Just a Dog

 Today I said goodbye to my dog. I took her to the farm – a place she loves -- and I had the farm vet euthanise her in the back of my car while I held her in my arms, and then we buried her in a grave I had dug earlier. I did my best to ensure it was the most peaceful and stressless way I could let her go. She was frail. She was losing feeling in her back legs, and she didn’t know where she was putting her feet anymore. She fell a lot, wobbled, couldn’t run, dragged her feet, couldn’t squat properly to go to the bathroom, was becoming incontinent. But her mind was still sharp. She didn’t think anything was wrong with her. She still wanted to play, still wanted to chase the squirrels and bark at the dog next door. She even roused herself from sedation to have one last bark at the farm cats.

 

Euthanasia – good death. It’s a lie, you know. There is no such thing as a good death. Death is horrible, even when it is “just a dog”. She went from a vibrant, muscled, alert creature to a slack and sagging mound of flesh in a matter of moments. Her eyes went from bright golden shoe buttons to clouded opacity in the time it took me to draw a breath. Her great and loving heart stilled under the assault of the drugs in her veins. Death is not good. It is heavy and hideous. Her fur is still soft and her body is still warm but it is so horribly loose. I can hardly lift her, and she flops and slithers where before, even in her weakness, she leaned and loved and held her own weight.

 

Good death. It’s not a good death. It’s just death and I miss her so much I am startled by the hugeness of the hollow in my heart. She’s “supposed” to be just a dog. It isn’t “supposed” to hurt this much. But it does. So much of my daily routine is wound up in caring for her. I don’t even know how to go to bed without the routine of taking her out for one last potty break, making sure the gates are up so she doesn’t sneak into the front rooms at night, getting her Kong and a handful of kibble and the can of dog food from the fridge and preparing her nightly treat. She sits and waits until I give her the spoon to lick off (two pills tucked inside the pasty canned meat she loves), and then runs to her bed and jumps on it, waiting, eager. And now I am to just get up and go to bed? How? And how do I face tomorrow, coming down the stairs, with no dog to greet me at the bottom and lean against me for pats and scratches? I am dreading almost to despair the long months of a lockdown winter without my dog lying on the rug beside me as I work alone from home and getting up every so often to put her great head in my lap and look up at me just because I am there, and she can.

 

Good death? Damn death. Damn this whole horrible, broken, miserable, pandemic-blighted year. Damn the devil who laughs at disease and death, even if it is just the death of a dog.

 

Aye, but isn’t that the crux of it? Because it is all damned, groaning under the agony of the curse, the curse of my sin, our sin, the sin of this broken world. But, for the grace of God, it is all damned, and I am damned with it, and the curse crushes, and when I think about it, it is not anger I feel but deep, deep sorrow, not just for a dog but for the whole of this world crying out for redemption. It is not damnation I desire but redemption, a longing for the curse to be finally broken, for death to be done, for my faith to be made sight. Oh, God, when? How long, O Lord? “O come, O come, Emmanuel, and ransom captive Israel that mourns in lonely exile here. O come, thou Rod of Jesse, free thine own from Satan’s tyranny; From depths of hell thy people save, and give them victory over the grave. O come, thou Key of David, come and open wide our heavenly home; Make safe the way that leads on high, and close the path to misery.” O come, Emmanuel. Emmanuel, come back!

 

But there is more than brokenness in this world. There is joy and laughter and love. Every good gift is a foretaste of the new heavens and new earth. My dog was a gift. She had a good life. She was larger than life, living with an intensity that sometimes drove me mad but mostly brought me joy because in so many ways, it mirrored my own. She was smart, eager, always ready to play. I could never train her not to eat the toilet paper or to sneak into the rooms she wasn’t allowed to be in or to bark at the dog next door, but she learned to spell r-a-b-b-i-t and to recognise the Starbucks logo without our even trying to teach her. She came with me to the barn every time I went, for years, waiting patiently in the car until it was her turn, then running with abandon through the woods, playing in the puddles, finding the biggest sticks she could carry to take me out at the knees when she ran by at full speed. She went on many, many road trips with my housemate and me, travelling on motorboats, pontoon boats, ferries, busses, and tractor-drawn wagons. She’s been all over southwestern Ontario with us, has been camping and cottaging and hiking. She lived life to the full – no, more than to the full, and when she wasn’t frustrating us, she was making us roar with laughter. If she could leap, she leapt. If she could run, she galloped. If she could dig, she’d dig trenches like the Grand Canyon. If one ball was good, three were better. Everything was over the top. She wrested every drop of joy and love and life out of every day she had, right up to the end. 

 

Good death? Never. Good life? For sure.

 

Maybe she was just a dog, but I miss her.

