The Danger of Aging with Grace

A dog’s life portrays the nature of time. A young pup bears a crescent moon that waxes into blustery, playful years, and then wanes before us as he ages. To be close to a pet, we become witness to mortality. We are given the lesson of acceptance at the ongoing realization that we have made the choice to bond with a heart that will beat for less minutes, less days, less years than our own. Tender lessons of grief and of growing old are inherent to this relationship. All the while, two souls are tied together by a cosmic cord, which signs an agreement to protect, care for, and love one another without condition.

It was there the moment I met him, just minutes before I candidly handed the breeder $300 for a failed attempt at a pure-bred show dog. Her daughter brought him to me as I sat on the couch, and I made small talk by inquiring about the other dogs that were available. There was a female, also from the same litter somehow, who was entirely white; she was priced at two grand. Because I had relayed to the woman my meager budget, I was not allowed to even see her. But it didn’t matter, because the tiny little chocolate and tan long-haired doxie had already begun to nibble on my earring. The daughter squealed to her mother about the sweetness of the moment, while the breeder brushed her aside, in a haste to complete the transaction. Neither did this gesture, one which sparked a residue of the monetization of animals-something that any other day, would have been received as a greed-laden affront, bother me at all. Because the only thing I could see and feel was the invisible tether that would bind my heart to this tiny, helpless dog for the following 17 years.

I am 42, and have never had children. This is a compound fact that surprises most people. For one, I still look like I am in my late twenties, even despite the stress and hardships my life has bestowed. Had my life not been rendered by pain and poor choices, drug addiction and sexual indulgences, I might have assigned the credit of such a juvenile mien to bouts of vegetarianism or a decade of yoga practice. Yet, there must be something more to it. How does one age with grace? Perhaps age itself exists in our cellular makeup, springing from the very center of our emotional being. The seed of age must possess a delicacy, a fragile bent from which a plant springs. It must know how to care for others, to not force itself upon them; it must know sacrifice. So much of myself has been torn away by mental illness and grief, but somehow, I have stored inside myself an ability that will not grow old. An enigma, and yet I am certain it was from this source that I fell in love with and attached an invisible wire to this beautiful creature. I suppose some things are abstracted purposely so that they contrast against a clarity of concrete knowledge.

Secondly, I am a natural with the little ones. There is not a toddler on the planet I cannot propel into laughter; rarely do animals face the other way upon my initial impression. People have always told me that I am a natural born mother. So where a gaping childless hole warped my innate maternal gifts, there he was. He was my son. His name, in full, was James Danger Brown. He was called by his middle name.

​ Danger went by “Lenny” for about six days, before he nearly died from chewing on an open electrical wire in our apartment. Because our building was nestled on a neighborhood street located in the College District of New Orleans in 2006, the city had been recently plagued by the destruction of Hurricane Katrina. There was a lot of construction at the time- nests of loose wires were as common an occurrence as blackened kitchen floors from where refrigerators once stood. I was not aware that the accident occurred, for then was a time wherein I perpetually neglected to check my cell phone, which had rung incessantly in calls from my ex-husband, Chris, who had witnessed the entire thing happen. By the time I arrived, Chris had departed for his day of class at Tulane University. Still, it was not until I picked the little guy up and offered my face to his smelly puppy kisses, when I became aware of the horrible event. Half of his mouth had burned off, and there was a gaping hole in his tongue. It was a gut-wrenching sight, so I rushed to a very kind veterinarian. This doctor was a man who had weathered the storm to protect about a dozen dogs on the rooftop of his office. He relayed with a crackling, gentle voice how lucky we were; many puppies die this way. Danger was given antibiotics and pain medication, along with a new name. Eventually, his injuries healed, only so enough that the tip of his tongue was paralyzed and lay loose upon the absence of a lower gum-line. The fungiform would forever hang out of the side of his mouth, a trait equally endearing as it was comical. These were Danger’s primary personality characteristics, along with the third: he was also relentlessly annoying.

​ The same veterinarian who nursed Danger back to health following his accident had also performed his neuter surgery. When I picked him up, Danger was enunciating a meek, but rather loud, bark for a puppy. I asked the vet if there was any way to train this instinct out of him, to which he responded with an acceptance of his own incapability, “Some dogs just bark a lot.” On a scale of one to ten, the volume of Danger’s bark was a perpetual decibel of ninety-two. There was never a softer version of the tiny dog’s ear-piercing howl that rode from his lungs like a force intended to drive a herd of buffalo off the road. If there was already not enough ground to deter people from experiencing his better qualities, Danger was also impossible to housebreak. All I had to do was avert my attention to something for a moment, and he would sneak into a closet or hidden place to defecate. His charm, therefore, was lost on many.

​ But charming he was-that of a distinguished, fumbling gentleman. Dachshunds were genetically bred to burrow, so Danger was skilled at finding the exact place to curl up into a perfect circle of a dog. One would often find him snuggling between couch cushions, under blankets, beside a belly like a hot water bottle. Once, while my mother was dog-sitting, Danger had snuck off only to be found hours later making home in a foresty gopher hole. Another infamous mannerism was his frog-pose, a gesture of submission he enacted to let me know he wanted to be picked up from the ground and held. He would flatten his entire body to the floor with two amphibious hind legs splayed out. Danger also had a gift for finding the warmest seat. A favorite photograph displays the doxie lying on his side, framed perfectly by the only plate of sunshine that streamed in from the window onto the wooden floor beneath him. He was a great traveler, sitting quietly on a lap for a car or plane ride. My dog carry-on of choice was a simple canvas grocery bag that could encase the length of his body from neck to tail while his sweet little head poked out the lip. I even hung the bag on the hook of airport restroom stalls, while he remained undeterred by the ridiculousness of his traveling garb, an unfettered face peering out while I peed. Danger’s favorite toys were plush squeaky animals, and he didn’t even require a human to toss the things around for him. Somehow, he had figured out the acrobatics of throwing one over his head, circling beneath the airborne plush, only to catch it on the other side of the toss. He would play self-catch over and over again, like a happy little fish. Then there was the crowd-pleaser; Danger would insist on finding, and carrying, the biggest stick on the ground for our morning walks. Passers-by met my gaze with appreciative humor as they witnessed a 14 inch doxie strutting about with a four foot stick in his jaw. It was indeed Danger’s eyes I loved most-irises specked with a knowing twinkle, a trait usually only allotted to wise sages and innocent children. They were my puddles, deep caring caverns that wet my soul with their rain.

