lulu bird

Jeff is crying.  This isn’t something he does often:

I want the snow to melt.  I want the snow to melt her tracks.  I don’t want to be in this house.

I’d rather hang with the magpie, fat on the deck, lurking and shrill, the dog heavy and precious in her last days.  I’d rather sift.  Inhabit hair mottled, lids heavy.  Is today the day we ask?

Then carry on.  She’s an after-thought on our to-do.  She’s a piece of us dead so long.

She first left the July evening the girl came.  Bri brought her to the Birth Center with a pizza, she sniffed the red sleigh bed then cruised through the French doors.  That was before she decided she could no longer walk, muscles frozen with envy, masses building along her belly. 

She’s going into the yard to die! he said on the phone so many years ago with the 24 hour vet. 

I felt my distain rising, our separation almost inevitable.  I held the girl, cradled her to my breast, knew there was no one else in this world, ever.

When the dog didn’t die and the vets couldn’t solve the case, husband found the doggie acupuncturist.  She watched me do the baby sway, a tiny girl in a sling across my chest.  She watched my anxious husband and his still and focused view of the dog; the baby still a distance, a stranger.

He hurls snow off the deck.  I can’t be inside, he says.  I just can’t be in this house.

PTSD she proclaimed.

Your dog can’t handle the baby.

Sure enough when Eliana began to eat bits of banana and avocado, chunks of sweet potato and the famed rice cereal dripped from walls, from cuffs, Lucy healed.  She lapped the detritus.  She focused on benefits.

Fifteen years later, I return from a hike, girl awry. 

She’s not okay, mama.  We might need to put her down before her pills run out.

She’s been number one on the case as of late.  Eliana does all things Lucy:  feeds her, makes sure she gets her pills, makes sure she drinks water.  I have stepped away.  It’s like I don’t have the bandwidth.  I am so embarrassed and ashamed that I couldn’t love more. 

At a crossroads, we ordered one more bottle of painkillers.  For years our friends have remarked on her decay.  We’ve been telling neighbors, beloved house sitters – are you okay if she goes in your care?

This time around we know it will be too much.  Too much for any of us.  Her days are quite literally numbered.  In our hazy and exhausted moments, we break it down.  In our real day race, we feed and pet and deny – there’s too much going on to go there.

She stumbles like a drunk, a cripple, a peg legged lady pirate all washed up glamor and matted sheen, tries to find the stairs but instead walks into walls.  Her cry isn’t in my frequency, especially in the middle of the night but husband hears, wears the armor of midnight warrior, brings her water and pills, stays with her till she sleeps.

My doctor friend reminds me that she can’t advocate for her death, can’t describe the caverns of her pain.

Are we gonna burn Lucy? asks the boy.

Shhh, says husband.  She can still hear us.

It’s the first real snow and the heavy wet streets make me feel drugged and dizzy.  The kids more between silly chatter and sad silence as we drive across town to the vet’s office.

To me, she’s all crystal and stalagmite.  She’s hoar frost in winter, sun all the time, the life that sparked my animal self.  She is open space and deep gully’s and winter booties to protect her paws in the deepest cold, circles of pleasure around the Balsamroot in spring.   She is the backcountry before I even grasped the concept, the freedom of trails upon trails of nothing but earth and sky, creeks and stones.

She was our first taste of family, that one small thing we were actually in charge of.  I remember how she would leap and bark whenever I turned around at the top of Jumbo.  When I was way pregnant with Eliana, Jo and I were up there together.  Lucy began her crazed circle runs, her jumps fierce and playful on my giant belly.  Jo grabbed her collar, shouted, NO, looked me in the eyes.  You’ll never let her get away with that once you have that baby.  The dog is going to be an afterthought.  A nuisance.

My wise and blunt friend was right. Our fulcrum shifted.  So many years passed until it was daughter who tended her best at the end.  Somehow a long the journey, my energy began to wane.  There was only so much to hold and distribute, organize and create, share and love.  Can I admit this?  That I couldn’t love enough?

She is final weeks, final days.  I hold her wisdom in the age spots that appear overnight, the creases in forehead and sulk of skin.  I see it everywhere – the way we surrender and uplift, the way we settle and hold on, determined with now.