A Very Good Dog

Lucy died yesterday. She was ten years old. Patient with children, stubborn and truculent with foolish adults. Ready to tell you when it was 5:01 pm and you were late with dinner, or first to welcome all those at near-dog height with a welcome lick, chin-to-forehead, when you arrived at “Gigi and Bumps” house.

She was a very good dog. She died suddenly on her daily walk, with her owners Chris and Sharon never leaving her side after she laid down and could not get back up.

I’m not a dog person, but I didn’t have a choice when it came to Lucy.

Eleven years ago I was in a different place when Megan’s first dog Mia died. I had been out in Baltimore with friends and had ignored a smattering of calls from her over the evening. I returned home and hadn’t messaged or called her back when I heard a knock at the door of my parents. An “oh shit she found me” moment quickly turned to panic when I found Megan outside the door, sobbing and in hysterics.

“What’s wrong? Are you okay? What happened?”

“Muhmmmuh..Mia DIED!”

“Oh… that’s it?”

My “bedside manners” have improved since then. At the time I was in denial and shock from my own sister dying as the capstone of my youth and college years. An event that launched me into “adulthood” with a vicious selfish streak, individualism bordering on solipsism, as a shell I had built around myself for self-preservation.

Why care about a dog if you know it will die so soon anyways in the scheme of things? Why mourn the dog when you are still very much alive? Why bother returning your girlfriend’s calls now, and interrupt the moment, when you know she will come back around tomorrow?

An attitude and worldview that becomes self-evident because if you choose to live like this you will ultimately find yourself, well, alone.

Luckily this was a phase, and Megan’s patience outlasted my grieving.

Time sped up around then. The Brodie’s brought home Lucy, born the day Mia died, and as a family fired up those engines on the intense puppy love and bonding that as we all know when it comes to dogs, will end in heartbreak. As for Megan and I, on a parallel track to the new puppy love, we began to pull ourselves together into something with even greater meaning.

What started out with sleeping on the couch in the basement at the Brodie’s, with a golden retriever puppy keeping me company on the floor, one day emerged and asked Chris if I could marry his daughter, and then proposed to Megan in front of the kitchen sink mere minutes later. From living with the Brodie’s as newlyweds to buying and remodeling a house around the corner (on Lucy’s preferred route) with a storm door she could “kick” to be let in, knowing what she was really interested in was finishing off whatever she found in the cat’s food dishes. To starting a family and taking Lucy on marathon walks to “walk the baby out” resulting in one daughter who wants to be a veterinarian when she grows up and begs for her own dog, and a second who calls all animals, bears, horses, you name it, “Doggy!”. Two girls that have spent their entire lives digging their tiny hands into Lucy’s blonde fur for their sole entertainment and using her as the preferred throw pillow at their grandparents.

When we pulled up to their house yesterday and Megan told Marta the terrible news she screamed, “YOU’RE LYING” through tears as even she is old enough to grasp the gravity of what she has lost.

I don’t mourn Lucy or any animal, and I mean that, it’s just not who I am. I’ve never been a dog person either, but before Lucy, I had never really been anything a dog would admire. I had never built a home worth visiting, raised children whose faces were worth licking and whose torments were worth tolerating, or had practiced the love and commitment a dog, by its nature, so freely offers.

I tell Megan constantly, and through the pandemic, that these are the good times. Right now, every day, at this stage in our life we are making the memories that our future selves will yearn for.

As our time fades, the very idea of our children as infants, of “starter” homes, and early career struggles, will seem tinged with gold when we look back on them. I don’t mourn Lucy but I know that she will be a totem to these times, of something that soon will only exist in memory, but whose golden impression and nature will forever color the era.

Author’s note: The greatest comfort since losing Lucy has been being able to spend time together in our “bubble” with those suffering. Our heart breaks for everyone who has lost equal or so much more during the COVID-19 pandemic and has not been able to mourn or properly grieve together with those they need.