My Very Best Dog, April 1996 - July 2011

My Very Best Dog

I hadn’t realized how much Schnitzel’s breathing had become the background white noise on the boat. As the tumor in her nose grew, it pushed its way into her nasal cavity so that she alternately snored, rasped, and panted as her breath whistled and gurgled past that bloody lump. Her nasal passages filled up with the intruder and she began to sleep with her mouth open, her tongue bulging against what was left of her teeth while she sucked her breath in and out.

When the tumor bled, which was not constantly, the blood and mucus dripped from her tongue and pooled under her head as she slept. I’d sponge her jaw with a wet paper towel in the morning. Some mornings she would lean into the towel as I rubbed her jaw, as if it soothed her. The seepage didn’t seem to hurt, but it made an awful mess.

The worst part was that it clogged and distorted her once black button nose and cut off her keenest sense. She couldn’t see much and had been mostly deaf for some time. Being unable to “snuff her snuffs” must have been confusing and equivalent to a human going blind. The last few weeks she hasn’t been able to smell anything but fried grease. Her head would come right up whenever I fried chicken or made pancakes. The last few days she has been feasting on once-forbidden pancakes and syrup, bread and butter and honey, and other diabetes-instigating treats. What the hell.

But the tumor, messy and invasive as it was, didn’t kill her.

Her back legs have weakened steadily over the last four years and finally failed her. The same dying nerves caused her to lose feeling in her insides. As long as 18 months ago she didn’t realize she had to poop, and only much later, the last month or so, she has been unable to pee without help. For a short while, lifting her back end with the harness triggered the reflex and she was able to urinate, but over the last few days even that trick failed. She’d release on her bed, and while I didn’t mind gathering up the soggy dog training pads, she was constantly damp, either from urine or from her twice daily backend shampoo.

Her paralyzed back legs didn’t kill her either.

It was her liver, swelling up until it looked as though she had eaten a softball and hot to the touch that told me it was time to let go. I knew it wasn’t a fat stomach filled with what she ate, because she didn’t eat much. Mostly bits of Wal-Mart roast chicken infused with butter, another forbidden treat. Her insides were just shutting down, and instead of helping her release the toxins from her body, her kidneys and liver were storing them up. I could see that those poisons were bound to make her miserable, like having a worsening case of the flu, with all its attendant aches and pains. She slept 22 hours a day, sometimes running and barking in her dreams, something she hadn’t done it the waking world for months, if not years. When she woke up she was alert and herself enough to growl menacingly at other dogs from the safety of the little blue cart she rode in when her legs went limp. She never lost her spirit. Her little body just gave out.

Finally, after it being not right, not right yet, not now but maybe soon, it was time. So we put her on some towels on the front seat of the truck between us, where she has ridden thousands of miles over the years. We went to Burger King, where they prepared a small bag of salty hot fries hours before they usually do, just for her. She was wide awake, head cocked toward the fast food window. She knew those fries were coming. I cooled the fries in the draft of the truck’s air conditioner and fed her bit by bit and she gobbled them up as she always does. We drove to the vet and sat in the parking lot and waited, me feeding her those salty treats one by one.

The vet and the tech came to the car to give her the knockout shot. It stung and she whimpered a little, but it was over in less than 30 seconds. Then they left us and her attention was back on the warm French fries. She was scarfing them eagerly when she suddenly lost interest and went limp against my leg. Her breathing evened out and slowed. We waited as her body relaxed as it hasn’t relaxed in months, if ever, as she drifted deeper and deeper to the floor of consciousness and then sank through it.

I tried the handle of her harness. Usually no matter how deeply she is sleeping, she feels my tug and bursts awake. Now she hung limp as a rag dog. I handed her gently to her bed that was waiting on David’s outstretched arms and we walked her into the clinic. The techs had prepared the cold steel table with a brightly striped blanket. Maybe some who bring their dogs in don’t know that those operating tables are cold and hard. I was glad Schnitzel was sleeping on her own bed.

The vet was kind and solemn. She shaved part of Schnitzel’s leg and inserted the needle. She and the tech screwed in a vial of cheerful pink liquid and depressed the plunger. They followed with a vial of neutral clear liquid. Then the vet listened until Schnitzel’s heart stopped beating. Schnitzel never moved from her deep sleep. We stayed with her the whole time, our hands on her head and neck, combing her curls with our fingers. They said they’d dispose of the bed and her body.

I came home and bleached the bloody, urine-soaked towels and threw all her things in the dumpster.

