Lacunae

n. :a blank space or a missing part : GAP

after roland died.

how has it been so long since the last time i wrote? so long that i have to flip all the pages of this year back to april, back to when roland died, which feels like it happened both a lifetime ago and only half a heartbeat ago all at once. i’d spent so long carefully guarding my heart, knowing that a moat around a fortress would do no good against the invading forces of inevitability and death, but still when the long thread of his well-loved life was briefly snarled in a tangle of pain and the astringent stink of medicine before being snipped short, i was surprised at the heartbreak that followed. 

after roland died, vix died.

wait. 

after roland died, we laid his body in a casket derek built by hand for the pets we euthanize in our work with our veterinary practice, which focuses on in-home euthanasia and was founded in 2017, after harper died (white fluff and unmitigated fury capped with wall-eyes and a tongue so long i’m certain it coiled around her brain like a woodpecker’s does. when did my life become a string of dead pets?) this casket has held many pets over three years, dogs and cats, all family, but this was the first time it held roland. i laid a quilt made of my softest old cotton t-shirts over him and tucked french fries around him, the ones he wouldn’t eat in the car home from the emergency vet because he felt like garbage warmed over an open flame in hell, and then i held onto him for three days.

his body went cold, then stiff, then lax and limber once more. his gums leeched color and his eyelids wouldn’t fully close. i needed the time, to watch his body go through all the first tip-tapping steps into the frigid waters of the river styx before being fully submerged. needed the casket on our dresser at the foot of our bed so i could touch his flank as i got up in the middle of the night to pee, reassuring myself that there was no breath beneath my palm. needed to make a cast of his nose and his paw, the one with the missing toenail, so someone could make jewelry for me to wear. needed to be the one who took him to the aquamation center, my hand on the bumpy curve of his head the whole time. needed to watch them place that soft bundle of black and tan speckled with sunspots and grey into the hulking mouth of silver and chemicals. needed to do a lot of things that i’d never get to do again, because life is short and nothing is promised and even the very best goodbye is never enough when it’s your heartdog.

after roland died, vix died. 

(trigger-warning for dog injury. the dog was rehabilitated, but she dies, too. the dogs all die in this newsletter, i’m sorry. except one. it’s the only way i can explain why i’ve been gone so long.) 

she was a pitbull, black and white with bright green starshine eyes and a lolling tongue that belied her easy-going attitude. she’d been surrendered to us by a family from the practice where derek works the rest of the time, when he isn’t performing end-of-life care, because she’d been injured and she couldn’t feel her back half anymore. after the injury, she needed crate-rest, and while in the crate she caught her foot between the wires and tore off her toes. the family couldn’t or wouldn’t manage the wound and eventually a doctor stepped in, when vix was burning hot to the touch with fever and her mangled foot was covered in a haphazard bandage and she’d lost too much weight and most of her will. this veterinarian said vix needed to be surrendered or euthanized but she wasn’t going back with them, so when the family threw up their hands and signed the paperwork to be done with the troublesome dog whose disabilities had ballooned far beyond what they expected from a puppy, we were the ones who welcomed her home.

vix’s wound got better until it got worse, so we had to amputate the rest of her toes and we dutifully changed her bandages. she sat so statue still through each medical procedure, laying her heavy block of a head in my lap and closing her eyes, accustomed to the sensation of allowing others to inflict pain in the pursuit of healing. we carefully trawled through every kind of boot possible to try to protect her skin and let her ambulate on the leg that mostly dragged (but was still a better option than walking solely on her front paws.) 

then one morning, despite soft hands and delicate ministrations, we woke up and necrotizing fasciitis had settled into the limb like black rot you can’t shovel out. we watched her entire leg swell like a balloon as the dark shadow of decomposition swallowed what was left, until we found a specialized surgeon who amputated the leg at the joint and told us he didn’t know how it would go but thought we were through the worst. 

