Red is losing sight rapidly, his cataracts have both grown and he sometimes struggle to see a treat put down right in front of him.
I notice that both Bud and Fate defer to him, and stand back while he searches for his bone, mostly with his nose. Normally, both would steal any treat right out of the other’s mouth.
Not from Red’s.
Red’s heart is slowing, and he can’t hear well, he spends much of the day asleep in my office, so I don’t subject him to the strain and humiliation of trying to respond to my commands.
This is painful to see, as Red was one of the greatest herding dogs I have ever seen or known, responsive, strong, fast, with great authority and focus.
I will miss showing him off at the Open Houses, I can’t really work him now.
The other day I called out to him to move “away,” we were trying to get the sheep into the barn, and I thought they might knock me or Maria over, but Red couldn’t hear me and couldn’t see them.
He tried to respond, but got confused, and I yelled at him to get away, for which I am ashamed. Protecting us was something he always did without needing prompting. I made a note to not ever shout at him again.
In the afternoons now, I bring Red out to the rear pasture and tell him to lie down on a mound overlooking the sheep, who are grazing down the hill. It’s a special place for him, he can see the whole farm from there and keep an eye on his sheep. He often watched from there.
Red loves to sit there in the shade and just watch the flock, I know he is aware that they are there, even if he can’t see precisely where. He can hear them. He sits with great grace and poise. Perhaps some wistfulness, I wonder, although I doubt Red ever feels sorry for himself.
Sometimes I sit with him, as I did today, and sometimes I just leave him there, and go inside to work.
He is happy sitting there for hours, I think this is his favorite place in the world right now, along with wherever I am. If I leave him out too long, he comes looking for me, I see him sitting out at the pasture fence watching for me, staring at the farmhouse, waiting for me to go get him.
Red and I don’t use words much, I know when he is out there, ready to come in.
Red is a dog of great dignity. It always seems to me that he is saying goodbye to that part of his life up on that hill, though that may be a projection. He is perhaps saying goodbye to life itself, how can I know, when he sits up there on that hill and watches and watches, in absolute stillness and solitude?
**
The other day I wrote about going to the Mansion and learning that someone I had been seeing for months, even years, was gone, their room empty. I know what that means, and a kind aide or resident will eventually come up to me and tell me that this resident has died or gone to a nursing home.
I rarely ever see them again.
The elderly simply vanish into the vast and invisible network of the death industry, which is unknown and unseen to most of us. Death is expensive and hidden in our country. Children used to know it and live with it, but now they never see it. No wonder the adults are so stunned by it.
A woman wrote on my blog messages that she was sorry, she knew I “must be grieving, as you will grieve for Red when he goes.” People often make assumptions about grieving, which, unlike death, is often done in full view now, on Facebook or Twitter or a blog.
I do not grieve for the Mansion residents who disappear, they are not my family, they are not a part of my daily life on the farm. I care for them, and some care for me, but there is a boundary there, a space between us, they know it and I know it.
I am a volunteer, not a friend or a peer. They feel like my family, but they are not my family, and the minute I cross that line I will have lost my effectiveness as a volunteer.
I do feel sadness for their loss, but not grief. I learned how to not grieve when my father died, I felt nothing when he was gone.
I don’t feel grief, not even for Joanie, who I had come to love and who is now in a nursing home. Grieving would feel inappropriate and for me, crossing a line, and since Mansion residents die and leave all the time, it would wreck me.
To do this work, there must be space and detachment. I must know what I am, and what I am not.
If I let myself sink too deep into death and loss, I would burn out quickly and not be able to work there. I don’t permit myself to cross that line. I don’t write about people who died, mourn them deeply, or grieve for them. I do love many of them, but there is a difference between love and grieving.
People write me almost every day telling me they miss Connie, but I do not think of Connie every day, or very often. I do not grieve for her.
Being a therapy volunteer demands discipline, as it does for anyone who works in an assisted care facility. I take it very seriously.
Dogs are nothing but a joy to me, grieving would be a betrayal of them, just as that would be inappropriate for me as a volunteer.
I have to stay within myself to do this work and to do it well.
I hope I will celebrate Red when he does die. He did a lot of good in the world. He was, next to Maria, the greatest gift I have ever received. I cry when my dogs die in front of me at the vet’s office. When I leave, the tears stop and I move forward with life.
I respect life and death is a part of life. We will all end, Red and me both.
But of course I will grieve for him.
Elizabeth Kubler-Ross, the great scholar of death and grief, wrote that when people grieve, they will grieve forever. You don’t ‘get over’ the loss of someone or something you love and lost, you learn to live with it instead.
You will heal around loss and you will rebuild yourself around the loss you have suffered, writes Kubler-Ross.
But you will never be the same. Nor should you ever want to be.
When I fled college for life in New York City, I fell in love with a young woman I met in Greenwich Village when it was seething with youth and love, and we planned to get married and live together in Vermont, where she was raised. We went there very often. We were very much in love, I was very young.
Soon after, she was diagnosed with brain cancer and died in her family home a few months later. I was with her, holding her hand. It was difficult for me, I was so young and knew nothing of death.
I could not be happier with my life now, or love anyone more than I love Maria.
Yet I think of Sarah fairly often, just a flash or image that flies by, I see her face briefly and remember her smile and her odd nickname for me.
She called me “Smallville.” I remember that it was a nickname for Clark Kent. Lois Lane used it to refer to Clark when he is transformed into Superman. I remember Sarah saying “Hay, Smallville,” when she was very sick and I came to see her.
As Kubler-Ross said, I will never completely stop grieving for Sarah, yet I am whole and have rebuilt myself around the loss and far beyond it.
I am grateful that I don’t forget her and that I have gone on to find my place. Perhaps she taught me something about love.
As for Red, thanks in part to him, I have learned so much about death and mortality. No one knows how they will react when they reach the edge of life, but I have a bunch of role models now. They are grateful for their time in the world, they are ready to move on to their next chapter no matter what.
Red is a spirit dog, there is no need to grieve too much for him. He came when I needed him, he will go when is done. I believe that time is not too far away, I think that may be why he is so content to sit up on that hill.
