I was sick today, laid up in bed mostly, and I was reading Kate Roiphe’s new book “In Violet Hour: Great Writers At The End.” She was writing about the death if Sigmund Freud, who escaped Nazi persecution in Austria by fleeing to London, where he died soon after the beginning of World War II. It is a beautiful book, in no way depressing or disturbing. It reminds me that we have something to say about how we die.
Freud died of cancer of the mouth, it was a painful and difficult death, he refused any kind of painkillers because he wanted to be sharp and clear till the end and he was. There was a hole in his cheek, the result of many painful operations, as if a bullet had passed straight through. The necrosis in his mouth had begun to give off an unpleasant smell.
Towards the end, writes Roiphe, his dog Lun, a reddish chow, would not come near him, he would cower under the table, driven away by the smell. Freud wrote that what he loved about dogs was their lack of ambivalence, how they, unlike people, could love without hate.
But Lun’s unambivalent love had now turned into unambivalent fear.
For many years, Lun laid on the floor of Freud’s study as patients talked to Freud.
Lun, who lay under Freud’s desk as he was writing, had become, “through her presence, almost a part of his work, part, almost of his thinking..” She was not out of reach, perhaps when he needed her the most.
I thought of this today, and about the loyalty of dogs. And about the truth of dogs.
I woke up sick this morning, and Red, my older border collie, attached himself to me as if by crazy glue. He just seemed to know I was sick.
He sat outside the bathroom when I was inside being ill, he followed me upstairs, laid at my feet, not moving for hours. Like Lun, Red is a part of my work, my life, even my illness, also a part of my writing and thinking. He is always under my desk when I work, he is there now, I can hardly imagine writing without him nearby.
If I were truly ill and smelling of illness, would he also shrink away in fear and confusion? I imagine he would. As a hospice volunteer, I saw this so many times. Izzy, Lenore, even Red, would attach powerfully to a hospice patient approaching the end of life. But when death entered the room, they would change, as Lun did.
In hospice, one learns that as people near death, they withdraw from the world, they gather themselves, there are different smells and sounds, less eye contact, a diminishing need for attention. The patient often loses their spark, their spirit.
The dog would always – always – pick up on this and withdraw from the patient, refusing to jump up onto the bed or coming over for a pat or hug.
The dog, of course, could sense – see and smell – this withdrawal, sense that the person who loved and needed them and connected them had become something else, and was, for them, already gone. This is a difficult part of hospice therapy work because the myth, the cherished image of the therapy or family dog is one who is loyal to the very end, staying by their masters no matter what.
My favorite all time dog book is Jack London’s “Call Of The Wild,” I remember Buck avenging his master’s death and returning to the wild in grief and vengeance, one of the class stories of dogs and loyalty. Dog people just love this idea, of the loyal-unto-death dog, there are statues all over the British Isles of border collies who look for their masters for years after their death, even waiting at train stations for them to come home.
The true border collie lover knows that the dogs are probably looking for work, which they tend to love above all things. And this is all right.
In my hospice work, I watched for the dog’s withdrawal. I didn’t want to hurt the patient’s feelings.
I knew it meant we were close to death, and most often, Izzy or Lenore would then attach themselves to a member of the family. It was a ballet. As the hospice patient withdrew and began to disconnect, the needs of the family member grew more intense and the dog would simply transfer their suddenly ambivalent love to another person. It happened every time.
Hospice dogs react to need and attention, not to human notions of loyalty and dedication. Because we love dogs so much, we can hardly resist assuming that they are like us. They are not like us.
For me, love is always ambivalent, and should be. Love is conditional, it means nothing to me if it is given away without condition. I have to earn it. I noticed Fate did not attach herself to me today, or care much that I was sick. For one thing, she is Maria’s dog mostly, she spends her day with her. But Fate is a dog who would abandon anyone or anything to get to go outside and work. She is always looking at the door, heading for the door. That is one of the wonderful things about her, her first love is work.
I love her no less for that, dogs are not people, as even so great an intellect as Freud was to learn in his hour of need. Lun was not abandoning him, she was just being a dog. Their love is a kind of attachment that is unique to animals, but it is not the considered and absolute loyalty we apply to humans.
We need to understand them for what they are, not for what we wish them to be.
The rejection of Lun was terrifying to Freud, wrote Roiphe, because it was the rejection of the living world, of nature itself. “The dog will act on knowledge that the people who love Freud will not act on; they will suppress, overcome, but the dog will not. This is the evidence that death is already in the room. The smell is of rotting, of corpses, it would more decently have waited, but it does not wait.”
The dog cannot pretend for the sake of making us feel better, they are the most authentic of creatures. You are dying, they would say, and I know it.
And for me, this gives the love of a dog more meaning, more integrity. Because the dog cannot lie, dissemble, emotionalize or pretend. A dog’s loyalty is as pure as crystal. Dogs bring comfort and ease suffering, but they always know when death is in the room. And that is what separates them from us, and demands respect.
They have nothing to add to it.