For My Person

Feather will be turning seven next week and I only stopped calling her a puppy last year. Her youthfulness belies her age. She wiggles her entire body from the excitement of seeing you and she still sleeps curled around her “shrimpie,” a faded pink stuffed animal. She incessantly paws at your arms for scratches behind her ears - only your hand will do. And she stares at you indignantly like a stubborn toddler when you call her in from the yard at night. She’s a flea and a moo and a fliff.

She is still all of those things, but age has slowly creeped in. Her pace has started to slow on our walks and silver hairs have overtaken her chin. The finalization of the shift from “puppy” came last week, with a diagnosis of stage 3 lymphoma. It’s heartbreaking.

Now we bare the weight of deciding between treatment options that offer her the best chance of a comfortable life. Outcomes and remission times and lab tests feel muddled right now, but those will soon gain clarity. More stark is how every action is now marked against a timeline. And every point on that timeline feels heavier.

I know she’s just a dog, but she’s also my person.

Not knowing how to cope in the quiet time between tests and results, I’ve been reading poetry that brings solace and understanding for the feelings I can’t yet verbalize myself. Mary Oliver’s, Dog Songs, has acted as a salve through poems on the joys of puppyhood and the grief of loss (I’m not ready to read those yet).

There’s one excerpt from “Conversations” about Oliver’s dog, Bear, that stays in my head, especially in the short stretches of time we spend apart. I like to imagine the sentiments are true from both perspectives:

Said Bear, “I know I’m supposed to keep my eye

on you, but it’s difficult the way you

lag behind and keep talking to people.”

Well, how can you be keeping your eye on me

when you’re half a mile ahead?

“True,” said Bear. “But I’m thinking of you

all the time.”