Miss You Most

I miss you most in the evening. I miss the routine of taking you out at night for one last pee, shivering in the cold, peering through the dark, watching for skunks as you take your sweet time finding the right spot. I miss having to put up the baby gates to keep you out of the living room. I miss getting your Kong and filling it, and watching you dash to your bed, eager, anticipating. One last pat as you took your Kong, and and then I headed upstairs to the contented sounds of you working out the contents of the Kong. I miss you most in the evening.

I miss you most as I am falling asleep, as my mind, in an unguarded moment, slams against the reality that you are no longer here, as I see your head drooping over the vet's arm as she helped to lift you out of the car, hanging in death in a way it never ever hung in life. I miss you most as I am falling asleep.

I miss you most in the morning when I come downstairs, and you are not there at the bottom of the stairs to greet me. There is no joyful reunion, no happy dance, no leaning up against me for your morning pet, just a breakfast I am not particularly hungry to eat, a breakfast I force myself to eat because breakfast had rituals that involved you. My kefir lasts longer because you are not there to share it. When I take out the blueberries, you're not there to ask for one. You don't come running when my spoon scrapes on the bottom of the yogurt container. It makes me not want to eat blueberries and yogurt. I miss you most in the morning.

I miss you most when I sit down on the couch to put on my boots, and you don't come running to bury your head in my lap so I can scratch your ears. I miss the feel of the soft, soft fur on your ears and the top of your head, and the way you burrowed your head in my lap and groaned in pleasure as I rubbed your ears. There are no twirls of anticipation as you pretend to try to catch your tail but are really just so excited at the thought of walks or road trips or barn adventures. Somehow you knew exactly what was coming by the footwear I put on. I miss you most when I am putting on my boots.

I miss you most in the car and I look into the rear view mirror and do not see your ears sticking up above the seat. I drive past the Starbucks and there is no drama. You aren't there to ask for your own puppachino or to flirt with the people working drive-thru. There is no new nose art, and I cannot bear to wash the old art away. I miss you most when I am driving in the car.

I miss you most when I open the cupboard to get a bandaid and see all of your grooming stuff there and realise I will never again have to clip your nails or brush you or clean out your ears or check you for ticks. I will never again have to doctor a hotspot or give you a pill or an allergy shot. I never did get the spot under your ear healed -- there was still a scab on the day we said goodbye. I had wanted it to be healed. Why did I want that spot to be healed? What difference did it make? But I did, and I miss you when I think about never having to care for you again.

I miss you most when I am working or watching tv or reading a book. You aren't there to shove stinky toys in my lap, or to lay your head in my lap and just look up at me. No more stinky toys shoved alluringly at my hands, no more heavy head in my lap, no more long looks of love, no more pats and hugs and nuzzles and leans and licks and the thousand little ways I had daily physical contact with another living being who loved me freely and was loved in return. I miss you most in those quiet in-between moments.

I don't believe you're "in heaven". I don't believe in rainbow bridges. You are not possessor of a soul created in the image of God, and while I believe there will be dogs on the new earth, I don't believe we will have a reunion. It is goodbye, girl. Not just see you later, not until we meet again, but goodbye. The greatest comfort that I can conjure is that your body will break down and nurture the ground of a place you loved. But believing all that doesn't change my grief. It does not negate the tears I shed. I do not love you less or miss you less because I believe you are just dead and not "in a better place". My life is emptier with you not in it. My heart aches so much sometimes I can hardly catch my breath to breathe. No, believing you are just dead does not make my grief less sharp. I am grieving differently because you were a dog and not a human, but it is legitimate and genuine and right and appropriate that I grieve, and it is real grief. You were a constant presence and a companion. You knew my routines and my moods. You watched me always. You brought joy and love and physical contact into my life. You were my dog, and I loved you dearly.

Oh, my little girl, my good girl, I miss you most.

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.