I’ve been trying for months not to have to write this. It’s become obvious that I’ve needed to, if only to try to get the recurring thought it describes out of my mind, where it has come up at odd and frequent intervals, usually just as I almost drift off to sleep.
I’m posting it here because I’m not sure what else to do with it. Those readers who are impatient with grief still warm after five whole months are warned to go read something else.
February 3, 2007, approximately 12:10 p.m.
Cold hardwood presses into me, my hip,
my sternum, a cramp of rib and back,
face down on hardwood floor. An hour ago
you looked hard into my eyes, searching
it seemed, but for what? My presence there?
A stroke of reassurance? For release?
You met my gaze and held it, lingering
but fervent, and I told myself you knew
and understood, a fable I concocted
to steel myself.
I could not make the call.
In that small detail I failed you today.
I could not move, could manage nothing but
a panicked stare at Becky, weakness in
a moment we’d anticipated. Your
brave attempts to elevate yourself,
to rise, to join us, they enfeebled me
and I sat next to you tear-mired
as Becky got the phone. Craning your neck,
you stretched your strong front legs out leisurely,
as if it was any of ten thousand
late mornings passed lazing around the house,
waiting for me to fetch the leash. She made
the call. We had an hour to wait. An hour
to say what must be said to you. Nothing.
There was nothing I could say to you
but this embrace, this gaze, this abject fear
of grief, this sense of water running through
cupped fingers.
Hardwood presses into me
on this fragment of floor from which my eyes
will turn away for months to come. You meet
my gaze again and hold it. Nothing said.
Nothing more could possibly be said
that I won’t say a thousand times a day
for months.
He’s at the door.
I think you know
why he has come; it seems like you accept
the fact of his arrival gratefully
and calm, placid, only the slightest flinch
at needle’s blessed entry into vein.
It all went perfectly, you know. It all
went perfectly, your life with us, and now
it will end perfectly, with all of us
together, nothing to regret at all
save all of it. Though we will long survive
this happy end with amputated hearts,
it all went perfectly.
There are two drugs;
the first to make you sleep anesthetized
against the possibility of some
discomfort from the second, which will stop
that deep and steady beating that I have
heard so many times muffled by fur,
my head reclined against your laboring ribs
your groan hard to decipher. Discontent
with my intrusion? Happiness? The pack’s
deep-rooted thigmotropic moan let loose?
I do not know. Nor will I ever know
whether — in this ache-interval between
the first drug and the last, when into calm
and trembling sleep you ease, your lips at work,
even your back, useless legs at work, and he
looks up at me from stethoscope and vial
to tell me you are dreaming, probably —
whether he’s guessed the truth about your dream,
and if that last unconscious dreaming thought
contains a broad and sun-lit grassy field,
a perfect sky, and if after these past
few hobbled years, with dogged glee
at last, your bright strong legs hold you again,
and, with a final joyous look at us,
you run away for good.
