don't fall through the stars, don't fall through them....
It’s two am when I stumble from the car up the drive to the door. It takes minutes of drunken fumbling to locate the key to the front door, which has untied itself from the strap on my wallet and gotten lost at the bottom of the bag.
The living room is as it always is this late at night: the shabby overstuffed furniture where all the stuffing has started moving to the edges of the cushions, the stained carpet, the blue glow of the television, left on with the sound off, some moody, dismal thing. The dog at the base of the television, sprawled against his cushion, towels around him, the odor of urine and the food matted into his fur, rotting. He breathes heavily; in this quiet room his labored gasping echoes.
The actors onscreen are running and it is dark where they are, running and the gurgle of ‘Quito’s lungs seems as though it is both the sound of their breath and their running.
Quito stares off into space, doesn’t move his head to acknowledge me, doesn’t run up to me, tail wagging, tongue lolling out of his mouth, yodelling as he usually does when I enter, eager for his ears to be scratched and to be taken for a late-night walk. I can see in this dim light that his eyes are cloudy, unfocused. Yesterday, it seems, they were brighter, yesterday, though immobile, he would turn his head when I entered the room, would open his mouth and groan happily when scratched behind his ears.
I try to get him to stand up, to take him outside (his towels and blankets saturated with the stench and stain of urine), stand behind him, lifting his body onto his front paws. He sits, but when I try to lift his back legs up, he collapses, falls back onto the cushion, back onto the smelly wet fabric. He refuses to open his mouth when I try to feed him pills, food, anything, and when I ladle the water from his bowl into his mouth it dribbles out the sides of his muzzle, his lips and he chokes on it; not swallowing, but breathing it into his windpipe.
Tomorrow, it will be worse, I know, and the little part of me that hoped extinguishes itself. I feel strangely empty, on the brink of sadness, yet somehow separate from it, that he is not dead yet, but when he is the sadness will swell up, and I will fall right in.
Two nights ago, I walked into the house the same late hour, a little bit drunk from the two bottles of red wine Ted and I drank together as we closed. I don’t remember why we were drinking, but it was raining and we were lonely together, Ted because he had to return to his boyfriend’s apartment, to a house that held no love, me to a house just as empty. We aren’t friends, probably will never be, but we get along, we understand that sometimes when it rains it is nice to close the windows and doors and light a fire in the gas fireplace, curl up on the leather couch and drink wine and smoke cigarettes and not say anything. Quito was sick, had been for days, but I thought he would get better, was gonna be alright in the end: his eyes alert even as his body lame, lethargic.
I walked in that night, one am, later maybe, and my father was on the floor, all six feet, two hundred twenty pound of him, curled around th dog, petting him and whispering, It’s all right, ‘Quito, it’s all right, we are going to give you lots of time to get better... When he hears the clunk of the door closing, of me taking off my shoes and dropping them against the runners on the table, and looks in my direction, not bothering to hide the sadness in his eyes, not bothering to wipe them as they shine bright.
I have never seen my father’s tears. Not when we were scared his mother had stomach cancer all those years ago, not when his father had an emergency heart operation: his eyes stayed cold, the skin at his jaw tighter maybe, his eyebrows pinched in thought. I have seen him angry, wild, spittle flying from his mouth, roaring, I have seen him sleeping on the couch but he is never at peace, never unguarded even when asleep, I have seen him in quiet anger, circling issues to decide when to pounce and strike, and then his eyes lit up, but they have never shone from tears.
A man and his dog. Funny how this silly, strange beast has suddenly made my father human to me, after all those years. All that anger, hatred, how we yelled and fought and threw things at each other, my tiny fists pummelling and desperate to uncover something besides self-satisfied coolness and amusement at how futile my exertions, or anger, or something more than pity, because your life will never be easy, so learn now; you are stubborn but you will learn. bruises and blood and anger and now a man.
And I feel something now, some kind of understanding, some forgiveness. My father, brought to tears and whispering tiny words for his dog who can barely cock his head to look him in the eye.
It is too much, and I walk to the bathroom, wash my face and look at my reflection, how I am struggling not to cry and in that moment I know that Paquito will not get better and the sadness starts to swell but still cannot reach me.
Tonight we will go to the vet, to hear him tell us if he was going to get better, he would have improved by now, but he’s only gotten worse. My mother will cry, long loud whimpering sobs, my father will stand tall, his hand on the dog’s head, and there will be something close to tears in his eyes as he scratches, pets and tries to get Paquito to look his way. And I will stand by the door, looking for a way out, an escape because suddenly the small sterile room has shrunken and it will feel like the air is being vacuumed out of it, but I will not cry though I can feel the tears, the small swell of sadness.
Because dogs, they don’t die the way people do. They see their death, and they accept it, lie on their side and refuse food and water and their eyes cloud over and they are lost in it, its imminence. They wait and you cannot touch them because the dying is so near and they don’t want to miss it happening, a whole ten days of waiting for the one moment a little different from the others, the one where you stop waiting and it’s here. Last night I could see that ‘Quito was ready, wasn’t fighting anymore; I won’t fight for him.
You were loved, ‘Quito, and you loved and as I typed this sentence you barked and fought to sit upright for the first time in days, failed, collapsed, tried again. You didn’t make it, you don’t look at me sitting a few feet behind you, but you did more than that: you have taught me that even the most unlikely of men can hurt, can love too; even if it wasn’t mine that night on the livingroom floor it was my father’s, it was yours, and it was enough. You give the world your life, then you give it your death. And dying is easy the way few things are.
