After we put Izzy down, we stopped at our new home to see Rocky and bring him a snack and brush him a bit. The house feels like home to us. I’ve always seen Rocky as a teacher. He appears wise and seasoned to me, but as importantly, his very life and presence is a series of lessons for me. To value time. To appreciate life. To accept it, and not to wallow in the dark things it sometimes brings. Like Rocky we will all experience loss and figure out how to respond to it. Sometimes I talk to Rocky, and I close my eyes and imagine his answers.
What do you do, I said, when you are hurt, confused, grieving?
Look forward to things, he said. Try it. If it takes more than a few seconds, you’re good.
So I did today. My short list, there in the pasture.
I look forward to my life with Maria. Every minute of it.
I look forward to the final editor for my e-book “Rose’s Call.”
I look forward to the clouds lifting and photographing chickens.
I look forward to time with the donkeys, with Lenore and Frieda, studying the chickens. To outfoxing the fox.
I look forward to taking photos with George Forss. I look forward to taking photos anywhere.
I look forward to editing my Frieda book, “Me and Frieda: Second Chances.” I look forward to the publication of two more books this year, “Lenore Finds A Friend,” and “Dancing Dogs,” both in September.
I look forward to going to New York City May 6 to see Philip Seymour Hoffman in “Death Of A Salesman,” one of my favorite pieces of writing in any medium. On that trip, I look forward to seeing my daughter’s new apartment in Brooklyn, meeting with my agent and editors, going to the Park Slope Gallery to pick up one of George Forss’s photographic masterpieces and hanging it on my study wall.
I look forward to giving a talk on creativity and photography at the Mother’s Day Art Show in Greenwich, and then again, at the last Bedlam Farm Pig Barn Gallery Art Show here on the farm, June 23-24, Details of both on Maria’s site. I look forward to seeing some of you at one of those places or another.
I look forward to getting sheep. And I think I am closing in on a new dog, a border collie who can help with the sheep.
I look forward to moving to the New Bedlam Farm, as soon as we can. And then, I told Rocky, I was running out of room.
Izzy was euthanized a little after 9:30 this morning at the Cambridge Valley Veterinary Hospital in Cambridge, N.Y, at the loving and capable hands of Dr. Suzanne Fariello. She also put Rose down six months ago. Next time we meet, she said, please bring a puppy. Izzy died peacefully and quickly, a sedative followed by a lethal injection. Maria and I brought his body back and we buried him in a garden on the farm, one of his favorite places. We planted some flowers, said a few words. I guess it was a good thing that I just published “Going Home,” a book on animal grieving.
I don’t care to dwell on grief and struggle but last night was the most painful of my life with dogs. This loss is our life with dogs and animals and I know it and I accept it. I will feel this grief and acknowledge it, but it is only part of the story, which is mostly great joy, happiness and fulfillment.
Yesterday was harrowing. I spent the night with Izzy’s head in my lap as he struggled to breathe, swallow and move. I thought he was near death and I could not bear for him to die alone. It is so easy to project our own thoughts into these creatures, but he kept looking at me in a way that seemed pleading to me. Let me go, let me go. He was in great pain and discomfort, working hard every minute to shake off the poison growing inside of him and I wish I could have spared him that.
Izzy was a profoundly loving, gracious and easy dog, a perfect dog in so many ways. Even this week, which must have been so difficult for him, he never gave us a moment’s trouble, and always tried to do the right thing. To the end, he tried to love Maria and me, and last night, sitting on that floor brought back a flood of memories about the remarkable way we found one another, and my privilege to witness the work that he did, for me and in hospice. Maria is broken-hearted, and I feel for a creature that is as loving and intuitive as Izzy was. Izzy was what I call a spirit dog. They enter our lives at critical times, and mark the passages of our life.
I think of all those who have suffered this kind of loss, and I know it is something all of you have experienced. I will write more about the grieving process so that I can share what might be helpful while it is fresh in my mind. This morning, what I was feeling was the importance of making sure that the animals we love do not suffer any more than is necessary. One of the vet techs told me about her mother’s death from cancer, and she said she wished she could have spared her some of the suffering she experienced in the way Izzy was spared. That was good to hear. How ironic that we can sometimes do it with dogs and cats, but not with people. More later, and thanks again for the wonderful words of love, support and connection. Truly a new kind of community.
Many people are responding to the idea of helping hospice, honoring Izzy and supporting an independent bookstore by purchasing the paperback edition of “Izzy & Lenore,” my book about my work with Izzy, through the Battenkill book store. This seems to be taking off with a will of its own. I will sign and personalize all books purchased through Battenkill per your instructions, and donate all of my royalties to a hospice organization. I will inscribe the book to pets you have lost or to people you love. You can call the bookstore at 518 677-2515, or e-mail Connie Brooks at [email protected]. She takes Paypal. As you know, and as also happened with Rose, supporting bookstores is a worthwhile thing to come from the loss of a pet one loves.
