I Can't Think of a Title, So Sue Me.

I've noticed that a lot of blogs start with some form of the disclaimer "I haven't blogged in a while." "I haven't blogged in a while because there are a million and two more important things for me to think about and do on a given day," for example, or "I haven't blogged in a while because I temporarily lost the ability to move my left hand."

Mine's just this: I haven't blogged in a while because I didn't have anything to say. My last few posts were Jack-centric, and I didn't want to step on them with some meaningless drivel about how hot it is (in SUMMER in ALABAMA, can you BELIEVE it?) or how much I need to do a clothing-and-toy purge and dust under the TV stand because when I'm exercising in the morning I'm afforded a disturbingly up-close view of the inch-tall layer of ick.

But I don't think Jack would mind my moving on to other topics, and even though I still don't really have much to say beyond those things I just mentioned, I hate to let too much time go by without writing something about life for the sake of posterity.

The kids turned 8 and 3, respectively. I haven't wrapped my brain around it yet. I mean, 8, sure, Alex has been going on 16 since he started stringing together complete sentences. At 2, instead of throwing an age-appropriate tantrum, he would stomp off to his room and slam the door, then emerge minutes later, voice shaking with barely contained emotion, to tell us "I am not very happy with you right now."

So his turning 8 shouldn't come as such a shock to me, right? Only it's an age I remember so well, and it doesn't seem that long ago. It was the year I busted my chin open trying to do a flip over the stair railing at carpool. It was the year we got my first dog, Bonnie, a sweet little black-and-white sheltie mix to whom I credit my enduring love for overweight, sweet-natured dogs with floppy ears. It was the year that I fell in love with Mikey from The Goonies and doodled "I love Sean" all over my notebooks.

It was, if memory serves, the year I found out the first skewed incarnations of all kinds of things that I can't fathom Alex knowing at this juncture in his life.

But, well, it's happened. He's turned 8. And as the instances of laughing at something he's said because it's cute and precocious have become fewer, those of laughing at something he's said because it's GENUINELY FUNNY have soared. He's turning out to be quick with a one-liner like his dad, one of those people whose sudden sharp wit catches you off guard in just the perfect moment in just the perfect way. It will take him far, that. It's one of the things that made me fall for Steven in the first place.

In the meantime, Katherine has taken 3 by storm. She is a live wire, our sunshine baby. It's like someone passed her a note, a 4-year-old, maybe, worldly and wise, disclosing the tightly guarded secret of how to temper maximum maddeningness with supreme sweetness and abject adorability so that no one ACTUALLY kills you.

She kisses with abandon, "lubs" everyone and everything, snuggles and giggles and lulls you into complacency, so that when you forget to let her open the string cheese by herself, or when her brother calls her Frieda (long story), or when the bow falls out of her hair, or when her doll won't balance on top of the dining room table, or when the sun is in her eyes, or when it's time to go to bed or time to get up, or when she puts on her pants with both legs in one leg hole ... when any of these things happens, you're surprised and baffled (and a little bit awed) by the deluge of insanity that erupts from this tiny person who seemed so demure and angelic a few seconds ago.

And then the storm passes and she's all smiles and hugs and love and sunshine and bunnies and rainbows again. It must be exhausting.

And then, because it's still on my mind a lot (a LOT a lot) ...

It's been two months and one week since we lost Jack. Most days I'm okay. Most days I can even think about him and talk about him without tearing up. But then there are times like when we got back from our beach trip with the Texas family. I was putting my shoes on, about to go to my parents' house to pick up Charlie. "Where are you going?" Katherine asked. "I'm going to get the dogs," I said, because we'd never been away before and NOT had two of them to pick up. And then, because I was tired and hot and because I had just accidentally poked myself right in the grief, I burst into tears.

So yeah, it's still there, sometimes, that horrible breathtaking ache when it hits me that he's not coming back, EVER. That I will never wrap my arms around him and breathe in his special Jack-scent as I give him a big bear hug. That he will never shove his head up under my hand so I'll have to pet him. That I can leave food unattended and it won't be gone in the time it takes me to turn my head.

But mostly it's better, and mostly we're happy, and often there's laughter and always there's love.

I'll take it.

Moving on, sort of

It's not easy, moving on.

I worry that moving on means leaving behind, that just the act of not thinking about something five thousand times a day will somehow lessen its importance in my life, no matter how indelible the mark it made.

