What I'm Here For

She was missing fur. This little border terrier/dachshund mix. She was shaky, barky, and stinky. In fact, any unpleasant adjective you can think of, it probably applied to this dog the first time I saw her. I didn’t want to keep her. She was only half potty trained and had real trust issues. She hid from me. She barked at me. She peed on my carpet. For the first few days my wife and I had her, I called her Little Asshole… I thought, the sooner we found her owner, the better. The only thing she didn’t do (that pest of a dog would do) was shed.

To be fair, I was in a really bad place when this little gremlin came into our lives. For a month or two prior to finding her running around my in-law’s back yard, all I did was work, drink, and introspect. I found little ways to hide from my wife and the world in our little one bedroom apartment. I buried my nose in a journal or a book. I’d spend hours in a hot bath. I knew I wouldn't be disturbed in any circumstance where I was naked. I never understood that “men don’t cry” garbage. Among many of the global pandemics, I think toxic masculinity is one of the worst. Still, I didn’t like to let people see me do it. I’m what the film industry would call, “an ugly crier”.

I just couldn’t get that call out of my head. I couldn’t stop worrying about all of the different outcomes. In retrospect, I even worry that my worrying was causing me to alienate my wife when she needed me most. Buried in a deep pit in my head formed a selfish tendency. I sometimes made the whole thing about me. I could’ve handled it so much better. Although I did everything in my power to be there for my wife physically, I have this sinking feeling that, emotionally, I was truly lost. I’d be physically sitting on the couch holding my wife while she cried for hours but my heart was running elsewhere. To keep from breaking down with her, I had put my emotions in a labyrinth of distractions. Monsters made of fear and rage and despair ran rampant through corridors upon corridors built out of the paper thin idea that if I could control them, I could control the outcome of my problems.

I think, what made it all hurt worse, was the dream I’d had long before we got the test orders from the gynecologist. It was so lucid and real. I was in an airport. Denver International Airport, to be more specific. But it wasn’t normal. It was empty. There were no people, no directories, no stores built into the endless outstretched halls. The moving sidewalks stood still. The terminals were missing. I remember, more than anything, feeling so small in the vast building. I walked through it looking for a sign of life and ended up at the farthest room in a dead end. Where a terminal should have been on all three sides of the room, there were just windows. The seats were gone, the ATM I used before our last trip to Las Vegas was gone. I looked out the windows and saw the most incredible sunset painted across the horizon. Blues, pinks, oranges, and bright yellows splashed over the clouds. It would have been beautiful if the ground wasn’t an unsettling expanse of tarmac from the airport to the end of the world. I pressed my hands against the window as a deep bellowing voice suddenly poured through the empty air. I looked back to the hall that I came from and noticed a men’s room sign where there hadn’t been one before. I cautiously went in to find the singing man. It was a normal bathroom with stalls, urinals, and sinks. The voice continued from the first stall. I announced myself with a nervous, “hello?” The singing stopped and the toilet flushed. The stall door swung open. A large man, seven or eight feet tall, was adjusting a pristine white robe as if his underwear was crooked under it. He had a white beard and I can’t, for the life of me, recall anything else about his face. If I was any kind of religious, maybe I would’ve had a stronger reaction to his Hollywood interpretation of God look. He greeted me as an old friend would and put his large hand on my back. He led me back out to the windows. My hand print was still hanging on the glass. He gestured out to the tarmac and, like little ants in a time lapse video, people started flooding the endless concrete with different construction equipment. Cranes, bulldozers, trucks. They finished a building that looked like the elementary school I went to. At the same time, the home I grew up in was erected next to it. Beyond that, high school and college. Beyond that, the hospital I was working in at the time. I watched as my life was built before me and then torn down. When the last bulldozer drove off and my life was cleared, the man said he was proud of me for the life I’d built. Then, he gestured back to the tarmac. A small construction crew built a playground that I didn’t recognize. I looked back at the man who just smiled. He nudged me forward and I saw the playground right in front of me. We were no longer in the airport. I felt the wood chips that surrounded the playground under my feet. A cool breeze washed over me and I heard a small voice ring from the playground. “Daddy,” it called. I searched the structure that was suddenly crawling with kids. A girl wearing a purple coat jumped from the stairs and started to run towards me. She had the most beautiful eyes and the biggest smile. Her hair was the same gorgeous glowing brown color as my wife’s. She looked so much like her. I put my arms out and she fell into them. She was warm. The man asked, “you love her, don’t you?” And I immediately replied, “I’d do anything for her.” I woke up holding my pillow with fresh tears on my cheeks. I told my wife about the dream. She was ecstatic.

“The growth we tested in your wife’s uterus is cancer.” The words sounded like glass shattering. I don’t remember anything that came after or before those words. I just remember sitting on the couch staring at a zoom screen with our oncologist telling me my life might be over. It was so matter-of-fact. I know it’s hard for doctors to break that kind of news to their patients or their patient’s families but it came out of her mouth so easily. So Practiced.

I remember, my face got hot. The oncologist just kept talking. She blabbed forever about the next step and the next step and the next… and all I could think to do was break down. I just wanted to grab on to my wife as tight as I could and never let her go. And I did. Once we were finally able to hang up the Zoom call, I took my wife in my arms and we cried. It hurt so bad. “The next step” felt like the end. “The next step” was me getting thrown into a world without the person I loved and needed most. A world without my world. Nothing. Emptiness. “What if I lose her?” It became a poisonous thought that trapped me there. A malignant tumor of my own that began to swallow the joy in my life. There was no treatment for that.

