August 22, 2014

DOG DAYS

Until a couple of weeks ago I measured my life in dog-shaped days. Not my entire life. But the past five years of it. And now that Fred is dead my days are haunted by shapelessness. I expected to miss him but I didn't expect this.

Eric munches, Fred watches

We had Fred for 14 years and he was diabetic for the last five years of his life. When diabetes happened, insulin happened, needles happened, blood sugar testing happened (but only after catching Fred's first morning pee in a ladle). It gave a pronounced terrier shape to the day.

Which was not an altogether bad thing because around that time my days needed shaping. I'd recently lost my job at the mismanaged company where I worked for most of our time in Texas.

That wasn't an altogether bad thing either because the bombastic, myopic, erratic, neurotic, narcissistic mismanager of the company had me desperately seeking therapy in lieu of suicide. I wanted to quit the job. My very practical wife thought I meant quit in a couple of years when I could retire. I meant RIGHT NOW! before it kills me. I didn't make myself as clear as I needed to. She had worked hard, earned her Ph.D., had things she wanted to do and said she wanted the time to do them. Because I love her, I agreed, but we lived on separate psychic timelines for a while after that. We'd never done that before in our long and happy life. But I kept working, kept going to therapy (so I could keep working). Besides, the erratic, neurotic, narcissistic, etc. mismanager paid pretty well and the health insurance was good (the therapist liked that part).

Then suddenly, surprisingly, the job ended. A guy called me at home to tell me. It was good old Darryl, the ever faithful company guy who would lose his own job to the same mismanaged mess not long after that. Mr. Erratic, Neurotic, Etc., who recently had assured me that he couldn't imagine the company without me and that I could work there as long as I wanted to, never did his own shit work. I was out. And that was that. It was all over but the unemployment checks. I was too furious at the duplicity of it to feel relieved.

I suppose my anger gave my days some shape, but it didn't last. While my wife worked I sank into shapeless days of television, seeking narrative relief for the interrupted job-shaped story of most of my life. Then Fred became diabetic and ladling pee, testing blood sugar and poking needles gave me something to do every day. It still left plenty of time for television. Then, on a day when my wife was away working in Rhode Island and I was watching rerun after rerun of Law and Order on cable TV and eating peanut-buttered saltines, Fred looked up at me from his bed beside my chair and I watched him go blind. It was among the saddest things I'd ever seen and there was nothing I could do to stop it. It was over in a few minutes.

That's when my days took on the dog shape they kept until a couple of weeks ago. They were noisy days from the first. Fred was a good blind dog, but he was a blind dog. He had a talent for understanding words and following directions and I talked him through his blindness. He listened and was remarkably independent for a long time, but grew more and more insecure and dependent as time passed. My days became smaller and smaller as Fred's needs grew larger. He lost his sense of direction. I had to talk to him more and more to get him through his days but he seemed to understand what I was saying less and less. When I got out of bed in the mornings I stepped into a deep terrier-shaped hole. At least that's how it felt by the end.

That was two weeks ago.

Now when I get out of bed I step onto unexpectedly unfamiliar ground. I have been spending my shapeless days lost in a bigger and sadder place. And there have been some days too devoted to TV (narrative relief of the Law and Order sort), but I know they will end. And I know I am not really on unfamiliar ground. I've been here before. I am standing in that undefined and too quiet spot where the dead always leave the living. It is the place where life goes on and things shape up. I know that. I just don't know what new shape my days will take when that happens.

  

 

  

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