Day: December 14, 2011

Last Day. In The Pole Barn

 

I went to Cambridge yesterday and today to sign books for Connie and Marilyn and I was approached by two people, one inside the store and the other outside, as I left. Both were eager to know what illness resulted in Rose’s death.  How had it been diagnosed, how was it treated, what were the details of her decline. To be honest, I didn’t wish to talk about it, and I should have said so. I wished they hadn’t asked.

I mumbled something inconclusive and got away. I thought about whether I should write more about Rose’s illness, decline, treatment and death, but I have chosen not to. It is Rose’s business, really, and mine and Maria and I just don’t feel easy discussing her pain, disorientation and occasional humiliation. Some things are mine to keep. I don’t really know the exact cause of death – the tests and examinations didn’t reveal anything conclusive – and it doesn’t matter much to me, to be truthful. She declined rapidly and painfully from the beginning of the summer to her death.

In our society,  where health and profit are no longer distinguishable from one another, the dying are often overwhelmed by medicine, technology, politics, and  the voiceless soul is shoved aside, smothered and lost. My responsibility was to make sure Rose died well and that her soul shone brightly to the end. That was my steadiness of purpose.

As a hospice volunteer, and a writer who has had some contact with death, I have always believe our way of dying is  cruel to the point of barbarism. How ironic, we can give this gift of comfort and dignity to our dogs,  but not to our mothers and fathers.

I have always loved St. Augustine’s definition of love. He believed that love is the beauty of the soul. Rose’s soul was distinct to me – dignified, brave, vulnerable and faithful. Her love was a kind of devotion, and so was mine for hers. I could not give her her health back or save her life, but I could make sure she died in a loving way, the opportunity denied to so many human beings. It was the least I owed her.

Last Thursday, I woke up, disturbed for her. Rose and I have always been almost telepathically aware of one another.  It felt as if she was calling out to me, and I got up and wandered the house looking for her. I found her, awash in her own waste and vomit, trembling by the back door. This most dignified of creatures was trying with some of her last breath to get outside, as if to preserve her dignity and control. She had never lost control of herself inside the farmhouse.She could not stand up. She looked at me, in a way that seemed pleading, and I heard – felt her call out to me – I am lost. Help me. And my heart just shattered to see this brave and resolute creature nearly paralyzed on the kitchen floor, calling out to me for help.

At that moment, carrying her to a cushion, I knew Rose needed to leave the material world.  True love is, I think, selfless, not selfish. She needn’t stay here any longer for me. At first, Maria found this difficult to accept, and she said she wasn’t ready, she wasn’t sure. And then I burst into tears, and I said, “Rose is lost, she needs me to help her,” and Maria, who has never seen me cry like that, saw  my face and looked at Rose, and came over to me and now she was crying, too, and she took my hands in hers and said, “I understand, I see it, we will do it together.” And once more I was reminded that St. Augustine said it well, that  love is, in fact, the beauty of the soul. And to the end,  Rose’s soul was present in her eyes, and her beating heart, to her last breath.

So this was the story of my decision. Do not ask me about the medical details, as they are not significant to me.  I chose to see the beauty of Rose’s soul, and give her the gift of death.

 

 

I always said Rosie gets the job done, and she always did. And she is doing it again. We have somewhere between 100 and 200 books left to sell for Battenkill Books to make our goal of 1,000 copies of “Going Home” sold in support of me, Bedlam Farm, and the Battenkill Bookstore. More than I would have imagined, the bookstore has emerged as a symbol of what it means to deal with human beings in the era of the online store and the corporate phone tree. The bookstore has always been a safe haven for me, a place for a writer living in an isolated area to feel part of book publishing. Connie and Marilyn have charmed and touched so many people that this has been a life-altering experience for all of us. Battenkill is standing as a national symbol of the human need for the emotion and connection that comes from human contact. This independent bookstore is booming. We do not want to lose these places to a digital, discounted world.

Yesterday I was in the bookstore and someone was on the phone crying about Rose. Marilyn held the phone for several minutes until the caller was able to place her order. Try doing that online. The emotion of animal grieving, the drama of the independent bookstore, the challenge of contemporary publishing for the writer, the growing sense of disconnection and helplessness in the face of corporate power, and above all a love of books, all of these things came together in the “Going  Home” campaign for Battenkill.

That is enough. When we started, we hoped for 200 books sold. We are at 800 plus. Looks like Rosie might get us the rest of the way, and if she sets her mind to it, it will be.  The Battenkill campaign proves the adage that things that ought to happen will happen. Since Rose died, Battenkill has been nearly overwhelmed with orders for “Going Home” and “Rose In A Storm” and my other books to be purchased and signed in honor of Rose. I didn’t think of this, and would not have proposed it, yet it has touched me deeply, as here is Rose again, working for me and inspiring so many others with her ferociously resolute spirit. Connie called in reinforcements today, and the store is ready to handle orders. You can call by phone, 518 677-2515 or e-mail Connie – [email protected]. Connie has PayPal. She and Marilyn spoke to me this afternoon very poignantly about the good people calling in to honor Rose.  She wanted me to reassure people that I’m OK, so I did. Books ordered by Friday will make it for Christmas.

