Adjusting

"Jane went back into the kitchen to the inexorable tasks that death has no power, even for a day, to blot from existence. He can stalk through dwelling after dwelling, leaving despair and desolation behind him, but the table must be laid, the dishes washed, the beds made, by somebody."

from Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm by Kate Douglas Wiggin

I first read that in grade school, I think, and it made a big impression on me then, and it's still something I think from time to time. Lately, it was because we had to put Jane down.

We got our first greyhound by accident, and then my mother started working with the adoption group around 1995. We have taken in a lot of old ones and ones with health problems, and we have had other dogs and cats, so I have been down this road before, but that never really makes it easy.

I read recently that children don't have a sense of permanence about things, so even if you deal them that death is permanent, they don't really believe it. My first thought from that was that parents should not shield young children from death, because it's better for them to get used to it early, while it doesn't seem so bad. Pets can be a good part of this. They are valuable for teaching caring and kindness and responsibility, but also for teaching us about death.

I've lost people that I love, but never someone who was a part of my daily life, so a lot of what I understand of grief comes from them. Normally Forest would be at my hip the moment I reached the door, or Jenny would be sitting there, but no, they're gone. Each jostle of memory retells the story until at some point it shifts mentally and we know they are dead.

With Jane it came really fast, because it happened the day before Thanksgiving, and Jane was our difficult dog. Normally we had to keep a basket on top of the garbage to keep her out even when there was nothing special in it, so turkey wrappers and giblets would need to be carried outside immediately, but not this time. There were doors that did not need to be closed, and things that did not need to get put out of reach, and if that had been a relief I would have felt guilty, but it was only sad.

Still, I needed to cook dinner, and we needed to clean up, and there were phone calls that I needed to make. I still have a job. With all the reminders we have of who is gone, there are even more reminders that we are still alive. We still get hungry and tired and being happy isn't a betrayal because it's a necessity.

We got Jane after Suzy died, and while we had thought we would be okay with two dogs, I noticed that our two older ones were sadder and slower, and so we got a young one. She annoyed them terribly, because of many of the traits that made her Jane, but she also cheered them up.

Jane's death left us with a single dog, and he was one we got for free due to the previous owners deciding, after four years, that they wanted a small dog. (I normally advise on not judging, you have a dispensation here.) Geno is very mellow, and very focused on people. Also, vet bills keep getting more expensive, and we were thinking, maybe we can be okay with one dog and one cat. Maybe we need to cut back.

It seemed like that was what we were going to do, but I noticed subtle things about him, where I felt like he wasn't doing as well. Mom was a wreck, too, and I started remembering how much getting Maeve helped after Max died, and how much Jane pepped up Jack and Randi. It is not a betrayal, it is a necessity. I knew we had to get another dog.

Now we have Adele. She is very shy, and she is straight from the kennel, so everything about having a home is new. We have had shy dogs who have been in homes, and we have had confident dogs who came straight from the kennel, but this combination is new.

It has its difficulties. She is scared to tell us when she needs to go, which makes it hard while we are still teaching her where to go. Tonight we will work on sitting in the living room, which as the social hub is the most desirable, but as the open space is the most terrifying. We'll get there.

That night after we put Jane down, many people said kind things, and I couldn't respond until I just got everything out, and I did that, but mainly the overwhelming thing was how connected I am to life. I am connected by my needs and my responsibilities, and sometimes the lines blue a little between them, but the best part is how much of the connection is love.