That Nice Girl with the Dogs
In the moonlight, with only a few faint crackles and muffled footfalls, she’d materialize like a large white wolf loping through the meadows toward me. Once called though, she’d sweep by for a quick pat and then be off and away, eager to get back to hunting sleepy rodents.I think there’s a choice about how to deal with death. You can move in close and try to make each moment precious and take the chance of suffering all the more later. Or you can shut off your feelings—a kind of protection—to make some distance so the end won’t hurt so much. With Sirocco, as the passage of nights and days brought her death inevitably closer, I moved toward her. I studied her, making a visual memory of her face and body, and held her, so my hands and arms would remember her texture and heft.She seemed to want to be closer to me, too, padding after me throughout the house, waiting for me at the front door to stretch and wag me home, and, sometimes, I’d look up and she’d be standing there, just gazing at me.I wanted to ease her last days, and to create a sort of tribute. All I did for her—the lost sleep, extra walks, lazy brushings, home-made treats—had a sense of meeting a purpose and gave me a sort of peace as we approached her death.Sirocco died in early December just before a two-week visit from my mother, a visit that was sure to rattle my world. Mom was in the grip of dementia, with its jagged, halting transformation of a coherent, familiar person into an oddly fragmented stranger.
I had readily agreed to give my sister, Mom’s caregiver, a two-week break over the holidays. Even though feeling a stunned emptiness over Sirocco’s death, I went ahead with the plans, covering grief with a fragile competence like the skim of soft ice at the edge of a winter pond.
I was allowed through airport security to wait right at the gate to meet my mother. I saw her—one of the last to de-plane. Would she recognize me? My sister had warned me that much of the time Mom referred to me as her daughter, but more and more often, I was “that nice girl with the dogs.”
My mother, a thin old lady clinging with both hands to the steadying arm of a flight attendant, glanced about the crowded airport with quick, bird-like glances, chin puckered in apprehension. Waving an arm over my head, I cried out, “Mom.” She spotted me, smiled, and started to shuffle in my direction. She called my name, voice rising in a tremulous question. Eyes stinging, I stepped forward to embrace her and led her to the luggage area. I prattled on about the noise and crowds, trying to comfort her, as she patted my supporting arm and nodded, face tight with uncertainty.
Once on the road, she slept slumped against the car door as I fretted over the checklist magnetized to the refrigerator at home. The first item, repeated several times by my sister was “Keep the doors locked.” Mom had taken to wandering at night, disoriented, in her retirement complex. She had to be prevented from a more dangerous barefoot sojourn out my front door and into the subfreezing Wisconsin winter.
The second item was “Lock away poisons and medications.” Done. The third item was “No candles and careful around the fireplace.” Will do. The last item: “Supervise at all times, especially shower. Could fall.” Got it.
I huffed in exasperation—this visit would not be easy— as I pulled into the driveway of the small suburban home where I lived with my two remaining dogs.
* * *
She stands at the side of my bed.
“Are you awake?” she asks in a stagey whisper.
“Yes, Mom, I am.”
“Isn’t it time for coffee yet? The little one woke me up.” She means the younger dog. “It’s morning, isn’t it?”
Resentment settles like a cloth sack over my head, smothering me. For the three days she’s been visiting, I’ve been getting up at 5 a.m., before her, hoping for an hour of solitude. But it’s not going to happen this morning. I turn over to face her.
