As a farm kid, Ula is accustomed to the cycle of life and death.  But she wasn’t accustomed to my sadness. 

 

 

“Somebody just died.”  Ula begins.

“Somebody was just born,” I answer, smiling.

“Somebody is crying,” she responds.

“Somebody is laughing.”

“Somebody is scared.”

“Somebody is eating ice cream.”

“Somebody’s happy.”

“Somebody’s sad.”

“Somebody is watching the rain.”

“Somebody is working in the sun.”

“Somebody is sewing.”

“Somebody is building a house.”

“Somebody just got hurt.”

“Somebody just got better.”

This is our game.  It spontaneously began about two years ago.  She usually starts it.  It is something we do privately —  Our secret little way of marveling at the complexity of the world.

The game popped into my mind yesterday as Spriggan, my 15 year old Australian Shepherd Lab Mix, lay beside my kitchen counter.  I was making candles.  She was dying.

Spriggan came to me as a puppy a few months after I completed my oral exams in grad school.  She sat beside me every morning as I worked on transcriptions and data analysis for my dissertation.  She walked with me each morning as I puzzled over my research.  She was waiting at the farm with me when I came home from my final defense bearing the title Dr. Hayes.  She was lying nearby when I conceived each of my children, she walked with me through my pregnancies, allowing me to lean on her for support when my encumbered belly required frequent pee breaks in the woods.  She walked five mlles with me while I was in labor with Saoirse.  She paced the floor and climbed up and down the stairs as I worked to strengthen the contractions for Ula’s birth.  She was standing beside my face as I bore down to push my children into the world.  She slept beside me when I slept.  She sat beside me when I was up all hours with my babies.  She laid beside my desk each morning as I wrote six different books and over 200 essays.  She sat outside the door of the processing shed each time I cut meat, swam beside me in the pond when it was time to cool off from a long day, rode beside me in the car between home and farm.

Spriggan began to fail about two weeks ago.  It started on a walk in the woods.  She was slowing down, for certain, but she would always plod along at her own pace, and I would stop frequently to allow her to keep up.  But on that day, I stopped and waited.  And waited.  And she wasn’t there.  I re-traced my steps down the slope to the stream, near the sunny patch on the ground where the ramps grow.  I found her lying there, panting heavily.  Seeing me, she pushed herself up and followed me home.  I made her take a few days off.  Then, on a day when she seemed especially eager for our daily jaunt, I let her come again.  And she collapsed again.

“She’s getting ready to go,” I told Bob bravely.  I thought I would be okay with it.  It’s no secret that I’m a dog person.  The kids tease that I love my dogs more than I love my children.  And Spriggan, well, she was more than a companion.  She was my shadow.  My familiar.  She was part of me.  We began inviting other dogs into our home a few years ago in efforts to fill my heart and thwart the future sadness.  They are wonderful, all of them, different from Spriggy, but still comforting and joyful.  I was certain I would hold up to our inevitable separation with their support.  What are farms, anyhow, if not a magnification of the circle of life?

 

I stopped taking her for our walks.  Dusky, my littlest dog, protested.  She didn’t want to walk with her pack split up.  Nikki, our English collie, chose to stay back with Bob and see if there were plates to lick in the kitchen instead.  I was left to explore the woods on my own, a lonely feeling that I am unaccustomed to.

I went down to the stream to think and gather ramps for soup.  There, I took some time to cry beside the water about the waning of my friend.  I sought to draw comfort from the teeming life of the forest — the singing of the thrushes, the whisper of the breeze through the fresh spring leaves.  As I looked around me at the woodland glow, I remembered once more that the magic of a mixed growth forest is not necessarily in all that is green and lush.  It is actually the decay that makes the color stand out — the fallen logs that have surrendered to mushrooms, the standing dead trees that harbor the bugs that feed the woodpeckers, the fallen leaves that blanket the forest floor, enabling the wild ramps to draw their nourishment.  Life in the forest is in the death that inhabits the forest.  As I looked around, Ula’s game rang in my mind.  Something is decaying, I thought, something is growing.  Change is what makes the forest constant.