Jack is still with us, one week and four days and three hours after we let him go. He's in the big space Charlie leaves on the doggie bed in the corner, the empty food bowl that Alex still doesn't want us to put away, the space next to the air vent in our bedroom where he always slept (effectively leaving anyone else in the room to sweat or shiver it out on their own).

He's even—and I thought this might seem weird until it didn't—in a prettily carved wooden box on our mantel. Alex propped a picture of him up next to the box, and I look at it several (thousand?) times a day and wish, wish, wish I could touch him. Just reach my hand down where he used to lie while I worked and feel him slowly lift his head and give me an obligatory lick or a lazy tail thump.

It surprised me that I didn't, I don't know, crumble. I struggle with big emotions, and everything surrounding Jack's illness and death was big. I don't know if the two months of "preparation" we were afforded did anything to take the edge off the grief when the time came, but I am glad we had it. I was able to evaluate potential regrets, and even to course-correct so that when he did leave us, those regrets were weaker, or not there at all.

And helping a child grieve is its own kind of therapy. Every night when I tucked Alex in for the first week we had an exchange, the same every time.

"It's not any better," he would say, a note of accusation in his trembling voice.

"It's not supposed to be, yet," I would say, gripping his hand or brushing his damp hair back off his forehead and fixating on those enormous eyes of his. "It takes time. But every day will get a tiny bit easier. I promise."

I promise. 

I didn't believe it, not one little bit. Not for me. I believed it for him, and hoped like hell it would be true, that I wasn't just feeding him a line because of my desperation to eradicate some of that deep sorrow from his eyes. But as far as I was concerned, it was just something a mother says to her child, like your cut won't hurt anymore once we put a Band-Aid on it (knowing that it will), or there's no such thing as monsters (knowing that there is).

I fully expected to be sitting here, eleven days after my Jack took his last breath, weeping onto my keyboard and spilling out the awful truth of unshakable grief, unhealable wounds, unutterable sadness. 

...I'm not.

I'm here, typing about him, thinking about him, dry-eyed and, more or less, whole.

Don't get me wrong; I miss him beyond all reason, sometimes so much that I can actually feel him, hear him, smell him. Some nights I hug Charlie, my ever-faithful sunny golden girl, as she sleeps at the foot of my bed and say "I love you. You're not him, but I love you."

But the hurt is less raw, and, like I told Alex, it's getting a tiny bit better every day. Thank God it wasn't just an empty promise I was giving him on those dark nights.

I'm not leaving Jack behind, I don't worry (much) anymore that "moving on" means that. I know what he meant to me. Anyone who knows me knows what he meant to me. I have to believe that he knew what he meant to me. And that will always be, will never be depleted no matter how many nights pass when I don't have to maneuver past him in the dark, no matter how many times I walk in the door and catch my breath because there is only one wagging tail to greet me, no matter how many years pass or dogs come into our lives.

He mattered.

He matters.

He is Jack.

All Dogs Go to Heaven

I debated writing a blog post about this. I don't think I can find the right words or do the experience the justice it deserves. So I won't try. I'll just say these things.

Jack got tired. He was done. It was in his big, soulful brown eyes and in his heavy head and in the final few, weak thumps of his tail.

People told me from the beginning that he would tell us when he needed to go. I thought they were just saying that because it's one of those things you say, when you don't know what else to say. But they were right. We knew. There's no guilt.

No guilt, but plenty of heartache. It's strange that a dog who did little more than lie around licking his paws and looking mopey but sweet (until he wanted your lunch, or the empty paper towel roll, or a napkin, when his elephant ears would perk up and he'd watch you with that pleading look he'd perfected) could leave such a gigantic hole in his wake. 

But our house is quiet, unnatural. It's missing a vital and irreplaceable member.

I hope I live the rest of my life and never have to witness again my child's heart crack down the middle right before my eyes. If my grief was unbearable, his was unfathomable. Just bottomless. In a few words I tore away a part of his very soul, and there was nothing, nothing I could do to make it better. It was a mother's nightmare.

He couldn't stop saying goodbye. Once we'd gotten Jack tucked securely into the car, Steven and my father carrying him in a makeshift stretcher, Alex went back and back and back, his sweet heart rejecting the thought that it was his final look.

Jack was so calm on that last car ride. I think he knew, and that he was glad of it.

