A Dog's Life - Dec 8 2024

 

A Dog’s Life

Dec 8 2024



It feels incomplete.

Without a rite of passage.

Without a ritual

to formally declare

she was here

she mattered

we shared.

There are only memories.

And these

held by me alone;

a poor custodian

of even my own

inconsequential life.

And of the few that remain

too quickly fade.

The way dreams turn to vapour

at the first light of day

no matter how hard you try to hold them,

lying quietly in bed

eyes firmly closed.

But then, a dog’s life

is lived moment to moment,

so what legacy

would one even expect?

Simply that she came, she went

she left her mark,

changing me for the better

when I needed it most.

So when I go

it will be the end of us both;

unremembered,

unlamented,

and might as well never have been.

So perhaps that’s it,

that my sadness

is the existential angst

of a meaningless life;

hers,

and by extension mine.

As usual

it’s more about me than her.

Even the video’s are gone,

a hard drive

that melted down,

or lost

from laptop to laptop.

While the final photograph

is the old dog

soundly asleep

in the hot pink diaper

she reluctantly learned to wear.

Although to her

the pink would have looked grey,

and there was no indignity

in a ripe old age.

Pixels on a screen

all that remain,

a clean diaper

in the back of the car

I may someday need myself.

Of all the people

this, stoic, gentle, loving dog

could have touched

but sadly did not.

This is the price

of the hermetic life

we lived for 15 years;

the memories

that are mine alone to bear.

No one to share

and reminisce.

Wth whom to laugh, cry, hold.

Tell stories

tall tales

bad jokes.

And the regrets

I keep only to myself.

This is where an atheist like me starts to understand the power and persistence of religion. Not that anyone cares about the fine points of theology. Rather, it’s all about community, ritual, and meaning: everything this poem says I need for some kind of closure (if there even is such a thing!)

The pic was taken just a couple of days before Skookum was put to sleep. In order, top to bottom: Rufus (8 years, 3 months); Peanut (1 year, 5 months); Skookum (15 years, 3 months). (The man behind the lens: 69 years, 8 months!)