​ Aside from the earth-shattering bark were other sounds, too. Danger had a puppy whimper whenever I would hold him close; it was as if puffs of clouds were emitted from a snuggly squeeze. Then there was the mad-scientist hiccup that transpired whenever Danger was caught doing something he shouldn’t. This sound was entirely unique-to describe it would only lessen its strange magic. And alas, there was the compassion whimper, of which I recall only being orated twice. The first painful bell rang out the day Chris packed up his things from our one-bedroom apartment in Philadelphia, as he shared his farewell with the tiny dog. The second time I would hear it was the day I was admitted to the hospital for suicidal ideation. At times like this, the tether pulled taught. It was if tiny strings were stitched and locked between our two souls. He ached when I ached; that much was true.

​ My life, after the pain of a divorce and onset of severe clinical depression, became a myriad of fractured sequences. I would like to say that I cared for Danger perfectly, but there were times I certainly fell short. Sometimes he was left in his kennel for too long or nipped by a pair of scissors when cutting his hair. He probably always wanted our walks to last longer, to have more toys, to be given more individualized attention. He traveled with me from city to city, New Orleans to Philly, Philly to New York, New York to Cincinnati. I lived in about ten different apartments in the Cincinnati area, all of which he also took residence. I was lost and broken, in search of a self that felt whole. Amidst all these moves, heartbreaks, and lapses in sanity, I molted pieces of everything. Tender relationships, antique furniture, money, self-esteem, and jobs all fell into the sand and were washed away by the tide. Yet, Danger stood by me as a whole, reliable entity mirrored by a life in shambles. He never broke away from our allegorical tether, but he did grow old with the passing of places and people.

​ The time somehow crept up on me. Where once there was a dog so startled by a small disturbance or unsettling noise, a passive, nearly deaf canine lay sleeping for hours upon hours. His hazel eyes had become opaque, and his energy for walks had depleted. This was during the time wherein, after a decade of error, I finally made a choice to admit myself to a Christian treatment facility. I was not allowed to have a dog in this home, so my mother took Danger in. He was happy there, accompanied by her Golden Retriever, Muggsy, and in front of a warm fireplace basking in the spattering flames. He came to visit me every Sunday, impressing my housemates with his tap-dancing trail clicking away in a shadow behind me. He laid on the couch with me there, his stomach on mine, listening to one-another’s heartbeats. Had I been aware of his upcoming departure, I probably would have sealed a moment in my mind a memory like a worn, old Polaroid. But this is the nature of grief; it comes unexpectedly, and in waves.

​ My mother and her husband, Bob, dock a boat on a Michigan Lake every summer, joined by Muggsy, their perfect lake companion. One Sunday summer morning, Muggsy died in her sleep on the boat. My mom had left Danger with Bob’s sister, Martha, who had her own 17 year old dachshund, Shultzie. Muggsy’s death surfaced within my mom her inability to return home to a house with just one dog, whose presence would only render the absence of her own. She could no longer pet-sit for me, so I scrambled to find someone to take Danger in until I could find my own place to live. My timeline to live at the recovery home would just be for one more month, that is, if life hadn’t brought me one precious gift-my fiancé, Eric. You see, upon entry to this facility, I had signed a no-dating contract. It just so happened that I fell in love, so I was asked to leave.

​ I had to find a roof as quickly as possible, so I moved to a halfway house down the street. They also had a no-pet policy. I did finally find a person who agreed to take Danger in, but by this time three weeks had passed. One night, my mother called me and left a voicemail regarding an issue with Danger we needed to discuss. A pit locked in my chest as I dealt with the fear that something terrible had happened to him, or that Martha had grown annoyed with his idiosyncrasies and needed me to retrieve him as quickly as possible. As it turned out, she felt just the opposite. Martha, a stay-at-home artist, pet-stairway beside-the-bed dachshund owner, had also fallen in love. She wanted to keep Danger as her own. The conversation with my mom was flecked by her own recent loss of Muggsy, a time wherein an owner looks back to consider if she gave the pet the best life possible. Danger and Schultzie had become a bonded pair, and here I was with nothing to give him, but with an offer to have all his needs met. I recognized that my final gesture of love for this animal was to let him go.

​ I am unsure now who chooses whom, the dog or the person, but in a way, I felt that Danger decided this perfect ending. He had accompanied me through a decade of sorrow, but chose to leave me before he would compound it. His purpose was to hedge on the circumference of my own sadness, not to become grief’s center. Danger had given me the mercy of exiting my life during his aging years. This is grace-to sacrifice oneself in order to protect another from pain. For a while, I still felt the tether, but at one point it faded. In a dream or in a memory, he tugged at it one last time before letting go. He had transitioned, attached to another, and aged with perfect grace.