One Day More

 In the musical Les Miserables, there is a song called "One Day More". (You can hear it here.) The world is on the cusp of change. Every person is affected, some personally, some because they are being swept up in societal unrest. When tomorrow dawns, everything will be different, and no one knows what the sunrise will bring. It is a song of hope and longing, a song of fear and anxiety, a song of anticipation and dread, a song of triumphant resolve and tentative ambivalence. Everyone knows that things are about to change, but no one really knows how. No one knows how those changes will affect them personally. And, in many ways, it seems like an appropriate song for today.

One day more. 

For the past six months, I have been living and working at home. My physical world has become really quite small. I've gone from driving 400 km a week to driving about 40 km a week. My social circle has become even smaller. And that's all about to change. On Monday (ok, so not quite one day more -- more like four days more) I will resume teaching in person. My world will once again expand 100 km down the 401. My circle of contacts will expand from approximately five people to closer to 50 people.

One day more.

For the past 10 years, I have known exactly how to teach. Being in the classroom has always felt comfortable and safe and familiar. I have prided myself on being fairly technically-savvy. My classrooms have always been paperless, or very nearly so. But even so, I'm stepping into a strange new classroom, a classroom with plexiglass and microphones, and students are spread far and wide across a vast, echoing space, and group work and class discussions are a thing of the past, and masks and physical distancing are the new reality. Some of my students will be at tables in front of me, and some of my students will be on screens in front of me.

One day more.

When things shut down back in March, they shut down on a world that I was part of. I was out and about. I rubbed shoulders with people on a daily basis. I knew how to greet people with a handshake or a hug where appropriate. But the world I am about to reenter has changed. Where anxiety and depression were common before, now they are rife. Where stress and impatience and frustration were common before, now they are widespread. Where anger simmered, now it boils. And the world feels a much less kind place now than it did six months ago, not to me personally, but in general. Perhaps all those things were always there, and we just managed to cover them with a sheen of civility. Perhaps the past six months have done nothing but strip away the veneer to show the toxicity that was always there. Still, the world feels like a dangerous and unkind place now. One slip, one wrong word, one perceived wrong word, one thing spoken when someone should have kept silent, or one thing kept silent when the world judges someone should have spoken, and the mob roars in and cancel culture kills another person created in the image of God.

One day more.

I scarcely dare to move.

One day more.

I am filled with hope and longing, fear and axiety, anticipation and dread, triumphant resolve and tentative ambivalence.

One day more.

I'm looking forward to the drive again. I'm looking forward to seeing colleagues and students. I long to be in community again. Even off-the-scale introverts get lonely after a while. I hope my office remembers me. But at the same time, I'm nervous. Will we stay well? Will I stay well? Logically, I tell myself it's not if I get sick but when. After all, we are dealing with a highly-contageous disease for which there is no immunity and no cure. Logically, I tell myself that, regardless, my chances of getting a serious case or dying are very low indeed. I remind myself that every day of mine is in God's hands, and that I am not going to die one second before he calls me home, and if he is calling me home, I'm ready for that. But I do not want to get sick. I don't want my loved ones to get sick. I want to go back. I want to stay at home where I feel safe. I don't want to have to go back into lockdown. I am afraid to come out of lockdown. Hope and longing. Fear and anxiety. Anticipation and dread.

One day more.

I can't wait to get back into the classroom. I can't wait to see my students again, even if it is behind plexiglass and masks. Part of me believes that, regardless of the changes, it will feel more familiar than unfamiliar. I pray that the unfamiliar becomes familiar quickly. I pray that the internet doesn't go down and the projected slides stay up. I want so much for my students who are live-streaming to feel as much part of the community as they possibly can, given the limits of time and space and screens. I want this year to be truly good, not just ok, not just makeshift until we can get back to normal, but a year of excellence. I'm not sure I have the skills necessary to make that happen, but I'm giving it my best shot. Hope and longing. Fear and anxiety. Anticipation and dread.

One day more.

Oh, how I pray that these six months alone have taught me a measure of wisdom and grace, patience and kindness, love and faithfulness more than they have taught me fear and anger and depression. Oh, how I pray I can be a light shining in a world that feels so dark right now. How I pray that I can lean in hard to my faithful Father and lead well. How I pray that my classroom, and our school will be a light that the darkness cannot overcome. I feel so small and insignificant to the task, but then I am small and insignficant to the task. So I pray that in my weakness, God might be strong. Hope and longing. Fear and anxiety. Anticipation and dread.

Tentatitive ambivalence.

But, I pray, mostly triumphant resolve. By God's grace and in his strength alone.

One day more.

Culture Shock in Canada

I recently saw an advertisement for Uber Eats. A bunch of old friends are greeting each other in a gym, but what should be a moment of joy is a pathetic, awkward situation. The people approach each other, hands out as if to shake, a big, hand-slapping arm-shaking kind of shake that happens between good friends who haven't seen each other in a while, the kind of shake that would normally morph into a back-slapping hug. But they suddenly remember that they're not supposed to shake and reach up for a high five, but no, that's not right, either, and suddenly arms and hands are flapping in a chicken dance gone very wrong. Just as it gets beyond awkward to painful, they receive a notification that Uber Eats has arrived. Saved by the notification.