They had a room ready for us. They brought us Kleenex. He settled instantly on the pallet on the floor, and we knelt next to him and said all those things that needed to be said: I love you. I wish. I'm sorry. You'll always be. We'll never. THANK YOU.

I smoothed his silky ears and kissed his head (turkey) and listened as he breathed slowly, steadily, peacefully ... and then listened to the silence when he stopped. The doctor used her stethoscope and said "He's gone. Take all the time you need."

He looked like he was sleeping. The way I've seen him a million times over the past ten years. The way he hasn't been able to sleep for the past couple of months, his loud breathing and frequent sneezing fits precluding any real rest as he got progressively sicker. 

He was resting now, and it was awful and it was good.

We stood and watched him until they came to get us, and when I asked about payment they told us that everything had been taken care of. My amazing friend Leigh had come by earlier that day and paid for his cremation and ashes and euthanasia. Her text to me said "I did it because I am so so sorry and there's nothing else I can do. Don't mention it again. I love you." Later she brought us dinner, with beer for Steven, wine for me, and Coke (in a real glass bottle) for Alex. She barely said anything, just handed it to me, hugged me, and was gone. 

She may never know how much those things meant to me. How my eyes are welling up even now, thinking of those acts of love and friendship.

I'm also eternally grateful to my parents, who braved their own sadness to help us when we needed it most, who came when I panicked and pretended to be calmer than I could be that day, whose strength bolstered my own, which was all but depleted before the sun had even come up.

And to my friend Katie, always my emotional touchstone, who used her phenomenal photography skills a week before to (crop out the air conditioning unit he insisted on using as a backdrop and) capture some priceless images of my boy in his full glory, the way I will remember him always, bright and shining red coat, soft eyes outlined in black, a face that says, self-assuredly as no human has the right to be, "You know you love me. And if you have any doubts I will sniff your crotch until you relent and scratch me behind the ears."

It's quiet here without him. No one steals my napkins. His places are empty, the floors cold. I don't have to step over his giant furry body on my way to the bathroom in the middle of the night. No one licks my toes. It thundered last night and I didn't suddenly find myself with a big golden head shoved up under my arm. Charlie is sad but we're trying to help her through this. She lost a brother, after all, her constant companion since she left her mama and other siblings as a tiny little ball of fluff.

We want his ashes and are looking forward to getting them back. It feels like he'll be home then, and that will be a comfort.

Last night Steven and I shared a memory, a funny one of those many times Jack played the clown, and we laughed and didn't cry. I know that will happen more and more, and that one day the ache will fade and the good memories will override the pain the past few days have brought.

We'll heal. I guess the process has already begun. But we'll never forget.

We will always miss you, Jack. Thank you, again, for gracing us with your love, loyalty, patience, and quirks.

Now go play.

What Comes Next

My mean little red puppy who turned into my sweet big red dog is tired. The boy who would dig through garbage to find a morsel of bread at the bottom of the trash can, or who would sit up with two paws on a chair to lick the remains off an unattended plate ... he's not hungry. The vet told me today that it may be time to think about What Comes Next.

I don't want to, but I am.

When I have to, I will pet his head and scratch his soft ears and hold him tight and let him go.

But I don't want to. I don't want to more than I've ever not wanted anything before.

He will always be with us, always be our boy, our buddy, our first. We just won't be able to see him or pet him or get him to clean up the crumbs the kids leave on the dining room floor or nag at him to stop licking his paws or tell him that growling at the thunder doesn't make it go away. We'll only have those memories that will hurt like hell for a while.

But for now he's here. He's touchable, smellable, huggable.

I'm going to make the most of it.

It's a dog's life

Once upon a time, there were two married kids who had just bought their first house and were high on the start of a new life together and the idea of being grown-ups. With jobs! And bills! And a mortgage!

So what did they do? They went to get a puppy, of course.

They drove out to a farm in the middle of nowhere, planning to "just look," but with a kennel, puppy food, and a bunch of plush squeaky toys in the back of the truck. Just in case. And then they were led across a field to a fenced-in area where twelve tiny golden faces peered, grinning, and furry little bodies pawed, stumbled, wiggled, wagged, and yipped. And they, these two, were done in.

There was one puppy in particular. A fat one, redder than the others, with a big splotch of milk on his face. He spared the couple barely a glance and a halfhearted tail wag while trotting relentlessly after his mama, stepping over and on top of his brothers and sisters with his oversized puppy paws.