I pretend that she is staying with friends for a few months. I imagine her chasing squirrels, 18 pounds of pure silver thunderbolt joy.

It is awfully quiet.

Online Work is Working Out

I have to report a crashing lack of interest in my grant-writing career. It sprang up, flourished in the zero-oxygen world of non-profits for a brief moment, and died of exhaustion. I simply stopped getting up, dressing up, and showing up, which pretty much put a bullet in the head of my ambition.

Face it – I have a very small amount of ambition for anything that becomes tedious, and seeking grant writing opportunities became tedious fairly quickly. I wish I could tell you otherwise, but I wither fairly quickly without encouragement, and I got very little encouragement in this endeavor. I put it all back on myself. I’m just not someone who thrives on meeting and talking with people. In fact, it wears me out in a hurry.

So I decided to axe the people part of technical writing and just do the writing. I haven’t made much, but I’ve made 100% more than I did at grant writing!

There are days, like today, when I spend far too much time indoors, at the keyboard. I have been below this entire day, ignoring pathetic looks from the dog and my own eye strain as I apply, apply, apply for writing jobs on the internet. I just finished a series for a friend’s new magazine and sent those off. She likes the articles, which is great, but they’re freebies. Great practice, no money. My hit rate online is now about one in 20, which overall isn’t the worst. The money has, finally, begun to increase. If I can just be patient. If I can just trust that this is, finally, the forum that best suits my talents.

The wonderful thing about working online is the fact that I communicate almost entirely by the written word. I don’t have to hurdle the obstacles of age or physical appearance, nor do I have to appear sprightly, competent, and grateful for employment. I’m not much good at any of that. Of course the bad news is that to date the gigs don’t pay much and they don’t take long to do.

I have finally started exploring other online writing options as well. What on earth takes me so long to move out of my comfort zone? I guess it’s like anything else – I have to be miserable enough to take that leap.

I have got to walk that dog.

Sharing a few fears

My bright idea when I started this blog was to do a little therapy for myself by writing down my struggles and successes and insights as I slog through the last half of my 50s and beyond. I know there are people out there who share the same frustrations and joys. Lately, however, there have been so many frustrations! I hesitated to share only the bad stuff, but I seem to be drowning in bad attitude these days.

My loudest problem is my failure thus far to earn my keep. I got hired as a paralegal last fall (my profession for over 20 years before we left on our adventures) and I was more or less happily resigned to working at that for another 10years, until Social Security and Medicare kicked in. Then I was fired. What a blow that was! Not only that, but since it was in the 90 day no-fault period, they wouldn't even tell me why.

It was such a huge rejection, I have just been stunned, paralyzed, and completely unhorsed. I know, rationally, that I have the same talents and skills I have always had, but it took me two years to get that interview (and I only got it because of a friend) and then - wham.

I have started several businesses over the last three years and none of them has produced much income. I do good work, but have a heck of a time marketing my services. My current attempt is grant writing. So far I have one client - for no pay (it is, after all, my first professional effort).

Every day, including today, I have to take a deep breath and put myself out in the world and put a lid on the voices in my head that tell me failure is just around the next bend. I keep trying to remember all those inspirational stories about Abraham Lincoln and others who made failure an art form until they finally hit on the right path. May this be it! I am running out of money, time, and courage.

Wisdom initiation

January 8, 2010

David and I had a wonderful discussion this morning, based on reading I did last night in Richard Rohr’s book “Adam’s Return.” Rohr was talking about the necessity for initiation in attaining wisdom. I read that as experiencing an ego death.

Based on reading I have done, ego is absolutely necessary for the development of a healthy psyche. The picture I have is of scaffolding that surrounds a building. The scaffolding is necessary while the building is being built. It’s sort of an exo-skeleton. But once the building is built and the mortar is set, the scaffolding is no longer needed and it is dismantled. The building stands alone. However, the scaffolding has been a part of the building from the beginning. To someone who doesn’t know the process, it would look as though part of the building itself was being dismantled.

To wrench that metaphor into human experience, when the ego is no longer necessary to hold up the building, it needs to be dismantled. However, since the ego has been with me from the beginning, I think of it as being an integral part of myself, rather than as a building aid. Therefore dismantling it (which is done gently, not with dynamite) is scary and painful to me. I don’t realize that the ego is not me, but simply a tool given to me to use, just like my mind and my emotions. It takes time to realize that I am not my mind, not my emotions, that they are parts of my human experience, but not my essence. They are wonderful tools, and terrible masters.