And isn't that being repeated over and over?

I walk out of the house and forget to bring a mask.

I instinctively go to the empty cashier at the grocery store only to remember that I need to join the line that stretches all the way to the freezer section and wait to be called to a cashier. I duck my head and am glad my mask hides the rising colour in my face as I face the glares of those already standing in line. I didn't mean to cut in front. I just forgot.

I see a dear friend and stand at a distance, smiling awkwardly, waving awkwardly. I feel like a toddler. It's not good enough. It's not near enough. But near enough is too near, and I don't know what else to do. No one does.

I get too close to someone in line. He glares. He gets too close to me. I glare. We're afraid. We're not meaning to get too close, but our social cues, our social norms are so ingrained that we forget. I'm so busy thinking about whether or not I have everything on my list that in that split second, I forget about the red circles on the floor. He is so busy thinking about the circles on the floor that he gets home and discovers that he's forgotten the very thing he went to the grocery store for in the first place.

Nothing feels right. Nothing feels the same. Faux pas await around every corner.

It's like when I was in Indonesia, trying to remember to use only my right hand for basically everything. Hand money to clerk with right hand. Take bag with right hand. Pass bag to left hand. Accept change with right hand. Left hand bad. Left hand useless. Pretend you do not have a left hand. But inevitably, I'd forget. I'd pass the money with my right hand and reach out my left to take the bag, only to have the clerk visibly recoil. I'd quickly snatch back my wicked left hand, and suddenly money and bag were falling all over the place as I tried to give money and take the bag and accept change all with one hand simultaneously. It's one small example of a thousand thousand ways I was reminded on a daily basis that nothing was the same anymore, that everything I thought I knew about how to interact with other people had gone out the window.

I read an article that talks about this very thing. The author argues that dealing with COVID and dealing with culture shock feel the same to the brain. I'd go a step further. I think that COVID has so altered the way we relate to each other that what we are experiencing really IS culture shock.

Our culture is no longer the same. The deep, unwritten rules about how we relate to other people have been changed. From how we greet each other to how we queue up at the grocery store to how big our personal bubbles are have all changed. The facial expressions and body language we use to "read" each other are altered, changed because we are hidden behind masks. I can no longer easily tell if you are friend or foe, happy or sad, angry or at peace. Even our voices are changed, muffled behind masks, diluted by distance, raised for the simplest of reasons -- we cannot hear each other. Pardon? Pardon? I'm sorry, I didn't hear you. We may all be speaking the same language, but still we cannot understand, and so, just as we do when trying to learn a new language, we speak louder, slower, as though the other person is stupid and hard of hearing, as though my own tongue is too thick and stupid to make the proper sounds. And we are frustrated because we don't understand the rules and we feel the fool and no one likes feeling the fool.

And the problem is that no one understands the new culture. At least when I was in Indonesia, the Indonesians knew how their culture worked. I could watch and observe and hopefully not do anything too stupid or insensitive. At a fancy dinner with a dozen pieces of cutlery, I can at least watch to see what other people do. But here? Now? No one knows how the rules work anymore. No one even knows what the rules are. We know the don'ts. Don't shake hands. Don't hug. Don't get too close. Don't go into stores without a mask. But we don't know what to do in lieu. How do I greet you when I can't get too close, can't hug, can't shake hands, and Uber Eats isn't there to save me, but I'm really glad to see you and really want you to know that? How do I assure you that I see you, I hear you, and I care, when I can't see you or hear you or touch you, but I still care? How do I celebrate when potlucks are out of bounds, or grieve when there can't be a funeral, or worship when I can't sing? How do I teach behind plexiglass to masked faces scattered across a huge room? How do I build community when all the rules have broken down community and there are no new rules yet for how to build it again?

I don't have answers, just observations. Maybe observing this helps me to be kinder to myself, more patient with myself when I feel out of sorts, more willing to stop and rest when I feel exhausted, more able to admit that there are things that have to go because simply living is taking way more energy than it used to. Maybe it helps just to understand why I feel so awkward and thickheaded and homesick, why the longing for the way things used to be can feel at times so overwhelming. I suppose I can take comfort in the fact that expats adjust to new cultures all the time. Although I'm not sure even expats have ever found themselves in a situation where they have to basically invent a whole new culture.

And maybe this also helps to explain the general unrest in the world. If all the old "rules" have been thrown out, then who gets to decide what the new "rules" are? It seems that in the void of the old rules, there is a rush for warring factions to create the new rules. After all, one might argue, if we're going to throw out handshakes and hugs, then we might as well throw out democracy and economic systems and free enterprise and history and freedom of speech and religion and start completely from scratch.

I don't have answers, just observations. But it has been pressing on me more and more that all of this reveals one thing to me: I am not a citizen of this country. The culture in which I found myself so comfortable was never my culture in the first place.

And maybe, just maybe, the culture of the Kingdom to which I do belong has never changed.

And that is where I must look to find answers.