Roland Ratcliff-Calhoon
May 4, 2006 - March 7, 2020
he’s been breathing like this for hours, a forced exhalation that’s audible from across the room, and i think it’s because he’s painful because that’s how i breathe when i hurt, when i’ve been holding my body taut, a bowstring pulled tight enough to snap at the slightest pressure. sometimes i don’t even know how badly i hurt because i’ve tucked it into a casket and buried the casket into a plot dug deep into my heart, until i hear myself breathing, holding it at the top note, forcing it out, in and out and in and out because i’m in so much pain even my lungs hurt.
i’m trying not to play the what if game because i know firsthand that that game is full of all the skeletons hidden in your closet singing lullabies to the monsters beneath your bed. the what if game is the pitter patter runningdashing head start before leaping into your bed to make sure nothing grabs your ankle on the way in.
but what if what if what if
what if it’s cancer? what if he has a tumor? what if it’s pressing against his spine and that’s why he’s tripping over his back feet (i know it was only twice and once could have been a side effect from the appetite stimulant, but.)
what if it’s a tumor invading his colon and tearing apart the delicate lacework of his membranous tissues and that’s why everything that comes out of him is dark and red and smells like grave rot
what if his coughing is because it’s all pressing up against his ribcage, shoving his heart into his throat, the coughing retching discomfort of trying to force down a stone that cannot be dislodged because the battery made of his muscle is misfiring, the lubdub swoosh of arterial flutter flapping wildly, uncontrollably, unfettered inside his tiny body
(we find out later in a chilled room with uncomfortable seats that there is a tumor between his lungs, like a stone sealing a tomb, and viscous fluid flowing freely in spaces where it shouldn’t, pressing down until he can’t breathe, eat, swallow. it has been growing there, a planted pupa erupting into an imago’s sticky folded wings. we leave him at the emergency room to have them drain the fluid out with the pinprick pull of a needle and when the veterinarian calls to tell us how much has seeped out i ask my husband to show me what 250 ml actually means. i’m standing in front of the mirror, sleepseeds glued in the corner of my eyes with tears, when he returns with a soda can and holds it out to me. that plus some. i focus inanely on the collected condensation and imagine it inside roland’s sweet body.)
i know his body so well, have held it in my hands since he was six weeks old, have slept with his head laid gently across my neck, our pulses mingling in the night. the smell of his puppy breath like coffee and the way he tiptoes like a ballerina in the grass, searching for the exact right spot to go, my schedule be damned. the sound of his yowling howling bark like a demon possessed, an exorcism gone wrong, satan himself taking control of his vocal cords all because he learned to talk from me instead of his littermates. the way his round head poked out of the grocery bags when i snuck him into the store when he was smaller than my shoe (my foot has always been tiny enough to fit into children’s shoes so he was smallsmall tiny) and his ears flopped over for so long my mom joked that i’d gotten ripped off and he wasn’t a chihuahua at all, until one day just the tip of one ear stood up! then we realized his big bat ears were larger than his entire body, so big they couldn’t stand up straight, the exhaustive effort of trying to support the weight of his elephantine ears was like unfurling a sail and tacking it down, like erecting the opera house on the point of the harbor. on windy days the wind snapped and rippled those ears and he glared balefully at the sky as if he could reprimand the weather for its insouciant cruelty. how dare…!
(after he is gone we lay in bed together, derek and i. the comforter is weighed down by the soft warmth of dogs, velvet ears and their blood thrumming through their bodies so warm against my palm it feels obscene. outside our bedroom windows the banshee wind screams and tears at the hurricane shutters, metal scraping against glass, like the world is mourning with us. when he was still alive just hours ago i stepped into the backyard and startled a great white heron perched on our fence, his yellow toes splayed between the bells, their clappers gently chiming in the breeze that had not yet picked up and as it soared away i watched it and felt gratitude for its beauty because he was still alive, still here, still in this world.)
and oh, it’s been nearly fourteen years together, he and i, and he’s watched me grow up as much as i’ve watched him. i have changed him, in some ways irreparably, like how he can’t stand to stick around when i’m fighting with someone, even in jest, even if i just get a serious tone to my voice, all because of my abusive ex-husband and the way he’d scream when standing in the doorway to trap me inside a room, or how for the longest time roland would hide if there was football on because that same ex would get so mad when his team lost and stay angry for days, stomping silence and slammed doors that shook the foundation of our house and recklessly shunting full plates of fresh food into the garbage.