The living room is as it always is this late at night: the shabby overstuffed furniture where all the stuffing has started moving to the edges of the cushions, the stained carpet, the blue glow of the television, left on with the sound off, some moody, dismal thing. The dog at the base of the television, sprawled against his cushion, towels around him, the odor of urine and the food matted into his fur, rotting. He breathes heavily; in this quiet room his labored gasping echoes.
The actors onscreen are running and it is dark where they are, running and the gurgle of ‘Quito’s lungs seems as though it is both the sound of their breath and their running.
Quito stares off into space, doesn’t move his head to acknowledge me, doesn’t run up to me, tail wagging, tongue lolling out of his mouth, yodelling as he usually does when I enter, eager for his ears to be scratched and to be taken for a late-night walk. I can see in this dim light that his eyes are cloudy, unfocused. Yesterday, it seems, they were brighter, yesterday, though immobile, he would turn his head when I entered the room, would open his mouth and groan happily when scratched behind his ears.
I try to get him to stand up, to take him outside (his towels and blankets saturated with the stench and stain of urine), stand behind him, lifting his body onto his front paws. He sits, but when I try to lift his back legs up, he collapses, falls back onto the cushion, back onto the smelly wet fabric. He refuses to open his mouth when I try to feed him pills, food, anything, and when I ladle the water from his bowl into his mouth it dribbles out the sides of his muzzle, his lips and he chokes on it; not swallowing, but breathing it into his windpipe.
Tomorrow, it will be worse, I know, and the little part of me that hoped extinguishes itself. I feel strangely empty, on the brink of sadness, yet somehow separate from it, that he is not dead yet, but when he is the sadness will swell up, and I will fall right in.
Two nights ago, I walked into the house the same late hour, a little bit drunk from the two bottles of red wine Ted and I drank together as we closed. I don’t remember why we were drinking, but it was raining and we were lonely together, Ted because he had to return to his boyfriend’s apartment, to a house that held no love, me to a house just as empty. We aren’t friends, probably will never be, but we get along, we understand that sometimes when it rains it is nice to close the windows and doors and light a fire in the gas fireplace, curl up on the leather couch and drink wine and smoke cigarettes and not say anything. Quito was sick, had been for days, but I thought he would get better, was gonna be alright in the end: his eyes alert even as his body lame, lethargic.
I walked in that night, one am, later maybe, and my father was on the floor, all six feet, two hundred twenty pound of him, curled around th dog, petting him and whispering, It’s all right, ‘Quito, it’s all right, we are going to give you lots of time to get better... When he hears the clunk of the door closing, of me taking off my shoes and dropping them against the runners on the table, and looks in my direction, not bothering to hide the sadness in his eyes, not bothering to wipe them as they shine bright.
I have never seen my father’s tears. Not when we were scared his mother had stomach cancer all those years ago, not when his father had an emergency heart operation: his eyes stayed cold, the skin at his jaw tighter maybe, his eyebrows pinched in thought. I have seen him angry, wild, spittle flying from his mouth, roaring, I have seen him sleeping on the couch but he is never at peace, never unguarded even when asleep, I have seen him in quiet anger, circling issues to decide when to pounce and strike, and then his eyes lit up, but they have never shone from tears.
A man and his dog. Funny how this silly, strange beast has suddenly made my father human to me, after all those years. All that anger, hatred, how we yelled and fought and threw things at each other, my tiny fists pummelling and desperate to uncover something besides self-satisfied coolness and amusement at how futile my exertions, or anger, or something more than pity, because your life will never be easy, so learn now; you are stubborn but you will learn. bruises and blood and anger and now a man.
And I feel something now, some kind of understanding, some forgiveness. My father, brought to tears and whispering tiny words for his dog who can barely cock his head to look him in the eye.
It is too much, and I walk to the bathroom, wash my face and look at my reflection, how I am struggling not to cry and in that moment I know that Paquito will not get better and the sadness starts to swell but still cannot reach me.
Tonight we will go to the vet, to hear him tell us if he was going to get better, he would have improved by now, but he’s only gotten worse. My mother will cry, long loud whimpering sobs, my father will stand tall, his hand on the dog’s head, and there will be something close to tears in his eyes as he scratches, pets and tries to get Paquito to look his way. And I will stand by the door, looking for a way out, an escape because suddenly the small sterile room has shrunken and it will feel like the air is being vacuumed out of it, but I will not cry though I can feel the tears, the small swell of sadness.
Because dogs, they don’t die the way people do. They see their death, and they accept it, lie on their side and refuse food and water and their eyes cloud over and they are lost in it, its imminence. They wait and you cannot touch them because the dying is so near and they don’t want to miss it happening, a whole ten days of waiting for the one moment a little different from the others, the one where you stop waiting and it’s here. Last night I could see that ‘Quito was ready, wasn’t fighting anymore; I won’t fight for him.
You were loved, ‘Quito, and you loved and as I typed this sentence you barked and fought to sit upright for the first time in days, failed, collapsed, tried again. You didn’t make it, you don’t look at me sitting a few feet behind you, but you did more than that: you have taught me that even the most unlikely of men can hurt, can love too; even if it wasn’t mine that night on the livingroom floor it was my father’s, it was yours, and it was enough. You give the world your life, then you give it your death. And dying is easy the way few things are.