Dog Days

After the deed was done or maybe before: she mused "you're like my dog" an elegy a loving postcard mailed to me sprawled there summery spent beside her as she sketched her affection toward Rusty or was it Sandy maybe Rex his loyalty love obedience and companionship so I edged into sleep an afternoon nap against her arm her leg her side as she read, her Rolex off, her diamond stud earrings on the nightstand, cues for unshackling as a prelude to unbridled intimacy. So I gathered I knew what she meant by the canine compliment. I was fine with it not a slight not a condescension but a treasured tableau in her memory's slide show and now mine as well fast forward a decade plus and Doug is dying, everybody knew it would be the last day, a Friday, after Debby had told me the previous Sunday "get up there, he's not coming home, he wants to ask you something," now his last, and my last "goodbye, I love you." Doug in his hospital bed looked at me as I brimmed into tears and he said "it's all right it'll be all right" then he tousled my hair he ruffled the hair on my head as he would have to Divitt the same dog who nearly bit my arm off on the night of Bush v. Gore in 2000 because I grabbed his bone, Divitt, a perfect name echoing the divots of every weekend's rounds of golf, a so-called sport I never played, with Doug or anyone else. I stared into your eyes and I knew it was okay and would be after and forevermore. You asked me to "read something" at a memorial and who knew that request would be such a gift, such a gem, because we never so much as once even swung a golf club together, unlike all those other partners on the fairways and greens who I figured knew you more and deeper didn't they, so why me? Why ask me of all people sort of like what they say about Christ and the disciples he picked why me they all presumably said. Such a revelation, the first of that year, 2005, the discovery of death's secret surprise, death's wink and a nod, the magician's rabbit out of the black upside down top hat. Richard, speaking of golf, six months later, November, in Florida, "let's go hit some, go to the driving range," straw hats, blazing sun, gently kindly "hold your hands this way, yes no that's it, careful, slower, no that's fine" almost hit golfers in the nearby rough but that CLICK! oh God! the sound of it the jolt in the hands resonating echoing into the arms the soul. Richard my brother, we never said half brother, too weak too tired to swing, sitting on the bench, the blistering blaze of light, its merciless scorch. And this was the slide in the carousel, the slide show, freeze-framed, after his death, the ferry to the yonder shore, this the wallet-sized image, the frame of future sentiment and loss, your plantation straw hat the artifact of a Monday afternoon, the farewell in the dark Tuesday morning, you in your bed, did I say good bye or I love you, probably not, though we both knew, to find out later your childhood prayerbook and rosary beads were there under your pillow. Dogstar pointed tooth hair of the dog long in the tooth my life as a dog doggerel mongrel sobs and all that. Then, last year, Maggie put down, across the boulevard from where I sit, tapping keys in the battleship dun afternoon, her eye left open, where did she go, so quickly, invisibly, effortlessly, the hideous simplicity the reckless rudeness of death, to every man woman child dog or leaf, you me and everyone and everything else. I went into my car in the parking lot of the animal hospital. Hospital. Inhospitable Last Exit. A rainy Friday. I wept against the steering wheel. How can I ever leave this parking lot. What can I do. Where can I go. What do I do now. Where's that sought surprise. Under the Tuscan sun, the Syracuse rain.
 

A Dream and the Persistence of Grief

You think it is final. You think all that is over and done with, fine linen stained with tears put away in a drawer. And then a morning dream. We seem to be somewhere with a countertop. It might even be a bar, but there is no drinking, no smoke, no sounds. It seems bottles might be arrayed in the background, in front of a mirror. It is a dream, so one never know, afterwards. It is Richard, my older brother. The cancer was discovered in August of 2005, just after we got back from camp, as we did yesterday. The course was rapid. The light, what little there is, is dusty, no not dusty, more like dusky but gray. A clear gray if that is imaginable. Richard is wearing a gray suit. How do I know it is him? I see his face. There are no words. We embrace. I sob uncontrollably hard. We hug tightly. My ample tears fall on his neck and shoulder. The moisture seeps through the padded fabric of his suit.

I awake sad.

In halting and fractured terms, I tell my wife of this dream, knowing full well how inadequate my description is. She says something about my love for him or me for him, that he is trying to tell me something from there. I don't know if I believe that. I don't find it especially reassuring. I tell her I am sad, it was sad.

I stop and think that Mom and Beverly and Laurie, for all I know, have had such dreams countless times. I will not ask them.

We go to church, first time together in months. I was going to go to nearby Saint Mark's, on the west side; she had already left for Saint David's. I changed my mind and showed up, in the middle of the sermon, at Saint David's, on the east side, the suburbs. She said yesterday was her dead father's birthday. At the prayers for the dead I couldn't get the words out and tried to make no show of what my eyes were doing.

She pointed to the bulletin, to the first reading, which I had missed, from Genesis. She pointed to the bottom of the passage, an excerpt about Joseph, in exile in Egypt.

Then he fell upon his brother Benjamin's neck and wept, while Benjamin wept upon his neck. And he kissed all his brothers and wept upon them; and after that his brothers talked with him.

In the mail that had accumulated in our absence, a large envelope package, from my brother Bobby. A luscious coffee-table book, Baseball As America.

Beth and I went to a minor-league game last night, before the dream, with Steve and Steve and Ed. Beth and I left before the fireworks.

Today I wonder if Jack is back from Chicago.

And marvel at how three surviving brothers can skirt this grief of many colors.