Spriggy began collapsing more and more frequently.  We palpated her.  She seemed to be in no pain.  We chose to keep her home, to spare her the anxiety of one last trip to the vet.  At night, I took the girls up to bed.  She wanted to follow, as was her job.  Bob held her back and slept downstairs to keep her company.  And that became our task, to keep her company, to keep her comfortable as she continued to do her job as our companion. It wasn’t too hard.  There was plenty to do around the house, and she was able to move enough to follow me to the porch, where she could watch me move about the gardens, and keep an eye on the kids as they played.

But yesterday at dawn, when I went to work in my office, she struggled to follow me, and collapsed.  Bob carried her outside to relieve herself, then brought her back to her sheepskin beside the kitchen counter, and waited with her until I finished at the computer.  I took my breakfast on the floor beside her.  As the day unfolded alternately steamy, sunny and rainy, it was clear she was no longer able to follow me around.   Bob left for the farm.

I wanted to only stay beside her.  But Ula needed me to do her vision therapy.  The kids needed to play.  If I left the kitchen, she would pick up her head in an effort to locate me.  And so, there I stayed. In my distress, I made things.  I made candles.  I made salve.  I made soups. I cooked lamb.  I boiled fiddleheads. Saoirse and Ula ran and played.  Mom called.

“How are you doing?”

“The kitchen’s a mess.”

“You’re all in there around her?”

“Yes.”

“That’s what she needs.  Keep it up.”

And my kitchen became like the forest, and like Ula’s game.  Somebody was crying.  Somebody was cooking.  Somebody was eating.  Somebody was talking.  Somebody was learning.  Somebody was cleaning.  Somebody was making.  Somebody was taking something apart. Somebody was pestering for sweets.  Somebody was scraping dishes. Somebody was dying.

Spriggy picked up her head in a sudden jerk.  I dropped the measuring cup I was holding and rushed to her.

“It’s time,” I called out to the girls.  And they came and sat beside me.  “It’s okay, Spriggy,” I whispered to her, tears streaming down my face.  “You can go.  But you gotta wait for me, okay?”

And I burrowed my fingers through her fur until they found her beating heart.  I kept them there, feeling her pulse, until it stopped.  I didn’t beg her to stay.  That’s silly.  My home is like the forest.  Change is the only constant.

But that doesn’t mean I didn’t cry.  I sobbed.  I howled.  The girls clung to me, I think more frightened by my sadness than by the loss of the dog.

“Mommy!  Mommy!”  Ula grabbed me by the shoulders.  “Spriggy isn’t gone.  You said she can come back.  Remember?  Mommy!  Say it!  Say Spriggy will come back!  Maybe she’ll be a cockatiel!  Maybe she’ll be a fish!  Say it Mommy!”  She shook me, her voice shrill with panic.  “Mommy!  You have to!  Say Spriggy will come back to you!”

And her eyes were wide, and the tears were thick.  “Mommy!  Please!”  She took a deep breath, and then said what worried her most, shouting it out so that it slammed into the walls of the kitchen “Say you will be happy again!”  Saoirse held me from behind on the floor, her sobs more contained, her eleven year old wisdom knowing there were no words of comfort just then.

“Mommy!  You have to be happy again!”  Ula just didn’t know any better.

I took my hands from Spriggy’s fur and wrapped them around Ula’s balled fists.

“Remember the game?” I whispered quietly.  “Where sometimes somebody’s happy and somebody else is sad?”

She nodded.

“Right now, it’s my turn to be sad.  And you just have to let me.  But that doesn’t mean I’m not happy, okay?”

She nodded again, then fell to her knees beside Spriggan’s body and began to pet her.  “I’m sorry, Spriggy.  I’m sorry I didn’t know how to love you enough!”

There’s no such thing as enough when it comes to love, I think.  But that’s a lesson for another day. For now, I’m just somebody sad.  Somebody who cries.  Somebody who loves.  Maybe tomorrow, or maybe the day after, I’ll be somebody who laughs.