Dog Trip


One more day when other things eat up the writing time. But it's of no consequence, as (my mom points out) nobody is paying me for it. Mom said yesterday, "The songs says, 'I'll Fly Away,' but I don't know whether you do or not? What do you think?"
Dad said, "I was dead for a minute or two I guess when I was in surgery, and there wasn't anything between the time I went out and when I heard the doctor say, 'Thank god I thought we'd lost him.' It was nothing, and a whole lot of it."

I said, "Well, I think the part that's alive needs to stay focused on being alive, and let something else take care of the dying. I think it's like being eight years old and trying to imagine sex. You can't, because it's out in front of you, still."

Neither one of them think death is that far out in front of them. I imagine when you get in your middle eighties to early nineties you take every day you're still here as a gift. My dad is ninety.

Today I'm taking the old man to Seligman, a Route 66 town now just off Interstate 40, and about 125 miles from Camp Verde. I'll be doing a lot of driving today, as it's an hour to get over there from Prescott. We're going to get a German Shepherd which is up for adoption. Sasha, the black German Shepherd they had for several years, recently died of liver cancer. Dad likes to have a German Shepherd on his property, especially since there have been break-ins around Camp Verde.

Mom is in a wheelchair, felled by a stroke which weakened one leg. She walked on a walker for awhile but she fell a couple of times and decided she'd be better off using the wheelchair. For awhile she had a walker at the foot of the ramp we had built to the front door. She put it there in case of fire. She figured she'd need it to escape.

I go over and we take the garbage to the dump or clean the woodshop. He still works in his shop, still makes cutting boards and furniture and whatever appeals to him. I would get nervous about his using a power saw but that's mother's job. She worries so much about everybody that it takes the burden off us. Somehow she bears up under its weight. If there are clouds she worries I'll die in bad weather on the way home.

One day I might. You never know. It'll be a whole lot of nothing or I'll fly away.

And in her presence I have to be very careful about sneezing or coughing or wincing. She's on it. There's a scene in "Dumb and Dumber" where Jim Carrey is a limo driver and he picks up Loren Holly to take her to the airport. His eyes are glued to the rear view mirror, and she makes a little nervous gesture; he says, "Nervous?"

Some people are always right on it. Mom is vigilant. She always wanted to give me one more blanket in case it got cold toward morning. I used to get mad at her, but now I have learned to agree with her. If she says, "Aren't you afraid to drive in this rain?" I come back with, "I'm terrified. I'll probably slide off in a ditch and get killed before I make it home."

This makes her laugh because what else can she do?

Sometimes there's nothing you can do. Sasha was bleeding to death in the driveway. We don't know if it was the dogfood, but we suspect it might have been. She may have been murdered by a trade agreement, maybe not. It's up in the air. But the dog herself was on the ground, and the blood soaked into the blanket they put around her.

My niece was there to help them through that. She showed up and the dog died with her, the night before she was booked to fly back out. We all loved Sasha. She was one of the family, a black shepherd to tend the black sheep.

I'll be on my way to meet the new girl now.

Posted: Mon - February 18, 2008 at 11:33 AM