here is how i know something is really wrong with roland: he is refusing food. i’ve never met a dog who eats food the way he does, swallowing it down in great gulps, so focused on inhalation that i worry he’s going to aspirate it into his lungs. there’s no way he can actually taste it, those great wolfing chomps. you have to be sure he doesn’t get your finger on accident while he’s glutting and gorging himself on whatever he can beg from you. he knows he’s not supposed to, but still, he stands on his back legs and tucks the curlicue of his tail between and places his right paw on your thigh, delicately folding the other back as he looks up at you to wheedle. he knows, he knows exactly what he isn’t supposed to be doing, so much so that i only have to cock my head in silent admonition before he recedes, pulling back like the tide, but god, more often than not i give in, just a crumb, a tiny crumb, because how can you say no to a face like that?
(we stop at mcdonald’s on the way home, derek calling with dogged determination to schedule an ultrasound, aspiration of the mass, an oncologist meeting, while ordering french fries, the next steps dialed out in seven little numbers and then pencilled into our calendars. the brown bag crinkles and the fries sizzle hot against the pads of my fingertips but roland, wrapped in the same quilt that covers us both at night, wrinkles his nose and turns away from the offering. my insides a lurching heartquake: something is very wrong because he should be feeling better now. the fries go cold and gummy and the bag stands sentry until his body is vacated of that which makes him him, and then i pull the mush out one by one and scatter them around his body, between the peruvian lilies that are my favorite and the yellow roses that communicate loyalty in the quiet singsong flower language. i wish so many things but first and foremost i wish he’d been able to eat one last french fry without feeling like he was swallowing razor blades chased with motor oil.)
for a long time he was black as used motor oil and tan as oiled leather and his brown eyebrows lifted quizzically above his eyes like parenthetical asides. i know everyone reads about animals with eyes that look like they belong to people but there is truly something within his eyes, some intelligent depth. there is something alive in his eyes. once when he was a puppy he gave himself a permanent injury to his left eye, a tiny divot dent in the round iris you can only see if his eyelid is pulled back. i brought him to the vet terrified i had done something wrong but he was just clumsy, i guess. it’s still there today. his eyebrows have always been question marks of quizzical anxiety lifted just-so above those eyes, granting him a look of perpetual concern, like he’s waiting to hear that the sky’s falling and he wouldn’t be surprised when you delivered the news. somewhere between then and now silvery-white-grey crept up his paws and his muzzle like ivy. i hardly noticed until i looked back at old pictures and saw the shocking thatch of tan that used to. now he even has a dash of a white mohawk across the top of his head, right between his ears. i like to run the pad of my thumb over it to feel the dent of his skull and listen to him breathe (not this painful breathing but the normal breathing, the contentment and comfort.) he has one single solitary white hair that sticks out from the tip of his tail, the rest still black. it’s thick and unruly, that white hair, and i love it for its very existence; i don’t think anyone else notices it but me because i know him so well, i have known him for so well and he me.
(they’ve shaved his sides to drain the fluids and the sunspots on his belly leached up to creep over his ribs. i run my fingertips over that silken secret laid bare and though he should be breathing easily without the dank dark wellwater weighing his lungs down, he isn’t. derek and i take turns watching, counting, pressing the diaphragm of the stethoscope against his ribcage, our fingers curved to hold the bell in place and hopingprayingwishing the labored push of roland’s lungs are something we’re imagining but... we aren’t. the effort is sisyphean. he cannot hold out for an oncologist at the end of the week if he’s suffocating against that rock still | again.)
he is quiet now because the medications have finally kicked in and calmed his pain. we should both try to rest, to sleep, but even in his quiet dozing he still looks concerned, those damn eyebrows of his, channeling the way i feel as he rests his chin against his front paws. i don’t want to disturb him but i want to bring him to bed and curl myself around him to protect him from the reality of whatever’s inside him trying to eat its way out. i managed for so long, keeping him safe. he holds a piece of my heart, my soul and i am a former mortician and a deathbringer for pets and i know, i KNOW! better than anyone that one day he will no longer be.
