Day: June 11, 2012

I got very close to a woman who was dying in hospice care when I was writing “Izzy & Lenore. She was quite beautiful and had the most remarkable sense of humor, and I think I had a crush on her, she was so charismatic and bright and brave and we talked so easily. I loved seeing her with Izzy. She loved dogs and we battled all the time about whether they had souls or not and whether they thought like humans. The last time I saw her – she was 87 and dying from congenital heart disease – she asked me if I was ready for her to go. Well, no, I said, not really.

“Well,”she said, smiling for me that one last time, raising her eyebrow,”what did you expect?”  Don’t waste time mourning me, she said, when there were so many miserable people out there – dead men and women walking, she said. Cry for them. It was her time and she had been given the gift of a great life.  It was a great question she put to me, a powerful statement. It made quite an impression. When I came by the next morning, the house was empty, and she was gone. That was the worst thing about hospice, you rarely got to say goodbye.

I made a vow after my hospice work to write about death once in awhile because it is such a taboo in America, and people approach it in so particular and depressing a way. Politicians never mention it, and you don’t see much about it on TV or in the movies. If it doesn’t happen around you, you might never know in America that anybody was ever going to die. Perhaps this is why people almost always seemed stunned by it, as if they never expected it to happen. As if being sad is the only way to think of it, to talk about it.  Yesterday and today I found myself dealing with death and I wanted to share some thoughts about it.

My thoughts – they don’t need to be yours, of course. They are likely not.

A friend of mine, a writer died of cancer yesterday. He was 78 and he had been very good to me. A mutual friend called up, stunned, and said you won’t believe this, but Daniel died today. I thought but did not say, yes, what did you expect? I felt a surge of sadness and then I smiled at the wonderful life this gifted man led. Why didn’t my friend mention that?  Another friend told me on the phone in a shocked and grieving way that a photographer had died. He was 87 and had a wonderful and productive life, and I thought the same thing when I heard her sad voice: what did you expect? Was he suppose to live forever? Why can’t we be happy that he had such a good and productive life?

And this morning, someone I don’t know well e-mailed me that her father had died in the nursing home where he had been confined with Alzheimer’s for nearly a decade. She seemed completely unprepared for this – devastated she said, even though she had told me so often his spirit had left years ago and she could hardly bear to visit him –  and I thought of my friend in hospice, smiling at me: “well, what did you expect?” Why, I wondered, can we not feel some gratitude for the lives people give us, for the time we have.

Am I cold? Detached? Hiding my grief? Maybe. I understand grief, having lost people close to me as well, children and friends and parents, and seen it my work as a reporter,  in hospice as well as life. I respect it, and anyone who wishes it is entitled to it.

But I am estranged from this idea of death as an unnatural shock. I believe death is natural, inevitable, the twin brother of life. Everything alive – every flower, animal, person that we know and love will die – including me. I have come in my life to not be stunned by death, to celebrate the gift of life instead, as the Quakers taught me to do. As my friend in hospice taught me to do.

But I do grieve. I know so many people who are still alive who are, as my friend pointed out, long dead and still walking. They have given up on dreams, on life, on promise. They are enslaved by work they hate, fear that suffocates, people who discourage them and make them feel small.  They believe the search for money is the point of their lives, and they are trapped in the search for security, the great American Ephemera,  the Land Of Equal Insecurity In The Corporate Nation. I  do think it right to grieve for them sometimes, the people T. S. Eliot called “The Hollow Men,” the people who are trapped in grey and angry lives – loveless,  unlived and unfulfilled. Because that is truly sad to me, that is heart-breaking. That did not have to be.

I think I would rather mourn for them than for the people who lived out their lives and followed the inevitable path every one of us will take. To live an empty life – that is not what we ought to expect.

So, a time of change. Again. For awhile there, I thought I was done with change. But change was just beginning, as it always does. Change is not an aberration, but a constant. Still, a lot of change. Lost Rose, lost Izzy. Death is not a shock to me, but a part of life.  I don’t mourn death, I celebrate life. At first that was just an idea, but now I believe it deeply.

