer. Suddenly I felt very calm, and I said to my grandparents, “I’m never going to see them again.”

“We’ll see them in Heaven,” Grandma told me.

“Then why did the priest say we had to pray for their souls to get in? How do you know they made it?” I asked, suddenly all rational.

“Father McCleary is full of shit,” Grandpa began, to the horror of Grandma and the shock of the officer. “Of course they’re in Heaven. There’s no question. Now let’s go home and get something to eat. I’m hungry.”

And so I came out, and Grandma and Grandpa held each of my hands as the three of us walked off calmly and quietly back to the car as if nothing had happened. But from then on Grandpa and I stayed home from church when Grandma went.

It was the last time I ever felt anything passionately. Twenty years later I am here again, holding my grandmother’s hand as we walk up the path. I want to go run under the bridge again, but I don’t. This time I don’t run. I hold my grandmother’s soft hand, and I try to be strong for her.

I sit in the same pew with Grandma, who is white and shaking, and I put my arm around her, shut my eyes, and imagine myself like the boat I worked on, floating on the ocean on winter nights in fifty-foot waves. There were times it looked like our boat was no match for the enormous sea. I just sit there and think about floating, floating in any storm, floating through anything even when it feels so much bigger than me.

Every once in a while, something Father McCleary says catches my ear, something that defies common sense, and I hear Grandpa say, “Father McCleary is full of shit.”

It’s so hard to see Edith like this. It’s like I can’t reach her. And somewhere along the line my psychic protective force shield disintegrated, and now I can’t tell her feelings from my own. I’m just absorbing everything.

The small steers and feeder heifers get picked up tomorrow. I’m trying not to think about that, either. Each one will be about eight hundred dollars, much needed to sustain Edith. I know that. It just feels like death is everywhere, like it’s draping over all of us like a lead apron at the dentist’s office. I can’t seem to shut it out. I’m going to make an effort not to be here when the truck arrives.

Times like these all I can do to stay sane is curl up in a hot bath, read
Organic Gardening
, and dream of warmer days. I dream of feeling warm dirt between my toes and of eating tomatoes off the vine, warmed in the sun. The Church of the Dog doesn’t have hot water, so I go to the McRaes’ to bathe every night, and once a week I indulge in a bath.

I decided that everything I plant in my garden next spring will be purple to represent the spirit chakra: lilacs, irises— particularly the ones that smell like grape popsicles!—pansies, hyacinths, petunias, bachelor’s buttons, forget-me-nots, lobelia, lupine, wisteria, clematis, and lavender, especially lavender.

Edith has me hooked on lavender. Last September we cut many of her remaining lavender blossoms, sewed muslin bags, and put the lavender inside them. One floats in the tub now, infusing the bathwater with fragrance. Edith is my teacher of simple pleasures.

I pick up a seed catalog and mark another page. Did you know that in addition to purple vegetables like eggplant and red cabbage, which looks purple to me, you can purchase purple varieties of almost any vegetable? I take a highlighter and highlight Purple Passion asparagus, All Blue potatoes (which really look purple), Purple Pod pole beans, Purple Beauty peppers, Rainbow corn, and Purple Ruffles basil.

I think I’ll grow grapes, too. Perhaps I’ll even try making wine. Might help the longevity of my teaching career.

I put down the seed catalog, close my eyes, and dream of the brightness of summer, bright flowers, and bright sky. I dream of lazy days, of lying down and watching white puffy clouds drift through the sapphire blue sky. I dream of long days heating the sage so that the warm, windy nights smell fragrant and medicinal. I breathe deep, inhaling lavender, trying to clear myself, clear my mind.

I give up, pick up my
Organic Gardening
magazine again, and read an article on edible flowers. Seems like a waste to eat something so beautiful, if you ask me.

I remember sitting here in this tub as a boy, the heavy steam filling the room, making it hard to breathe. Here, I would sit by myself, and it would hit me how truly alone I was. Sometimes I could hear sounds of Grandma working in the kitchen or Grandpa outside in the barnyard, and I would fantasize about running to them, jumping in their arms, and breaking down. They would stroke my hair and tell me everything would be okay. But I didn’t, and they didn’t. Instead, I just ran for the window whenever my lungs got so tight I couldn’t breathe. I’d stick my head out and suck in a long, arduous breath.

People like to say that time heals all wounds, but I don’t believe it. I remember once when Grandpa took me firewood cutting, we looked at the rings of the tree together, and he pointed out the years where there was drought and the years where there was fire. So while time allowed for new growth that hid the scars of the past, those scars were still there, inside the tree and part of the tree. I think about how I’m like that tree.

I can hear Grandma in the kitchen. I want to get out of the tub and put my arms around her. But I don’t. Instead, I get out, open the window, and breathe deeply.

In my dream I’m at the Grand Canyon with Zeus. Actually, we’re floating above it.

“Oh! I was hoping you’d meet me here!” I hear to my left, and I turn to see Adam.

“Hey, nice to see you!” I greet him and smile.

“Wanna fly through the canyon?” he proposes.

“Oh, yeah!” I answer, and then the three of us go speeding through the canyon, flying down to touch the river, and back up halfway around the corners, on and on. Even Zeus is smiling.

And then it’s time to get up and prepare for another workday.

All of a sudden Kelli seems to have discovered herself as an artist. I noticed her picking up speed with her charcoal strokes, which I like to see. Speed makes a piece look full of energy and movement. I wanted to see what she would do if she worked big, so in class today I taped big pieces of butcher paper to the wall. She looked uncomfortably around the room and asked if she could come back after school and try.

Now here she is.

“Can I turn up your music?” she asks.

“You like Tori Amos, too?”

“Is that who this is?”

“Yep. It’s an old one,” I tell her. “Turn it up as loud as you want.” I begin to unload the kiln while she gets her supplies and gets to work.

Kelli is also a redhead, but the very rich coppery kind. She has no freckles, a delicate nose, and brown eyes. She is built much smaller than me. She moves like a bulldog as she walks over to the boom box, turns it up, and approaches the wall where the paper hangs. Then she just stands in front of the big paper for a moment, intimidated perhaps. I can see the back of her shoulders rise and fall as she takes a big breath. I focus my attention back on the kiln so that I don’t feed her pressure with the energy of my interest.

I pull out a slab pot of Audra’s that looks like something in a Georgia O’Keeffe painting. The bold sides have a gentle curve out and then in. That girl has great style. I like her art better than my own.

Next, I take out Brandon’s creation—an abstract sculpture with excellent balance. In parts of it I think I see screaming faces, but I’m not sure. I wonder what he’ll do with it next. I might suggest turning it into a multimedia sculpture by adding some metal elements.

I pull out some ugly pinch pots and coil pots. There is something endearing about them, about their awkwardness and imperfection. In the imperfections I see something genuine— hope perhaps, hope that they can become the artist they want to become. It takes so much courage to start anything from the beginning and to be patient with yourself as you learn. It takes strength to keep trying when the results of your efforts are so unsatisfactory and it’s not clear what you need to do to get different results. The same could be said whether it’s creating art or creating life. The simple act of not giving up is true success.