David and I discussed whether we had suffered the shamanic death of initiation. Both of us agreed that our divorce experiences had been that. I went into that experience as one person, and came out on the other side a different person. My next question was whether we experience more than one initiation, and I think that answer is yes – there are big ones and small ones. All my initiations involved “giving up” what I thought was essential.

Going to school - I gave up my family and its security
Going to France - I gave up my country, my language, and my customs and that security
Getting married - I gave up my freedom to act only in my best interests; I CRIED on my wedding night, I was so upset to be losing “me” and so afraid to trust
Having a baby - Talk about giving up freedom!!!
Getting divorced - I gave up my hopes and dreams for our future; I gave up my innocent trust
Being a single mom - I gave up my interests for the interests of my daughter

Each release was painful because of my fear and lack of trust and blindness, but each release brought such joy! To revisit my list:

Going to school – I made friends, I learned to read, I gained independence
Going to France – I got to travel, I learned a language, I gained independence
Getting married – I made a life, I lived with my best friend, I experienced being loved for the first time, I learned to cook, all of which was joyous
Having a baby – her every breath was my joy
Getting divorced – I learned who I was and how far I could be pushed, I owned my strength, I enjoyed my freedom, I discovered spiritual paths that deeply nourished me
Being a single mom – I enjoyed every second of being a mother to my daughter; in addition to that, parenting gave me focus and purpose

I think I can count remarriage to David as an initiation experience, even though it was very peaceful for me. Since our marriage, the theme continues to be to part with what gives me security, to part with things, to part with people, to part with the known.

I am currently struggling with letting go of possessions. I have to remember that regardless of the amount of fear and pain I manufacture when I let go of something, every letting go brings amazing relief and joy and freedom. Right now, my letting go centers on my possessions in storage. If we would get rid of all of that, we would be free to live without jobs for the rest of our lives. We would have to live incredibly modestly, but we could do it.

Bit by bit, I am able to release my possessions, but it is a very slow process. Mostly I clutch each item as though it were essential to my next breath. Only time seems to weaken the psychic bonds to my “stuff.” I finally gave away about 3 bags of clothes a couple of months ago and didn’t feel any attachment at all. This was true even though many were outfits that were connected to hugely important events or periods in my life, which is how they escaped the first cull six years ago.

Although I grieve each parting to some extent, I rejoice in how light I feel as each thing is released.

Here’s the kicker – the last thing I will release is my body and my life. What will the upside to that be?

I have no idea how people write short posts.

When Plans Fail - Get a New Plan

Things are not turning out as planned. In fact, plans are not turning out as planned. The former plan was that we would leave corporate jobs for the Great Unknown and that somehow, Oprah-like, a new life would fall into place. Well, a new life has tumbled into place, somewhat like an avalanche of scree, but it hasn't been Oprah-like. You know, follow your heart and all the doors will open.

Here was (is) my agenda: I wanted a stress free job in a small community. I wanted no commute, so I could make dinner before 7 p.m. I wanted to know my neighbors and have a group of friends to have over for dinner or to go camping with. I wanted some meaningful involvement in the community in which I lived, which would be small enough that my involvement would actually blip the radar. I wanted enough money to pay the bills. I wanted to live close to my daughter and be part of her everyday life.

Here is what I got: I got a series of employment efforts (non-profit manager, free lance writer, real estate agent, professional organizer, estate administrator, personal assistant) that paid little or nothing and into which I put a tremendous amount of effort (and stressed myself out, each and every time, trying to translate effort into money). I got no commute, but I ended up travelling about 28,000 miles in trailers and on this boat and made a series of acquaintences but only one long term friendships. I have blipped no radars on any subject. I continue to watch a financial hemorrhage that has slowed but never stopped since I walked away from my 18 year job. My daughter lives in NY and I'm in Houston (after travelling over the years from Dallas to Brenham to Galveston to this boat, and on the boat from Galveston to Maine to the Bahamas to Corpus Christi, and somehow, unbelievably, to Houston).

I also got nights on an empty sea lit by a hundred million stars. I got brilliant sunrises, marshy coasts, ports of all descriptions, and the ability to set an anchor. I got an intimate knowledge of small spaces and came face to face with my material lust. I learned what I could do without and I learned what I have to have.

Now I am sitting at the dock in my magic boat with my husband, my almost 14 year old dog and my almost 16 year old cat. My husband is working marine retail and I have worked at Wal Mart and been fired for the first time in my life after trying to re-enter my past profession. I have no idea what I am doing. I am in the middle of reinventing myself 3 years shy of my 60th birthday.

Stay tuned.