A Voice

First and foremost today: A Huge, Happy 33rd Anniversary to my Dad and Step-Mom! They are not only 2 great parents, they are two of the greatest people I know and are still thoroughly, if not sickly at times, in love. Congrats and here's to 33 more! Much love to the both of you.

Second: I just finished Mark Doty's "Dog Years: A Memoir" yesterday afternoon and highly recommend it to all dog lovers & humanists out there with the caveat of: be prepared to cry...several times. Doty's amazing choice of language creates detailed descriptions of dog's beings and heart wrenching moments of loss--both human and canine. I was on campus the day after we lost Bentley and ran into a former professor, who not only loves dogs as much as I do, but had met the great Beages. He, of course, asked me how he was doing & unbeknownst to him it hadn't even been 24 hours since we said good-bye. I felt worse for him than me at that moment, but he suggested, after some distance from the event, to read Doty's work and some of his poems. I ordered the book that night and let it sit in my stack of 'to read' books.

I tried to start it a month ago and got about 20 pages in before I closed it up and let it sit on my nightstand. As I had gone through my stack of 'to reads,' it was time and I tried again a few nights ago. Doty is a fantastic author and human and precisely captures all things dog--both from the dog and human perspectives. I finished the last 60 pages yesterday, lying in bed with the cat next to me. I cried, more like sobbed uncontrollably for 15 minutes, at the end of the novel. Graycie, the cat, extended her paw and touched my arm and then reached up and touched my nose. She's always had an innate ability to comfort during times of tears, and whether it was because she was genuinely concerned about me, or to sound incredibly insane, it's because she misses him as much as me, or even both, I was never so grateful for that cat and her 'ownership paw,' as my husband and I have named it.

Two things about this:

1.) That cat has been with me longer than the Beages was, longer than my husband, longer than my horse. As cranky and demanding as she is in her old age, she's still a best friend and she still gives more than asks.

2.) I've had an incredibly terrible time without the Beages. Between still trying to break habits of 15 years and the plain fact that I simply miss him, not just having a dog, but him and all of his unconditional, pleasing, non-judgmental ways and I have attempted to continue to package it up somewhere deep inside of me. I cried for 2 weeks after we lost him and at times, have choked up when running into people who hadn't heard and having to reiterate the story, and when I drove to the vet's office to pick up his ashes, but that's it. I tell my husband when I wake up, with my arm over the side of the bed scratching air, where Bentley used to lay next to me, but I think it hurts him as much as me. So, I've put my sadness in a small corner of my gut and continued on. Until yesterday. I hate to cry, I really do. For some unknown, never impressed upon me reason, I see it as a sign of weakness, even when I'm alone. The gooey nose, burning red eyes, not being able to breathe is annoying and brings attention to me--really, not a fan of that. But Mark Doty's writing opened the door to the fact that I'm not alone in how much my dog was not only a part of my life, but of me. And that's ok, I'm not crazy for that, in fact, I may just be a better human being for it. More importantly, for me, I feel a little less weighed down after that cry yesterday afternoon and that in all of it's counterintuitive qualities to me, is a great thing.

So on a final thought, Literature truly is one of Life's greatest gifts. It entertains us, teaches us, and at times when desperately needed, gives a voice to what our own language cannot convey...kind of like a dog.