Daisy

Today I want to write about the way that grief inhabits your body. The way you breathe around a lump in your throat, the way you hold the steering wheel and your shoulders hurt, the way your chin feels wobbly. The way your stomach has that sinking feeling all the time walking around. People say grief gets better with time.

In a way it is true. In another way, it is not. There is vestigial grief, vestigial digits and fingers of hurt that come back. My sister and her husband have to put down their dog this week. She has been their dog for 13 years. She was young with them when their marriage was young. They were exploring California after they left Wisconsin, taking her on hikes to explore mountains and beaches and the American River. She was with them when 9/11 happened and comforted my sister when her husband was traveling.

I have my own memories of Daisy. She comforted me. When I first moved out here after my divorce,  I lived with them for a period of time. One night I was crying, silent tears rolling down my cheeks. I was trying to be private about it. I was in the basement away from everybody. Except Daisy. She came down to check on me and with an empathy I've seen only in her, she laid her head on my knee and just rested it there.

As I grieve Daisy, I feel the old pain inhabit my body. So quickly the body relapses into the interstices of that old grief. I feel for this loss and it feels like the old loss. I feel for my sister and her husband. To contemplate that most horrible thing. Putting down your friend, letting her go. There is the decision-making, the second-guessing, the effort to be rational when your emotions are cloudy. Then there's the pain of watching her in pain and wondering if you've done it soon enough. It is a horrific proposition.

And they will miss her. There is that side yet to come.

There is a time-sucking quality to grief, especially in stores. Scene today: waking up from reverie so many minutes later in REI wondering what it was again I was looking for. Passed the dog section. That's what set it off. When I divorced, seeing willow trees set me off. Heh. Breathing set me off then.

I get why people have to die. I mean, how many layers of experience can the body hold? Yet then, I feel sad for Daisy dying. She won't get to see all the beautiful things in the world anymore. The hikes, the smells of piney woods, the splash of the creek, the doggy joy in catching a tennis ball.

The joys. The time when Sis and Brother-in-Law sent me on a 12 mile hike in California with Daisy as my guide. I was new to mountains, new to hiking, new, new, new. Daisy was my seasoned guide and boon companion, trotting by my side, carrying her joy in the loll of her tongue, the wag of her tail, the bounding steps of exploration. Crossing a stream, she would fetch a rock from the stream and bring it for me to throw again. Pure frolic.

The same joy I feel in water. And that's true too. As I carry the interstices of my old griefs, my body and mind carry the remnants of past joys as well. On the water kayaking with my sisters earlier this month, I remembered learning to kayak from someone who loved me. When you learn to paddle from a lover, your memories are of chasing moonlight across a lake, of ducking into "garages" made by bent willow trees, of stopping and kissing, pulling up alongside. That magical, magnetic pull. I remember nearly dying waiting for him to do the car drop and come back so we could be together. Of watching him log-jump, of being his cheerleader, his confidante. Of him watching me dive to the bottom of the river, running my fingers through the sand-rolling, pebble-running bottom. Coming up for air and his face, his smile. And the knowledge that he would be there, enjoying my joy.

I get why people have to die at a certain age. I mean, how many layers of experience can the body hold? There must come a time at which the interstices of joy and grief have carved deep enough wrinkles into the skin and that is the time.

Daisy has reached that time. In dog years, she is 91 and cancer has eaten up her body and carved an end point to her time. I salute the layers of joy - and grief - she has given my family.