4-leggers

I'm eating a sour punch straw I found in my backpack. I'm not sure how old it is but desperate times call for desperate measures. I'm scraping the bottom of the barrel here trying to eek out some creativity from this day. So I will write about what's close to home.

There is a 105lb Akita occupying my living room. She is 20 times the size of our Maltese puppy and the cats are registering concern. She is harmless though. Nicki is 12 years old with an ailing hip, dimming black eyes, and selective hearing. She is also recovering from some sort of virus affecting her balance so her head is permanently cocked to one side. She's looking at me right now like I'm crazy or something. We're watching her for a few days while her person is away on a business trip. I feel honored to be with this dog during one of her last numbered days. She takes me back to my own first love.

For anyone who knows me you will know how much I love dogs. For those of you who don't know me I was that Jane Doe blubbering uncontrollably on the plane from Chicago to Denver reading "Marley and Me." I guess you could say it was a dog who saved our family. My parents were the immigrants and we children were caught in the cultural gap of the first generation. Few words were exchanged during family meals. We never expressed any emotion except anger. Our stoicism was silently driving a wedge between us. It was around that time during the widest gap that my parents purchased a black female lab puppy, who we named Augustine (Auggie for short).

We took turns coddling her and whispering "I love you" into her soft black ears. We told her these words before we could say them to each other. Later, when she topped out at almost 100 lbs you could wrap your arms around her large burly neck and she would let you hug her indefinitely. She was our own furry ball of intentionality allowing us to say and feel what was already there but guarded in our vulnerable spaces. At 9 years old she accepted her disease and dying with grace. She knew it while the rest of us mourned how short her life was. She let us put up the good fight but she knew it was time - patiently waiting on us to let her go. A dying dog is one of the few occasions you can see a grown man cry. And so it was with my dad and brother on that last day she she went to sleep in my lap.

I don't know why I'm writing about this except that Nicki is here. And I remember how much we loved our damn dog. She showed us a way to love that which we are so afraid to lose. And the passing was not nearly as frightening as it was an aching and tender experience.