we took her to physical therapy, let a vet tech zap her incisions with a laser to invite healing, helped her balance as she learned again how to walk in a body that had betrayed her over and over again. some days she woke up with her back bent and aching from the effort of ambulating the way she had to, but most days she tore ass around corners chasing bash and the cats and wolfed down her dog food with the hearty joy only pitbulls can muster and curled against derek’s chest on the couch as he wound down for the night, their hearts beating in synchronicity. 

until, right after roland died, she didn’t. she curled, spine arched in the universal parenthetical curve of pain so big it bends your body, and cried softly until i cried with her. we tried everything, all the medications and specialists, but she couldn’t walk without hurting and couldn’t hold her bladder and bowels and derek and i knew that neither she nor we could bear to put her through more. she had almost eight months of love with us and we held her as our tears darkened her fur while she died in our arms. 

we took her to the aquamation center, too, but honestly, the cloud of grief looms so large it obscures my memory. 

after roland, after vix, i needed a place to put my love. we had sweet bashi, our oakland street dog, addicted to belly rubs, still doesn’t know how to play catch, but one dog has never been enough. against our better judgement, we picked up a puppy from a place we shouldn’t have, a tiny chihuahua who slept against the crook of my neck on the long drive home, but. 

(there is a happy ending, i promise. it’s coming.) 

i stayed up with him all night, feeding him karo syrup and water, but both derek and i had already girded ourselves against the inevitable. he died the next day, likely caused by medication killing off too many worms and blocking his system, and instead of paying the aquamation center for a third heartbreak to be broken down into consummate parts, we buried him in the backyard beneath a ficus tree in the sun-warmed florida dirt.

derek’s response to this kind of earth-shattering heartbreak is to let those walls around his heart raise up higher, for just a little bit. to wander beneath the porch and lick his wounds for awhile before opening himself up to another slashed open wound caused by loving too much, too hard, too deeply. he wants to curl in the corner and pull blankets around his shoulders and settle in for enough time that his hurt has scabbed over, toughened, become a scar. 

i’m the complete opposite. i fling myself headfirst, arms wide, into anything that will make me feel something other than the numb sting of grief. i need to feel more than that aching pull, the desperate yearning to undo what cannot be fixed after it’s been torn asunder. i need a place to put my love, a somewhere or a something or a someone, because there are so very many furry someones out there who need some of that extra love i’ve got, spilling over the sides of the moat around my heart, splashing and soaking. it took a little while (every day scrolling through pages of dogs, every age, size, breed, all needing a place to call home) until i got a text message from my mom with a picture of a puppy with no home who i knew was actually mine—i just had to convince my husband. 

of course, i’m married to a veterinarian, and the reason they pull up the drawbridge so quickly and slam the doors shut is because they love. vastly, deeply, wide. in every conceivable direction, until it’s wrapped around you like a t-shirt quilt still warm from the dryer. so we drove an hour to meet this dog (my dog, unquestionably, the universe had yanked him bodily from the streets of miami and handed him to me) and we pulled on our masks (still a new precautionary measure way back when) to meet this dog. 

rupert (little, tiny/spotty/baby boy, roop, demon dog, tiny terror) is not roland. nor is he vix (not my heartdog but my husband’s, a three-legged hole dragged through his soul in eight short months). but this little rat terrier with his big ears and the dramatic dark mask painted on his face has been a place to put my love. he howls even when his mouth is full of his ball, leaps with pure joy when i come back in the door (even if i’ve only been gone for seconds), burrows beneath the covers to curl against me at night, and dreams so vividly that his whole body quivers with exuberance. no dog will ever be roland, but this new beast in our family has all white toenails, excepting the single black one in the same spot where roland was missing his. a portent? a sign? a message from across the rainbow bridge? (the only afterlife i believe should exist, and you’re damn right i’ll be there). perhaps. maybe not. either way, he is a happy ending in a year determined to break all of us with the ineluctable reality of endings in a life that we’re all too aware doesn’t last forever. 

(this, by the way, is a promise to be back more regularly. we all have had good excuses to disappear during 2020, so no judgement and total forgiveness for anyone else who has also stepped away in order to simply survive. thanks for giving me the space.)