For now, I want to absorb what happened so rapidly, and try to make sense of it. To be honest, I have to say I fell apart on the floor of Dr. Fariello’s office, cradling Izzy’s head in my hands. I am broken-hearted too. Izzy looked up at me in surprise and concern as my tears fell on his eyes and nose.
Sweet Izzy, I said, may my tears wash away your pain and carry you to a better place.
I sat up with Izzy much of the night, to sit with him as he struggles. I was awakened by his trying to breathe, a new sound. I am one of those people, I think, who show emotion best with my fingers and my photographs. It was never safe for me to show emotion in public, I don’t yet know how to do it. It is very painful to watch Izzy struggle this way, and my heart goes out to those many people who have done it, and have yet to do it. I am very mindful that everyone reading this has experienced it in one form or another, or will, and that is part of our connection, our community.
My life with dogs is not sad, it is joyous, each coming and going an opening in my heart and soul, an ignition of the creative spark, a passage in my life, a reminder of what it means to be a human being. Sometimes that means being happy, sometimes not. I woke up very early realizing I had not yet written about my chasing sunsets with Izzy, an experience that altered my life. “I haven’t written about the sunsets,” I told Maria in the middle of the night. You can do it tomorrow, she whispered. It seemed wrong to wait that long, as if I have done Izzy a disservice and I want to get it straight, before he dies in the morning. And so I am here, at the computer, Izzy lying with his head on my foot, listening to his struggle, his fighting for every breath.
In the winter of 2008, it seemed as if my life was completely disintegrating, although in truth, it was really just beginning. The great recession and all of its panic and pain were a fitting backdrop to my struggles, the radio, TV, Internet filled with the horror stories that have become the news for profit. I had broken down, was getting divorced after a 35-year marriage, was alone and in terror much of the time. Izzy and I were doing five or six hospice visits a week, and people were dying all around us. I remember counting the hours until Maria, who was helping with the farm animals on weekends in exchange for using the Studio Barn, would come through the door on Saturday mornings. But I was not quite alone. Izzy was here, and one brutal winter’s day, I took my brand new Canon camera that I had bought on mysterious impulse – I had never owned a camera before – and drove in my Chevy Blazer in the gathering dark to Kinney Road in Argyle. It was an awful winter in many ways. I parked the car, puzzled over the tripod. Izzy jumped out and lay by the side of the ride in the bitter wind and was still while I took my first photographs of the brilliant sunset highlighting the simple farmhouse on the hill.
A farmer appeared at my side with a rifle and asked me what I was doing and when I told him, he shrugged and walked away. A truck roaring down the hill nearly crushed me against the car in the dark and knocked my tripod into a creek. The wind blew my cap off and froze the tears on my eyes but I took photo after photo and my spirit was suddenly re-arranged and I began to see the world in a different way, especially its color and beauty. Night after night, as dusk approached, Izzy and I chased sunsets. On Kinney Road. On Bunker Hill Road. On Cambridge Center Road, on the way to our hospice visits in the Adirondacks. “Let’s go chase a sunset,” I’d say, grabbing my camera bag. Izzy was always at the door. We did this almost every night for nearly a year, and in that very powerful year, my life began to change, as if those brilliant sunsets, one by one, healed my soul and lit it up like a stage. Izzy and I slipped into the daily routine that dogs love so much, and that are life itself to border collies. Izzy always jumped out of the car on those freezing cold nights, went to the side of the road and watched my evolution as a photographer and a human. He loved it more than anything. Every night I would post those photos on this blog and a few minutes later the phone would ring. My friend Maria was calling to tell me how much she liked my photography, how good my photos were, to encourage me when there was no one else who could do it or would do it.
Every time I posted a sunset, Maria would call to tell me how much she liked my pictures, offered me suggestions, artist-to-artist, gave me the strength to put them out there, the gift of encouragement that every writer or artist needs so much, and that the world so rarely offers. The calls were brief, businesslike. Neither one of us wanted to even imagine something more. But our creative connection was formed in those calls, deepened and grew, altered our lives. I knew then that we would be together one day.
Maria did not know that when she called on those winter nights that I was sitting in my favorite living room chair, Izzy at my feet, waiting, praying, for the phone to ring, staring at it, so that I would know she was there and I was still alive, and would be alive in the morning. I swear Izzy stared at the phone just as I did, as if he were on pins-and-needles too.
And here is the thing about life: at 4 o’clock in the morning, four years later, I am sitting in that chair right now, Izzy lying at my feet and he is weakening with every breath, and I do not know if he will make it to morning, but if he does not, I will be here at his side when he goes. I’ve been talking to Izzy, telling him I needed another border collie on any farm I was on. He would be the first creature to understand that. I just told Izzy this, before I knew I had to write it, share it, because this is what I do, this is my emotion: “we found those sunsets, didn’t we, pal. Such great work a dog like you can do, riding in the chariot alongside of us as we ride our way through life.” And Izzy raised his head when he heard me mention the sunsets, his wheezing eased, and rested it on my knee.
May you chase a million sunsets, Izzy. You are a spirit dog, and spirit dogs never really die, do they?