(i cannot control my body as i clutch his limp form to my chest, his front paws daintily crossed and his head lolling under the syrupy ministrations of sedation and pain medication and anti-anxiety medications. i keep interrupting myself with unexpected stress yawns that push the tyvek anchor in my jaw to its limits, a yawn that threatens to stretch my mouth wide enough to swallow my face. my tears drip down my nose and the velveteen rabbit softness of his ears are soaked and sticky with salt and i draw them into my mouth tenderly, a silly, careful caress that spoke of love, loyalty, and trust between the two of us.)
trust me, i’ve been thinking of his death for so long now that it feels like a pair of worn leather shoes to be stepped back into, the kind that are so comfortably fit that they hold the shape of your foot even when your foot isn’t in them anymore. i know it is coming even though i don’t know when but i don’t want it to be now. i don’t want the reality of holding him in my arms as the starshine flare of his soul fades away. who will sleep in the curve of my belly with his head across my neck when he goes? when i was in college and we drove back home on the weekends he would drape across my neck like a mink stole as the miles flew away beneath the tires. the heft of his body as he went limp into relaxation and eventually sleep against the thrum of the engine.
he is my heartdog and i have tried imagining for so long so i would know how to exist in the world without him, but how can i? you can never pretend the impossible into existence and i want more time, years, months, even weeks but i am afraid, vacillating between icy cold terror dripping down my spine and spilling into the bowl of my pelvis and the quiet resignation of acceptance that life is what is and death is what is and i don’t really get a say, i just get to punctuate the reality of whatever happens, whenever it happens, with my tears.
(i encircle his thigh with my thumb and forefinger like i always do when we’re performing euthanasias, creating a tight circle of tension that traps the blood and forces the vein to the surface for the needlestick poke. roland is huffing, puffing, that anvil in his chest pushing down against his lungs as derek plunges against the viscid pink of the euthanasia solution for a hairsbreadth of a second split, like a razor blade separating baby fine hair, before the vein blows
but roland’s gone still. silent. derek stops, nestles the stethoscope beneath his warm armpit, belly. derek has barely injected anything, hardly waved the bottle in roland’s direction, practically flicked the solution off his fingers like water droplets dappled across his black and tan coat, but my boy, my heart, my stalwart beastling is gone. i feel peace settle over me like being tucked beneath a warm blanket on a cool night: his small stoic body siphoned of strength and life was ready. we had listened well.)
even now as i lean back in my chair to look down at him, he shifts, eyelids flickering open, completely aware of where i am in space and time and whether he needs to rouse himself to follow me wherever i’m going and there will never ever be enough. enough time, enough tears, enough ways to tell him that i love him, the silken softness at the top of his neck, the tiny teardrop of brown at the base where skull meets ear, the paw missing a toenail, the brown spots scattered across his belly from sunbathing. i want to bury my nose in the downy skin where his rounded tummy meets thigh and feel the rise and fall of his chest. i want to remember all the things i know i’m going to forget: the cadence of his walk across tile, my fingers buried in the extra skin at the nape of his neck, the way his ear tips flicker back horselike, the quiet yipping sleep barks of his dreams.
(we rest the casket atop the dresser at the foot of our bed and i draw a blanket around him until he is encircled. i have dabbed roland’s eyes clean with a warm washcloth and smoothed shut his eyelids with delicate dabs of glue. the tiny muscles connecting muzzle to nose rippled almost invisibly, the final emissions of his brainstem and his body, a peculiarity he’s no longer here to experience. i cannot bear the idea of sleeping in the same house without him in my room after nearly fourteen years of shared space; there is a black hole gap in my sheets at the place where his body should be. tomorrow we will talk about disposition, about bringing him to the crematory or digging a hole to swallow him up, but tonight i want to be able to stand up and touch him if i want, in the middle of the night, when everyone’s asleep and i can pretend for just a millisecond that he is, too.)
all i can do is gather him up, so gently, so carefully, like the most precious and perfect piece of porcelain, thin and fragile as tissue paper and lay in bed beside him for as long as i can. no what ifs, just right now.
no what ifs,
just
right now.
i’ll be back next week with the second part of my foot story, but tonight the words were more pressing in the light of unexpected tragedy.
an obituary for my dog
We love them with all our heart, they with theirs, there is no words to ease this pain, there is courage in the power to let them go, oh but how our hearts shatter over and over, till one day you with think of him and know you are still broken but mending. There isn’t anything like the love and loyalty of a friend,child in fur.
A beautiful tribute to your "heartdog". Sending virtual hugs & my condolences 💌