Come and see.

 

In my early days on the farm, I used to take the dogs – Rose, especially, and sometimes, Orson, Pearl – up to the top of the hill, to sit in the Adirondack Chairs, and look at the strange and beautiful new world I had come to inhabit. I took with them St. Augustine’s “City Of God,” a dense and difficult book I had come to love through my readings of Thomas Merton.

The book is a far cry from the angry, dark and fearful visions of the future that offer a new kind of spirituality today. It is not for me to judge anybody’s spiritual vision, only to pursue mine, and Augustine touched my heart and spirit with his powerful evocations of a bright and beautiful place awaiting those of us who wished to go look for it and inhabit it. He set me on a path in many ways, and the farm’s path, the path I have always walked the dogs, has always seemed a roadway to a place of hope, light, love and beauty.

It has become for me, my own pathway to the City Of God, a place I have walked with the dogs, seen the seasons changed, come across the carcasses of stalked creatures, fallen trees, old stonewalls, fallen trees, a witness to my life, a place I go hand in hand every day with the true light in my life, Maria. This is also the place I took Rose on our last walk, and it was not a dark walk at all, but a place of great beauty and light, my highway along the Hero’s Journey. Somewhere out there is the City of God, and one day I will come across it, if I have not already.

I think the spiritual part of my life with dogs and other animals is learning how to communicate with them. I do not believe they speak in our words, or feel our emotions. They have their own language, their own way of feeling.  There is an overwhelming drive to hear what we wish, what we need.  It is my task to understand this, as they use their profound instincts to understand us. They know more, I think, about us than we do about them, because they are less arrogant than we are,  less selfish and self-absorbed.

So I am learning to communicate with them by listening, continuing the process of active listening I began to learn in hospice work with Izzy.

Rose has never looked at the camera for me, but she did all day Friday, her last day. And I have been thinking about her look, her message to me. I am listening and hearing it, I think,  a message in her spirit, her purpose.

This is what I saw, and heard:

I came when you needed me, she said, and it is time for me to leave. I will not be returning, crossing over to the human spirit world, not crossing any bridge with you, or joining you for eternity. Our work together is over.  I have other work to do, for, as you have sensed, I am a spirit who lives inside the body of a dog, and I have never belonged only to the material world. We come when we are needed, we go when we are ready. I am ready. You are ready.

I know you well, have seen and smelled and sensed your emotions, many of them hidden so deeply when I came to you.  I know you are hiding them now, as I smell and see your sadness and struggle. I came to ground you when you needed that, came to make you feel safe in this place while you left the familiar behind and gave birth to your new life. That was always my work. The sheep were just a part of it.

I saw the sorrow, fear and pain in you and I have stood beside you and watched over  you until you came to your own life, to real connection, to Maria, to the work you were meant to do and the life you were meant to live. I have seen you begin to heal, sensed that.  I did not come to be your true partner in life – Maria and you have found one another for that – or to  cuddle with you – Lenore will do that. Or to protect you. Frieda has come to do that work. We are all spirits in our own way, magical helpers come to guide you on your way. Simon will stir your heart and inspire your work and sound the call to life. The chickens will challenge you to see the beauty and simplicity in all life.

You always called it the Hero’s Journey. I have no name for such things. It was just my work,  the faithful spirits of animals in  service to people for all eternity. I have no understanding of grief, guilt, agony or confusion.  Those are your feelings, not mine. I am not a hero. I am not in grief or sorrow at departing.  I did my job.  I do my work. It is my destiny, my devotion, my steadiness of purpose.

And our work will continue, in your life, in your work, in the next chapters of your life. And in the way you work, where I will forever be a part of the stories you tell, the spirit that infuses your life and reminds you to live it.  Other people, other animals, other spirits will rise to help you, if you let them, as you let me. We are not about grieving you and I, not about loss. You will not waste your hours in regret.  You will grieve for a time, and them I will fade, and be a ghost in your mind, a breeze, a shaft of light.  We are another  love story, timeless and joyous, a light unto the world.

You can see in my face that I am saying goodbye. I call upon you to take care of yourself, and continue our work, which is forever and ever. You believe in your heart that the divine lives in heartbreak and confusion and loss. So it lives in purpose and love and affirmation.

I leave you now to live your life, fully and meaningfully, as you wished so badly to do.  Your life has just begun, and I know you will not waste it again, or threw away one precious day.  And remember what you read to me when you took me up to the top of the hill when I first came to you, and think of it now:

And so I did, I found and  pulled out the book,  St. Augustine’s City Of God and the tattered songs and prayers I used to read to Rose and the dogs up at the top of the hill, when I was broken and alone with her and them, and I think this is what Rose meant. It was right at the top of the pile, in a folder marked “City Of God/Awake From Your Slumber.”

“Awake from  your slumber! Arise from your sleep!

A new day is dawning for all those who weep.

The people in darkness have conquered the night.

May our tears be turned into dancing.

For the Lord our light and our love has turned the night into day.”