With loss comes gain, rebirth, renewal. The farm has taught me to never be surprised by loss. Or renewal. They are in the natural cycle of things. We got sheep. I am getting a new dog. I am teaching a writing workshop. I am selling the farm. Moving into a new one. Publishing my first e-book original. Publishing my first book of short stories.

Change is breath to me life. My life is not bounded by how little I can change, but by how much. Change is difficult, disturbing, wonderful, uplifting, frightening. Glorious. Ahead of me, as always is love, crisis and mystery.

Photo by Dr. Karen Thompson

I believe I’ve learned more from my mistakes with dogs than from my successes, and my failures have been many and public, and sometimes, controversial. My successes have been numerous also. Anyone who trains dogs and claims a perfect record is not in reality. I have learned much, and have much to learn.

Rose was a triumph, Lenore one of the best trained animals I have ever known, and Frieda the most difficult – and still ongoing – work with dogs that I have done in my life. I am getting good at this. Want to be better yet. Frieda is perhaps the greatest success. I’ve worked with Frieda every day for nearly three years and she is really just beginning to get there. I’ve had four different border collies, trialed a half dozen times, seen a dozen trainers and worked with sheep on and off for nearly 10 years.

I see Red as a challenge on a par with Frieda. He has different issues and needs but they are complex and will challenge me.  First, there is the challenge of working with him. He is a great working dog, and he needs that focus and consistency to his life. Then, there is the challenge of acclimating him to a different kind of life. Inside a house, riding in cars, going on my rounds, meeting new people, being a pet as well as a working dog.

I can already see from the messages pouring in about him that some see this as a trauma or a drama. He will be needy, traumatized. I’m not putting that on him unless I see it happening. This reminds me a bit of my first encounters with Rocky, when so many people insisted on seeing him as a piteous creature in need of rescue. That is not the case with Red. And I want to be upfront about it: I’m not going there. If that is what people do with their dogs, it’s their business. It’s not what I do. Training new dogs is not a drama. It is a painstaking, lengthy and life-long process.

It would be hard to find a better-trained or well cared for animal than this dog, or a more competent animal handler than his owner.  Dogs are adaptable, it’s how they survive and prosper in the cruel and fickle human world. Just look at the power of those eyes. I would not want to be a sheep crossing him. Or a human, for that matter. The intelligence and desire to work in those eyes could cut through steel.

The challenge is for me to be patient. To get to know Red. To give him work. To get him stable and secure. To housebreak him. Walk with him. Write with him. Take photos of him.  To figure out what he needs to live a more fully-rounded life and to be my great pal and companion. Maria’s too. I love these challenges with dogs, they are my work and my life.

I have written before that the challenge of new and social media is to share life, but not surrender it. I am not seeking advice. Other people’s stories are not necessarily relevant to Red’s. The only person who knows him well is Dr. Thompson, and her opinions count the most, more than mine at this point.

I will share the process step by step. I think Red could be a wonderful book from what I already know of his story, but it’s too soon to really tell. I don’t want to put that on him. I’ll do a Big Red Diary on the blog. I love challenges, and I intend to do well by him. How lucky I am to have this opportunity.

Went out to the pasture to try and get to know Tess. Checking her out. She was checking me out. Some animals love the camera right away. I tend to bond with them.

I believe in adding dimensions to life. I believe in moving past the drama, conflict, emotionalizing and projection that characterizes our love and life with animals. I believe in opening myself up to new experience, and learning from animals, not arrogantly assuming I know what they need and are thinking. A new paradigm.

I’ve never really connected with sheep or loved them. I don’t know why. I don’t think I can love all animals equally or see them in the same way. Dogs and donkeys and cats are all different to me and sheep have always been somewhere between chickens and other animals for me. Maria has changed that to some degree – I always learn from watching her around animals. These new sheep – is it because they are her sheep? – are affecting me differently and of course that shows up in the photos, doesn’t it? This ewe – Maria calls her Tess – is a gentle, loving and curious creature and she came up to me this morning and touched noses with me and sniffed the lens and then went and lay down for me. “She’s already good for you,” said Maria, beaming knowingly. New dimensions to life are important, critical.