In the Heart of a Dog – Kayaking and Kit in Orleans

 Kit happy in Orleans July 2015

What a gift it is to sit and write.

Hmmmm, is there a book somewhere where you can be well instructed on how to grieve the loss of a deeply beloved pet?  Would that help?  Most assuredly, no.  And so, on goes the process………

It is quite amazing how completely one can get thrown off course by a single change. (today must be a day of sailing metaphors)  What on one day can seem quite safely off into the future and as such, quite unimaginable, suddenly is thrust upon you and you are taken aback in such a way that you can barely remember what your purpose is.   Over the past three weeks I have become quite dislodged from my own bearings.  I am quite lost without my dog.  The fierceness with which I want her back is  indescribable.

These last three weeks have muddled along as if caught in that Bermuda high of lurid and languishing air.   Kit is emerging in me as perhaps the single most happy commonality in the source of major turning points in my adult life.  I am flooded with little vignettes of her at nearly every moment of the day and evenings.  Our rituals were deep and mostly unbending as I am quite more aware now.   Every time I pull the car into the garage and turn to walk toward the house, I glance into the sunroom windows and expect to see her looking out at me in wait.  Sometimes I still feel her there.  She was most often there looking out as I approached  or at the door when I opened it.  It is beyond incredibly wrong that she is not actually still there now.

My husband and I have exchanged some poignant memories of her over the several days last week or so when I have felt possessed of my faculties enough to speak of her.   There was his reminder of early mornings when he’d get up and she would, too.  His favorite was when she’d step out of her bed, do the downward dog and let go of a low moan of contentment in the length of the stretch.  She always awaited us rising and then her day would begin as well.

But, now it is another memory that he mentioned that is sticking with me even more powerfully and as I went up to bed last night I was completely immersed in the power of it.   In the scheme of all of them, large and small,  it perhaps captures her as much as possible in a nutshell, if that is at all possible.  The memory is of her in Orleans, a place she enjoyed going with us, and lolling out on the deck in the early mornings, moving about to the shade here and there, when the sun was blasting the back of the house in the height of Summer at mid day.

As I sat and wrote a letter to The Seeing Eye yesterday, I was reminded of the sense of responsibility that is bred into the dogs in their program.  For someone like me who doesn’t really know about the difference between their innate abilities and their developed emotional ties and strengths, it is really probably mostly misunderstood.  Kit perhaps had a much more fierce sense of devotion and responsibility than she let on and it can be illustrated by two memories that are standing out in my mind 1 1/2 weeks after we lost her.

One of the activities we take advantage of off of our backyard location on the Cape is the ability to put out kayaks and go for a nice serene ride or a bout of exercise.  The tide is such there that it is a quite perfect spot for setting off.  Only at the lowest tide is it a challenge to get back in.  Most of the time you can go off and return with ease from the base of our steps down.  I have to admit that I am not an avid kayaker.  But a few times I have been called to set off on a perfect afternoon for a spin about.  One day, several years back, I set off down the stairs and pushed off while I had told Kit to “stay” and “rest” on the deck.  She was always really good at listening.  I didn’t think twice about it.  Off I went without looking back.

I paddled out in the direction of southwest on the glistening water, not really venturing all that far out.  When I rounded about I saw the most startling sight ever.  There was Kit swimming out in the water after me.   At the very same time, I was filled with love for that dog and terror that she would succumb.   I wondered what she had been thinking and why she had come.  Was she merely trying to join me?  How silly, of course.  She was working to protect me, as surely I understand now, her senses giving off a sensation that said it’s my job to take care of her.  Kit did love to swim around down there but was given to constant ear infections whenever she got her head wet – and so, we usually discouraged her from going in.  After that we left her indoors to keep from worrying that she’d come out after us again.  As I look back, I am flooded with sadness for taking this away from her.  What would it really have hurt?  She was a good swimmer and all she really wanted was to come with us and be where she felt she belonged.

As I consider what happened to her over the last year and especially over the last few months I am surprised at what I did not understand about her.  I am now convinced that she was indeed uncomfortable by a margin that I did not perceive for much longer than I knew.  Her intent on staying with a “normal” routine right up until the day before I left for LA on 7/27 is now quite astounding to me.  We did our usual things: outside, breakfast, early morning rounds of the garden, shower, walk, nap, etc.  She had taken to only going up and down the stairs once a day over the last few weeks and I should have taken that as a more dramatic sign.  Often I watched her settle herself on the rug in the sunroom and she looked uncomfortable as she lowered her hind quarters.  I told myself it was just perhaps the vagaries of old age and she never complained or looked to me for an explanation of what was happening.

To look back now on the day before I left, the day I left and what happened immediately afterward is a powerful testament to Kit’s character, determination and devotion.  When I left for LA on Wednesday and she was lying on the rug next to the bench, I did sense something but I was perhaps too preoccupied and unable to consider what she was saying to me.  It was a moment of insight into perhaps the goodbye she must have felt compelled to say and I turned and walked out the door.  Nothing would ever be the same.

I will continue to grieve for the loss of Kit and work to try and adapt to the changes that have and will continue to unfold.  For the first week, I could not speak to anyone without bursting into tears and sobbing.  I have spoken to so many people who either knew her well or other great dog lovers over the past weeks who have said to me things like, “oh, I lost my dog three years ago and I still miss him/her so terribly”  and I think, oh no, I’m not going to be like this for three years, am I?

I am convinced of a few things already.  I am convinced about how incredibly lucky we were to have had Kit for as long as we did.  I am in awe of the fortune of having her in the first place.   I know that her quality of life was degrading, albeit slowly.  I know she didn’t feel as well as she had – but I had chalked it up mostly to the dastardly heat and humidity – she was always most “cheerful” when it was cool or cold.  I am convinced that saying goodbye to her when we did was what was best for her.  And, I am convinced that she was completely some great cosmic gift to me, meant to teach me innumerable lessons that in her presence and lifetime were unclear.  And, that her passing is as poignant a message as there could be in life.  I can feel her –  I have loved you and I have left you now.  Go off and do the things you have wanted to do for a long time.  I have been with you and I have left you with my memory.  I will never really be gone………….

And so, now I have begun to realize.  How foolish I am to have thought I was the one taking care of her all along……… How inept and misaligned is the human ego and our sense of place in the world. How silly is the shallowness of understanding of animals. How little I understood then and until now just what we meant to each other. How completely lucky was I to have her.  Such is the love of a great dog.  Such is the nature of serendipitous gifts given in the mysteries of the universe.  In the relative scheme of things it could be said to be beyond miniscule.  But for one person in one lifetime in one extended decade of sorts, I have learned more than imaginable about the inverse relationship between time and value.