For
a moment there are tears.
We are all gathered in our misery.
Slowly the crowds fade, and I am left with only you;
my grief.
We have become unwitting partners, thrust together in
comfort and
now bound together in memories.
Life begins to move around us and I try to move with
it, believing time has began to heal.
Then you appear, from the shadows, your weepy hymn
humming in my heart.
In my yearning for an ache less soul, my fear is to
forget you.
How you loved. How you filled my heart. How you healed me.
I try to remember what you sounded like or how you
felt in my arms.
Guiltily I want to hurt less but will that mean I
won't remember you more either?
And so, reluctantly, I take grief’s hand, hoping to
keep you close....he understands my plight. He knows how much I miss you...he
keeps me company as I play back all of our yesterday's in the movie theater of
my mind.
Chloe.
I am gone now.
It’s
been nearly a month since I’ve left and even though I am physically absent, I
am still here.
I
can still see my humans. I spend most of
my time in the same spots that I did when I was alive. The only difference is that they can’t see
me. I can see my mom. She cries a lot. She will just be doing normal things like
cooking or washing the dishes when she starts to daze out of the window and her
face becomes ugly with tears. She stays
there for a few moments, oblivious to the little human who watches her from a
short distance away, as she cries softly and whispers my name. The little human is called Nana. She doesn’t really outwardly show how much my
absence has affected her. She has
refused to cry and has chosen to not talk about me. Her only acknowledgment was on the first day
of my absence. That evening she asked our
mom, “So are we going to pick up Chloe or is she staying at the doctor
forever?” Our mom couldn’t answer her
and once poppa started to say to her, “Chloe’s body didn’t work anymore” Nana
simply turned and walked away without shedding a tear. My humans were worried. They didn’t want her to forget me or not
understand that I wasn’t there anymore.
But she knew. And she understood
too: more than either one of them
realized.
That
first night was a strange one. I still
wasn’t used to not being here. I waited
for the urgency of a full bladder and waited around for that all too familiar
trickle that I couldn’t control, but nothing happened. I waited around for that feeling of hunger as
well. I waited to hear my stomach
rumbling and that yearning for something delicious like turkey bacon. Again, I
waited for a long time and nothing happened.
I understood that I wasn’t here.
I remembered being at the vet’s office and being cradled in Kate’s
arms. I remember hearing her whispering
that it would be okay as tears streamed down her face. I could hear my mom wailing in the background
as my poppa unsuccessfully tried to console her. The doctor had given me a needle. Everything seemed to go fuzzy. A darkness started to fill in on the corner
of my eyes and there was a funny taste in my mouth. My heart began to race slightly and suddenly,
there was nothing. I remember hearing
lots of crying and Kate screaming out, “Chloe!” and I remember seeing her
holding me tighter. My mom was battling
herself. Aching for one last look but
being unable to reach out toward me. I
could see it all happening, but I suddenly realized, I couldn’t feel them
anymore. I couldn’t feel my humans
touch.
That
was the first time I cried. But it
wasn’t a regular cry or whimper like I was used to. It was a warm sensation that seemed to spread
from my core. From somewhere deep in my
belly there was a slow radiating warmth that began to overwhelm me and suddenly,
I felt very sad. I couldn’t really
explain what was happening or why I was feeling the way I was but I just knew
that things had changed and I wasn’t sure I was going to like it.
And
so, I struggled that first night. I
found myself in my grandmother’s house.
Even though my humans didn’t live there, for me, it was always the place
I called ‘home’. So it was not too
surprising that I was still here and well here
in my ‘home’. I sat in the hallway, the
same place where my humans had kept me for the last few days. I had been making sick everywhere so they
confined me to this small space and let me make sick on the marble so that my
grandmother wouldn’t have to clean up after me on the rug or hard wood
floors. As I sat there, I realized that
it looked different. The gate was gone
as were the multitude of wee wee pads situated around my bed. My bed.
That was gone too. That’s the
first time I thought to myself that I might not be around anymore. I knew that eventually all living things go.
I had heard countless stories and had watched countless friends leave
before me. I was prepared, in a sense,
to go. It was part of life, my instinct
had told me. I had lost my best friend
only a few years back and was prepared to meet him the day that I would
leave. And so, I thought I had left, but
he was nowhere to be found and I surely wasn’t at any rainbow bridge that my
mom had talked about.
“Choppy?”
I called out in my mind, trying to summon my friend from some great
beyond. I waited for a sound.
There
was nothing. There was only a deafening
silence that filled my ears in such a quiet way that it began to fill in every
space in my head, taking up space as if there was a vast, empty void inside of
me.
I
began to shudder, and quite violently. I
found it rather amusing that in my first life I was quite the nervous dog and
even in this after life, I still found myself scared. The silence frightened me. I began to do a panicked search for my life
companion Bouli. He is my grandmother’s
dog but we spent most of our time together.
He wasn’t as protective over me as Choppy, but he was there whenever I
needed him. I had to find him and see if
he could help explain what was going on.
I treaded quickly into the kitchen, past my water bowl (which was no
longer there!) and I found myself in my grandmother’s bedroom. I skidded onto the hard wood floors but the
“click click” of my paws weren’t registering as they used to. My grandmother’s soft snoring could be heard
up above and I looked up at her mile-high mattress. Her one leg hung off the edge of the bed
limply and I yearned to reach up and tap it, hoping to get her to notice me and
pick me up as she did countless times over the years. I struggled to lift myself, but couldn’t and
so I walked over to the other side of the bed where my grandfather slept. I attempted to take in his smell: a
combination of body musk and wool (from his blazer that he wore, day in and day
out) and I lifted my snout into the air and took in three rapid breaths in: sniff, sniff, sniff. But just like the deafening silence,
there was nothing. I paced back and
forth, the worry propelling me like a wind up toy when I sensed someone looking
at me. I followed the sensation and looked
up toward the top of the bed. From
above, Bouli watched down toward me, perched up on his somnolent throne. I caught his gaze but his eyes keep darting
from side to side, avoiding making direct eye contact.
“Why are you avoiding me friend?” I asked
with my mind. Hoping he would answer my
question as he did countless times over the years we spent together.
He ignored me. His eyes shifed: first to the left and then to
the right.
“Friend?”
I asked again.
He
stood up, his body seeming tense and his head bowed down, as if he was trying
to listen closely. A wave of hope seemed
to radiate through me. It felt like a
soft whisper inside of me. It’s a much
more pleasant feeling than the warm seep of sadness I felt before and it helped
to encourage me to try again.
“Friend! Look at me! Here I am Bouli! I am
here! Look at me! Please!” I said in an imploring tone. I try to send a wag, hoping that the
communication I knew how to use in my old life still seemed to work, but I
couldn’t move my tail. I looked back at
my tail, and shot a look of disappointment at my appendage. I felt the hope seem to diminish and I turned
back toward Bouli, hoping to use up any last portion of this wonderful feeling
to get through to him.
“Bouli! Please! I don’t want to play a game right now! I need help!” I begged. I began to feel some type of exhaustion, an
achy dullness filling my heart.
Bouli
was looking down, and it seemed that he was looking straight at me. I almost caught a glimmer of recognition in
his big, brown eyes but for the life of me , I couldn’t understand why he
wasn’t responding to me. “Why doesn’t he say something? Why was he acting like he doesn’t know
me? Why was he pretending like he can’t
see me?” I thought to myself. My
body, suddenly alive with a light electric buzz running through me.
And
then I realized, he wasn’t
pretending. He couldn’t see me at
all.
I
was gone.
