To be out of step with the world and in step with a dog is a singular experience.
It is a quiet, secret existence known only to your non-judging companion. Only he observes all the mornings you can’t get out of bed until almost noon and all the afternoon hours you give up the quest for normalcy and lie back down. Your human family sees some of these mornings and some of these afternoons, but they, mercifully, are spared many of them because they are working or traveling or playing, as they should be.
Only the clear-eyed dog lifts his head every time he hears you crying for the life you’ve lost, and only his rough tongue licks your face every time you seek his thick, auburn fur for comfort. He’s the one who knows that, on good days, you hum when you walk, and on bad days, you don’t. In his soul are recorded your ups and downs, your prayers, your tantrums, your efforts to scrape yourself off the bed and into the world. His is a perspective that will remain forever unshared.
He died a week ago, and everything is empty: the bed, the rugs, the yard, the back porch. My face is empty. My hours are empty. The world’s observations of my life through his eyes are shut down.
Though I have tried in this blog to render a full picture of a life reined in by fatigue, no one—not one other creature—can know the outlines, shades, and contours of that life as he did. It does not matter that he could not speak to me in English of my experiences.
I spoke to him.
The silence of his absence is felt in the bones.