The couple looked at the other puppies. They were enchanted by all of them. But the plump little penny-colored guy, it kept coming back to him.

That was our Jack.

Well, his name was going to be Billy. I don't know why; I just thought it was a cute name for a puppy. But I let Steven talk me into Jack, after making him swear on his life that he would never, EVER say the name in his awful Jack Nicholson impression.

So instead of Billy, we took home Jackson Tide.

He sat on command the first day home, at 6 weeks old. Three times with cheese as a reward, and he had it down pat. He chewed shoes, as any good puppy will, and sat stubbornly and refused to move when I tried a leash on him for the first time. He was convinced he was our alpha, that little red ball of fur. He was a growler and a nipper, and I once cried to Steven that I thought he was going to be mean forever. "Have you ever met a mean golden retriever?" he asked.

We took him on drives with us and he sat in my lap and panted out the window at passing cars. People smiled and pointed. He was beautiful, my first baby, and I was so proud.

He grew. And grew. And grew some more. At his biggest he was 120 pounds, and he still tried to be a lap dog. We got him a companion, his full-blooded sister Charlie, when he was a year old. When we brought her home he was instantly obsessed. She would take a couple of steps and he would put his big nose under her back end and flip her over. She was his best toy EVER.

When we came home from the hospital with Alex, we put his carrier down on the floor and let the dogs check him out. Jack sniffed at him for a couple of minutes, did the canine equivalent of shrugging his shoulders, and went about his business.

As Alex got bigger, he became more interesting, from a dog's perspective. He was a toddling goldmine of dropped bits of food, sticky tasty fingers, and spilled puddles of juice. He threw balls and sticks, and sometimes sat on Jack's back like he was his very own custom-sized pony. If Jack got annoyed or sick of the exuberant toddler attention, he got up and moved. My mean puppy had turned into a patient, lazy, sweet, dog who wouldn't hurt a flea.

One night I was half asleep when Steven burst into the bedroom and said, "Jack's having a seizure!" I was so disoriented, I said, "Jack who?" The seizures went on pretty frequently over the next few years, and he was put on phenobarbital to control them. He developed skin allergies and was plagued by dry skin that drove him (and us) insane. He became an obsessive paw licker. If I had a nickel for every time I've said, "Jack, stop licking!" over the past few years, I'd be able to retire. Always an Eeyore type, he's been our mopey but content counterpoint to his sunny, anxious, eager-to-please sister. His vet once told me he had "unusually intelligent eyes," and I think he was right. I think Jack understands a lot. I think Jack is a man trapped in a dog's body.

These days his favorite things to do are eat and sleep. He noses the garbage can open and woe to us if there's food within his reach. He constantly steals Katherine's breakfast and waits until no one is looking before polishing off any food Charlie has left in her bowl. He's stealthy. He's afraid of thunder, popcorn, and suitcases. He demands affection by shoving his head up under your hand until you pet him, preferably scratching behind the ears and under the chin. He licks toes. Anybody's toes. A lot.

Yesterday I got a call from our veterinarian. "Jack has cancer." It's an aggressive type, and it's going to spread. We don't really know how much time we have left with our big bear. But no matter how long it is, it's not going to be long enough.

I hope we've given him a good life. I hope he knows that we love him even though (and maybe a little bit because) he drives us up the wall sometimes. I hope he knows he'll never be forgotten, and that he's irreplaceable, that he broke that mold into a million pieces.

Most of all I hope he can enjoy the rest of his time here, being spoiled rotten. Because right now, he's just Jack. He's licking his paws and wagging his tail and nosing into the trash can and sneaking sticks and gumballs in from the yard to munch on and leave in woody piles all over my clean floor. He's happy, in his Eeyore way. For now we'll just spend a lot of time scratching those floppy ears, sniffing the top of his head (which always smells inexplicably like roast turkey), and telling him he's the best boy.

I told him to tell us when he needs to go. He looked at me with those unusually intelligent eyes, and I'm pretty sure he understood.

We'll be devastated. And then we'll heal. And one day it won't hurt quite so much to remember that beautiful, stubborn, "mean" little red puppy and the pushy, sweet, funny, maddening, mischievous, lazy, strong-willed, affectionate, loving, patient, loyal, unforgettable buddy he became.

It's never long enough.

"The risk of love is loss, and the price of loss is grief. But the pain of grief is only a shadow when compared with the pain of never risking love."
Hilary Stanton Zunin