After the call I started hiding like I mentioned before. I went to my wife’s oncology meetings. Because of the pandemic, I had to be phoned in to them while I waited in the car. I remember the first call with the surgeon. The reception was so bad I might as well have been on another planet. We had to choose between expensive and risky different ways to freeze her eggs or immediately find a surrogate; and giving up any chance we’d ever get to have our own kids. That was hard to swallow too. “Are you… last… ever again.” Later, I found out that meant, are you sure you don’t want to try and find the money? This might be the last time you get this option ever again.” I feel we made the right decision even though I wasn’t sure what it was at the time. If we’d waited any longer to get the hysterectomy, we ran the risk of the cancer spreading. It had already begun to spread through the uterine wall. Freezing eggs is like paying an extra mortgage every month for an embryo that may never take, and we weren’t in a financially stable enough situation to go with a surrogate. So, we abandoned the idea of having our own children. Thirteen years of dreaming about a little girl named Alice… since we met in high school. I couldn’t risk losing my wife for anything.

The surgery went great. The only thing my wife had a hard time with was the hot flashes. I spent her recovery constantly shuttling ice packs to and from the freezer. I also learned exactly how many steps it was to the thermostat from the couch and the exact temperature to keep the AC during a bad flash. It could’ve been pitch black in our apartment and I could go from the couch to the freezer, select any of the three flavors of ice cream we had, grab an ice pack, cross the kitchen to get a spoon, walk to the AC controls (the back lighting was broken on the screen by the way), turn the air down to sixty three and return to the couch. Blindfold me if you don’t believe me.

We also had tons of support from friends who’d stop by in masks with food or games. I know people say it all the time. “I don’t know how we did it without the help of our friends.” But they say it because it's true. Sure, we’d survive without a ready to bake casserole. We didn’t need the jar of Nutella, or the take-out Pho, or even the year’s supply of every different scented bath bomb you could imagine. But surviving and getting through a life-changing event like that are two entirely different things. Our friends and family risked a pandemic for us. They sacrificed their time and effort for us. We would have come out of that tragedy completely different people if not for the love and kindness of our friends and family. We’re grateful every day for what they did for us. We happily owe them eternally.

Anyway, it was once my wife was able to get out of the house again that it happened. The gremlin made her first appearance. We were having another long and frustrating conversation about adoption when my brother-in-law called. He said, “we found a dog”. Pulling into my in-law’s driveway, we saw a half-bald little blonde puppy sitting in my brother-in -law's lap. She was, as I had described, shaky, and stinky, and the second she saw us pull up she started barking at us like crazy. My wife and I just shot each other a look like, “is that even a dog?”

The puppy instantly took a shine to my wife. She cuddled with her on the couch. She let her give her a bath. She spent every second clinging to her, cuddling with her, giving her kisses. And she hated me. The first time I tried to pet her, she tucked her tail, barked her head off, and ran to my wife’s side. Every time I shifted in my seat, coughed, or blinked, she was suspicious of me like I was about to attack her at any minute. If I had farted loud enough it would’ve given her a heart attack. But I saw, when I watched my recovering wife and this scruffy little brat napping and cuddling on the couch, something pretty amazing. I didn’t give it much thought at the time. I was still convinced we’d find her owner and have to give her back.

We looked for her owner for weeks. We drove in circles around the neighborhood where she was found. We checked every lost dog, neighborhood, and news app we could think of. We called the pound every day to see if someone called about a little blonde terrier. Nothing.

We took her to the vet next and found out that she wasn’t chipped or fixed. She was a year old and the doctor told us she could have been on the street for over a month judging by how malnourished she was and how much hair she was missing. So we got her all the shots she needed. We figured, at least if we find the owners, we’d be helping them out. Maybe they just couldn’t afford her shots.

A month had gone by. There was no sign of her owners and we were hopelessly in love. The puppy had warmed up to me. At this point, she had been staying at our apartment to keep my wife company while I went back to work. I’d come home at night and her little wispy tail would go nuts for me. She still barked at me, but her tone completely changed. She would cuddle with me and play with me. She even slept in our bed at night and I’d wake up with her curled up in the bend of my knee. But more than anything, I loved seeing her and my wife together. What I saw that first night the two of them were cuddling on the couch was destiny.

We lost so much because of cancer. We lost what felt like a huge part of our future together. Someday, kids. Someday, grandchildren. Legacy. But “someday” had turned into one day at a time until this little puppy changed that. My wife was happy for the first time in a long time and so was I. That little ball of fuzz had become an outlet for all of our parental, nurturing energy that had previously been soured by grief and expressed in sorrow. To love and be trusted by a little creature who was probably having just as hard of a time as we were had fixed so much. And the timing of it could not have possibly been coincidence. She was meant to find us. We were meant to take in this perfect, adorable little creature and give her the love and care that we had in abundance.

We named her Mia. Her hair grew back after a month. We got her fixed and chipped. We bought her piles of toys and treats. We spoil the hell out of her and she appreciates every minute of it. Fetch is an all day/every day obligation for us now. She cuddles with any warm lap she can find after dinner. She has two cousin dogs who are four times her size but half as tough when it comes to wrestling in the yard. She’s a little dog with a big spirit and she means the world to us.

My wife has been in remission for over a year now. Our little family is thriving. I, my wife, and our little baby puppy couldn’t be better. I may still take my dreams a little too seriously. I may never get over the girl I met in my sleep. Her voice still rings through my unconscious mind from time to time. But it took tragedy for me to see that what I needed to be happy wasn't always obvious. If I wasn't so angry at life, if I wasn't obsessing over the worst possible outcomes, I'd have realized that all I needed was to be present. Enjoy every moment no matter how painful.

Be here. Now. Because real happiness, the kind that lasts, is always out there just waiting for us to rub its belly and scratch its butt.