Limbo

After seven weeks, I still close the gate to the kitchen, even though the poodle will never sneak in there again; though now I am less likely to expect to see her curled up in her bed near the desk, waiting for me to finish up & go back to the big bed with her. 

I still find her toys everywhere.  I go to put away her t-shirts & find one that she never wore; there are unopened bags of her favorite duck chips that will have to go to some other dog, because she won't be needing them.  Of course it was foolish to buy so many, but making a smaller order would have meant admitting that we had weeks, at most, left together.  For the last year or more I would flip quickly past the pages of memorial stones & urns in pet supply catalogs; & of course I had to avoid four of anything, after hearing so often that to the Japanese & Chinese, "four" & "death" were homonyms.  Superstitions, & not all of them even mine, but -- just in case. 

And yet for the last weeks of her life I checked her heartbeat or her respirations when she was sleeping so deeply, hoping that she had died peacefully there, & would not wake up when I tickled her.  Probably dying at home would have been a mercy for me, not for her -- the vet was competent, & we never left her alone. I had brought her in wrapped in a towel from home, along with her softest dog bed, & she was lying in the bed, in & under our hands, when she died.  She didn't flinch or gasp or react at all; she just relaxed, & I felt her heart, which had been beating so terribly hard as it failed, these last years, beat more gently & then give one last flutter. 

We left that dog bed at the vet's with her body, thinking they would keep her in it & Hartsdale (the pet cemetery) would take it along with her, but when we went to Hartsdale & saw her body before the cremation, there was no dog bed, & I think it stayed behind at the vet's.  A friend who worked as a vet tech said that after a few weeks, if unclaimed, bedding was used for dogs who were being boarded there.  So I didn't call to get it back; let some other dog get the comfort of it. 

But she had little beds all over, including two on our bed that we cannot bear to remove yet; the engineer took the sheets to wash but put the beds back up afterwards.  When he has left for work, some mornings, I lie with my head on one of her beds, & catch a bit of her scent, & get a huge rush of recognition for a moment. When I was away at work or in the kitchen or running errands & she was napping on the bed with the engineer, I was always secretly pleased to come back & find her lying on my pillow or right in the center of where I always lay, right in my scent, instead of snuggled up to him.  I understand it better now. 

Not much else helps.  I do not dream of her, which surprises & bewilders me.  I cannot talk about her or even think about her much without breaking down again, & have had to wear sunglasses to & in the office for privacy.  And I have almost no feelings for human beings, even the ones I loved or lusted after; that was gone as soon as she was & nothing is left but a mild gratitude toward those who were kind to her.

I could have done so much better, I could have been more patient, I could have kept after the doctors & insisted on more information or second opinions.  Somewhere, sometime, I stepped on a crack, let myself drink water in four gulps, or read the section of the pet insurance policy on reimbursement rates for euthanasia.  I wanted things, or people, or opportunities, but only with & for her.  Now I want to destroy it all, burn the building, break & rip up & smash everything I own; now I am ashamed to have scolded her when she was -- rarely -- destructive if left at home too long.  Now I see what she meant.

When we went to Hartsdale for the cremation, & were waiting for her ashes, I saw a young woman throw herself onto the ground where -- I suppose -- her dog or cat was buried.  At any other time or place, that would have appalled me; such over-dramatization; showing off.  But not there.  We were halfway up the hill, where the poodle will be buried when I can stand to let her ashes go out of the apartment, & the woman who was mourning at her pet's grave was down on the flat area & didn't know she could be seen.  I see what she meant now, too.