All Things Kerflooey

This afternoon on our return home from a walk with the dogs, we paused in the road on the spot where last year our Lhasa, Tyler was struck by a vehicle and killed. I pulled an ivory votive candle out of my jacket pocket and lit it. I knelt  to place it in the gravel, the little flame barely flickering on this windless day.

It was a day a bit like today, the day we lost Tyler. We went for a walk. We brought six dogs, Axel, Lola, Elle, Izzy, Tyler and Charlie, along. Lettie stayed behind; she’d already begun losing her energy for any type of walks and preferred to stay in the house or the fenced yard. Not far from us, combines ate their way through the bleached, dry cornfields. The sky was fall blue, the sun was shining, and there was no wind. We’d shared a nice Thanksgiving with family the day before and had another three days before us in which to enjoy the holiday weekend. We were moving along nicely, heading East down the stretch of gravel road that we almost always took on our walks. We saw the vehicle, a half-mile away, slow and turn off the highway. As we always did, we moved the dogs to the grassy ditch, off the road, in order to let the vehicle pass. It was a black pickup. It was moving fairly fast, which is not unusual on our road. Cars traveling on this road are rare, and almost always in a hurry to get wherever they are going. Paul and I were laughing at how all of the dogs were automatically making space around Tyler; they knew what was coming: Tyler would go into a barking fit, leaping and straining at his leash as the car whizzed by. It approached us. The rest is in slow motion.

I saw Tyler simply lean forward in his harness and become free of his leash. In that split second I still had time to observe that his leash had unraveled at the seam where it was fastened to the harness. I heard Paul say something like, “His leash broke.” It was just a statement, an amazed observation. Tyler ran straight for the pickup as it passed. I was frozen, I was screaming, “No! No, no!” It happened so quickly, but I saw it all. He went under the tires. In my memory I can hear the thud. He either rolled or tried to get up from where he was thrown. When I reached him…when I let all the leashes of the other dogs go and reached him with a silent scream in my head, it seems to me he was almost on his feet, and in my head a wild hope: that he was unharmed. But I scooped him up, and he exhaled and with his breath came gluts of blood. It poured out of his mouth and from his ears. His left eye was crushed. I feel like I remember him sighing. I wailed and cried, alternately clenching my eyes closed and then opening them to see my sweet boy’s golden fur wet with blood. My hands wet with blood. My pants, my coat, the gravel. I was sitting in the gravel road with Tyler in my lap. Ruined: I remember this word having flashed across my eyes the moment I first picked Tyler off the road.

The pickup had stopped by then and the driver had gotten out and was talking to Paul. He walked up to me, told me he was so sorry. I wanted to rip his eyes out, but all I said was, “It was an accident. You’d better go.” And then to Paul, “We’ve got to get him to the vet!” Paul agreed, but we both knew: it was too late. I knew that. When I finally got up, Paul had rounded up the dogs I’d turned loose. They were nervous, scared, darting in and sniffing the blood. I carried Tyler home while Paul half-led, half-drug the dogs; a grieving and surreal procession. We called my vet, wrapped Tyler in a blanket, and I changed out of my bloody clothes. The vet assistant confirmed him dead, and she cut some pieces of his fur for me, placing them in a small baggie. We left him there, for cremation.

I’m through apologizing to the world at large for grieving a dog as I would grieve any human. I can love, lose and grieve any number of pets with my whole heart and still have enough left in me to give appropriate respect to lost human life as well. Tyler was part of our family.

What isn’t affected when you lose someone you love? The normal, every day things are the things you notice most. Six food bowls to fill instead of seven. No more of those special noises- that shrieky bark when the other dogs played; that grumpy growl when he didn’t get his way; that funny moaning, snarky snorty noise he’d make when he was wriggling around on the sofa in back-scratching ecstasy. The way he’d lick his feet incessantly because of allergies – the licking noise. His spot on our bed – the only dog to sleep on our bed (because he wouldn’t be crated) – empty. We had the bed to ourselves now, and we cried at the realization. For weeks I couldn’t look down the length of the road when I turned East to reach my house. Tears would overtake me a mile or two from home and I got so used to this that I came to not even realize I was crying until I was to my front door and had to wipe my wet face.

Trying not to be still; not to think. We tried to make things normal again, for ourselves and for our dogs. Axel had taken to hiding under the sofa anytime I so much as sniffled. My crying scared him. I remember trying to keep busy, painting the entry while songs from The Beatles Love album played. “Because the sky is blue it makes me cry….” Trying to go shopping one night after it happened, and almost losing it in the store. Riding home in the car with Paul, realizing that there was a new reality. Feeling to the core of my soul that somehow I could make this un-happen if only I tried hard enough. And knowing that that was simply not possible.

I got through it by talking about it. By letting myself feel it when I felt it was safe to do so. By moving forward. I wrote about it. I lived it as well as I could. We took Christmas photos with the dogs and Axel play-bowed and barked at the 8×10 of Ty we set on the fireplace hearth to include in the shot.

One night, probably about three days after it happened, I drove home in the early twilight with huge round snowflakes dancing all around the car as if suspended by magic. When I got home and reached the gate of the fence, I stood and looked into the sky; each snowflake was gigantic and beautiful, falling from a point the dark sky in dizzying profusion. I opened my mouth, catching some on my tongue. This, I thought then, was a gift from Tyler.

This evening, as I was standing outside my house, snow began to fall – just a few large flakes: glimmers caught from the corner of my eye at first, then more and more visible. Real. I thought about this.

I only knelt before the candle on the gravel road for a short while. Maybe thirty seconds. But it was enough. I started to cry; I’d worried that I wouldn’t be able to. Life numbs us so. It’s reassuring to know that what meant so much once still does, a year later.

Paul was already moving on with the dogs. I had to hurry to catch up. But I kept glancing back. The candle continued to burn. Eventually I came to a distance where I could not make out the candle, but could still see the flame. By the time we reached home I wasn’t able to distinguish even that.

I know the candle probably burned itself out. It would have shrank as the wax softened and melted. Eventually the wax would overcome the wick, and the flame would go out. There was something comforting, powerful and sweet about that flame. Something I haven’t thought about or felt in a while. I hated to leave it behind, but I had to; that’s just the way it is. I left it behind, knowing it would burn itself out and be gone. But tonight, as I look out on the road East, I imagine it’s still out there, that I can still see it, burning bright and strong, marking the place.

We still miss you, Ty, and we always will.

Here’s another piece I wrote about this experience this past summer.