Part of the Deal

I am relatively new to death. My grandfather’s funeral last September was the first that I had ever attended. Those who know me find this fact to be a touch ironic given that I spent two years researching and writing about how others deal with death in the aftermath of violence. Perhaps my lack of personal experience with death is what makes me so interested in the process of mourning. Whatever the root of my intrigue is my intellectualization of mourning is admittedly and undoubtedly my shield against the pain of grief.

Along with tightly holding onto this intellectual shield in the face of death, I tend to protect myself against the tides of grief through years of careful preparation. When I got married I insisted that our wedding gift-CD included the song “Naked as We Came” by Iron & Wine. I thought it important that in the face of marriage we meditate heavily the lyrics, “One of us will die inside these arms. Eyes wide open, naked as we came. One will spread our ashes ’round the yard.” (I was reading too much Heidegger at the time.) When I was a teenager I was sure that my grandmother was not going to live to see my high school graduation. She did. I was sure that she wouldn’t live to see my college graduation. She did that also. And being the stubborn ninety-five year old that she is she has also lived long enough to celebrate two more graduations and to get to know my wife despite my insistences, and the hardening emotional preparations that went along with them, that she wouldn’t make it past my eighteenth, twenty-first, and thirtieth birthday.

I have long been doing the same preparation-for-death work for our adopted Springer Spaniel, Martini. She became part of our family two-and-a-half years ago when we moved to Austin. She came to us like a baby in swaddling clothes left on our doorstep. Martini, then named “Missy,” was dropped off by her foster father and the adoption papers were signed in a hurry. We were looking for a dog that was between two and four. As he hurriedly walked out the door, hoping that we didn’t follow him, Martini’s foster father told us she was “about four.” The first vet that saw her confirmed that she was at least ten. Martini was a survivor of Katrina and of jaw cancer. She was terrified of thunderstorms and of being left alone. Though she wasn’t the dog we were really looking for, we weren’t going to make her the survivor of another abandonment.

As soon as we learned how old she really was I began the work of building my emotional fortress against her inevitable death. In the beginning she was not particularly affectionate, and her initial distance made my labor relatively easy. Summer and I fondly refer to the first time that she got on the couch and actually fell asleep next to us as, “The Night Martini Got Drunk and Slept Around.” She awoke startled, sniffing for the Roofies that must have been in her water bowl. But then we started going on long walks together every morning when I was spending my days writing. She didn’t care that I made her jog the last half mile with me as I ran-danced to Justin Timberlake’s “I’m Brining Sexy Back” (which was my writing mantra at the time). In the afternoons she would sleep with her head on my books. And as time passed we didn’t even have to drug her to get her to cuddle on the couch with us. She was actively ruining my emotional distancing death preparation work.

Over the last six months and especially during her last few weeks, Martini grew slower, weaker, and more disoriented. Meal time was “Fifty First Dates” with her food. She would eat, forget how her head got in the food bowl, and walk away. When we guided her back by her collar, she would open her eyes wide and look up as though she was saying, “Good God, what took you so long to feed me?” On our last attempt at a hike (that is, a 1.5 mile walk on paved “trails”) Martini had to be carried the last ¾ mile. She was completely deaf and almost fully blind. She walked into walls, she got “lost” in the corners of a room, and she had to be carried up and down the stairs. On Wednesday, she let us know that it was time to let her go.

We literally had an appointment with death on Thursday. We arrived at the vet who knew ahead of time why we were there. As soon as we arrived, I had to use the restroom. I have an incredibly inconvenient nervous bladder. I waited in line for what seemed like forever while Summer was in the lobby with Martini. First, a vet tech was scrubbing down. Second, the little boy behind me in line looked as though he was going to burst so I let him go ahead. Ten minutes had passed and I was still waiting, feeling rather sheepish, while Martini was spending her last hour without me. (As an aside – during my grandfather’s funeral I spent a lot of time in the bathroom. Of course the nervous bladder was acting up, but that was a nice excuse for me to hide from all of my family members as I cried in the bathroom stall. I have a thing about crying in public, which is particularly problematic when you are afflicted with what my Aunt refers to as, “emotional incontinence.” I always felt bad about my time in the bathroom at the wake. I felt especially bad that I wasn’t more present for my grandmother. As I stood in line outside of the bathroom in the vet’s office I promised myself that I wouldn’t use my bladder as my emotional armor.) 

When we got into the exam room we spoke with the vet briefly, fiercely fighting back the tears. We paid our bill before the procedure so that we could just leave, as they put it, “without having to talk to anyone.” $50 for the injection and $75 for the cremation. Summer said her goodbyes to Martini and waited in the car while the vet did the final injections. She couldn’t be in the room. I couldn’t stay away. The fortress walls were a useless pile of stones and I just wanted to be with Martini when she passed away.

I always thought the phrase “he/she looked so peaceful,” regarding dead people was sort of lame. A comforting cop-out of sorts. Of course he/she looks peaceful. He/she is currently plasticized without worries about paying bills, cleaning the house, the next presidential election, or say, when they will have to decide to put their dog down. But as I sat on the vet’s floor looking at Martini, it was true. In death she looked satisfied. Her eyes, still slightly open, expressed gratitude. (At least that is what my admittedly anthropomorphic projection onto her saw.)

I stayed with her for a few minutes, kissing her forehead and reminding her how much we loved her. After my last stroke of her head, I returned to Summer in the car. Pia, our two-year old Border Collie rescue, was curled-up on the back-seat. We were sad. I said all of the conventional comforting things that people say because there is nothing to say. Phrases like, “She is with the big bone in the sky” and “She is probably chasing squirrels in heaven.”  The images were comforting and the sound of their utterance was loud enough to down out my more pessimistic realism. In that moment, I needed to believe those things.

Rain was starting to fall on the car windshield as we sat outside of the vet’s office. Between tissue uses Summer insisted that when we got another dog, it had to be a puppy. I argued that there was no guarantee that a younger dog would live more years with us. Death was just part of the deal (note the intellectual defense in action). Summer, the more-willing-to-actually-face-and-be-honest-about-her-emotions-type-of-person replied, “The deal sucks.” She wanted an addendum. “Article 1: no death. Article 2: no pain. Article 3: no sadness. Article 4: only fun.” I jotted down the amendments on the back of the cremation invoice. I asked if she would like me to attach them to Pia’s collar. She suggested, sternly, “No. Put it in a locket.”

We left the vet’s office and did the thing that anyone who owns a dog named Martini would do – we went to a bar. Summer ordered a cosmo martini. I liked that. A nod to Martini’s mod black and white duds and her long luscious ear locks. I ordered a dirty martini, extra dirty. That’s how I’ll remember her. Mud stuck in the fur between her paws, a little bit of crust in her eyes, and her belly wet from drinking in Lady Bird Lake.

We raised a toast to Martini, poured a little sip out for her, and swallowed the mixture of tears and tonic. It was pouring outside now. I commented that it was probably because God was crying. He (or She), like I, was never prepared for this.

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