Looking back on the fresh hell that was yesterday, I observe that my mind was trying, futilely, to be in several places at once. I was sitting in the lobby of a top notch emergency vet hospital waiting for word from triage about my service dog Milo. I was doing strategic math, which involved trying to guess how many thousands this visit would set me back, how much (er, little) I have in my bank account, what possessions I might swiftly sell, and who I might reach out to for some (financial) triage of my own.
I was also totally falling the fuck apart while trying to convince myself I had to hold it together for the dog and also reminding myself that sobbing in ER waiting rooms, while understandable, is better avoided so as not to flip out all the other anxious people around you. And I was wrestling with a sort of rule I have which says when an animal is coming to a natural conclusion, it is not a wrong decision to let nature rule.
But Milo is only maybe four years old. Last night was the first night in more than three years we did not spoon each other to sleep. I form a strong attachment with all my dogs—I have had so very many over the years. But Milo? Milo is something else. Milo reads me. Milo comforts me. Milo is my everything boy. Whatever bizarro autoimmune disorder suddenly had his own body attacking itself—well I couldn’t just let him go.
I was also trailing down another thought path, one that I find myself on in every major crisis visited upon me. I have an extraordinary number of friends who belong to the club no one ever wants to even talk about let alone join. These friends have all lost a child. Several of them have lost multiple children. The saddest truest truth in this life is that there is no greater human pain to be endured. I think of these friends not with pity (for I know that is unwelcome) but rather to gain swift perspective.
Driving Milo to ER, I could only glance to the backseat fleetingly. Was he breathing? Had I lost him? I couldn’t tell. He can’t die. I just lost Thelma. I can’t lose another dog. Not today.
Hold on. New set of thoughts. Actually you can. Possibly you might. Bad shit happens. Period. Now breathe.
I hate that my bereaved friends are bereaved and will be bereaved forevermore. I honor them, quietly to myself, like a secular prayer, when I bring them into my crisis thought process. I look to them as strong reminders that horrible shit happens. To remember that. To never forget it. To recognize that every one among us will have shit to deal with. This, in turn, helps me to deal with whatever shit I am being forced to deal with.
Once many years ago, I received the most beautiful letter anyone ever wrote me, which is really saying something since I’ve had many pen pals over the past fifty years. I had just broken up with the guy who had dethroned the previous Worst Boyfriend Ever, a title he— the penultimate guy—had held for twenty years. Even though that breakup eventually proved to be one of the Top Three Best Things to Ever Happen to Me, I was still in the fog of narcissistic abuse, still foolishly lamenting the loss of a violent sociopath.
The letter writer was one of my friends who has lost multiple children. She did not congratulate me, as she might have done. She did not offer advice. She certainly did not insinuate in any way that maybe I should stop feeling sorry for myself because, come on, look at her life. Instead she pointed out that grief is grief is grief and that her heart hurt for my heart. And then she told me this story about Buddha and a grieving mother. I was already very familiar with the story, heretofore my least favorite Buddhist anecdote and, at the same time, the one I could never get out of my head.
It goes a little like this:
One day a woman who had lost her son went to Buddha and begged him to resurrect the child. Buddha told her to first go to every house in town to track down a mustard seed. There was a catch. The seed had to come from a home where no one had ever suffered death. Eventually the woman returned to Buddha and admitted she could find no family that hadn’t suffered.
The reason I always hated that story was it seemed so mean-spirited to me. I know, I know, it’s a parable. But still, Buddha please. Who would do that to someone so grief stricken? Sounded like a particularly extreme episode of Jackass.
Only my friend added something to the story that I had somehow missed the first six thousand times. She told me that each stranger the woman approached and told her story to had offered her empathy. That when she returned to Buddha, having been on the receiving end of so much compassion, something had shifted inside of her.
My friend offered me such compassion in her letter that I cried and cried when I read it. How could someone who had been through so much have anything left over for me, someone merely dealing with another stupid breakup?
Yesterday as I was driving home without Milo, the hospital called with the actual estimate based on an intense in-hospital treatment plan. I hate asking for help but I was desperate. In lieu of door-knocking and mustard seed seeking, I put out a call on IG and explained my situation. I hesitated before posting. I thought about how many hungry people could be fed for this sum. I thought of how many healthy homeless dogs I could help. I thought of how selfish my request might seem to people with far bigger challenges. But I wanted Milo to live. So I asked.
I was met with overwhelming compassion. I was met with the means to give my dog a chance to survive and live a quality life. I was met with a chance to maybe keep spooning with my big boy. My community delivered so quickly that I went to bed last night I knowing I could at least set aside the financial piece of it and focus on worrying about Milo’s health.
This, in turn, prompted a massive shift inside of me. A shift like the mother in that parable felt when she understood the community was collectively holding her in her sorrow. I am sorry to inform you that the only way to fully illuminate this shift is to mention that other community I briefly lived in, the place where they threatened to kill me until I left.
When I reflect on that time, which I try not to do too often, what freaked/freaks me out— at least as much as the personal pain of being personally attacked— was (and remains) how so many people could be so mean, could seem to get off on being so mean, and get off even more for being mean collectively. Like a hot poker to the psyche just thinking about it. Like if the woman looking for the mustard seed had been sent out in that town she probably would have been shot at the first house she visited.
That assessment is too broad stroke, actually. I met so many wonderful in that town, too. Friends I have still. But the love they offered could not outpace the hate rained down on me by so many. That sub-community of haters destroyed the community at large, something they did long before I arrived and something they are no doubt still doing now.
A couple of weeks ago, I received some correspondence from that town. Unbidden it was. And it shocked me into a state of hate and fear as I relived, yet again, the sickening adrenaline spikes of being perpetually hunted prey. The pain these flashbacks prompted literally drove me to bed for days. I began to revisit my dream of a lawsuit.
Then Milo fell out. Rapidly. Everything else fell away. I watched the proceedings as if out of body. My Rolodex mind pulling up the names of at least six vets. My fingers rapid scrolling through google, calling every mobile vet in a fifty-mile radius. A whip smart doctor and her able tech down on the floor gently examining my dog then rapidly facilitating an ER visit. Then doctors and techs at the hospital swooping in. And a huge Nana dog in the waiting room, oddly off-leash, lumbering over to put her head in my lap and nuzzle me.
I hate how sick Milo is. I hate not hearing, “We can cure him good as new!” But I will never forget the shift I felt as I allowed myself to be held by a vast community full of people I’ve known for decades and people I’ve never met in real life. People not judging me for my suffering. People not purposefully trying to make me suffer. But people who understand the power of pulling together.
Thank you all. For the love, the light, the cash and, most of all, the shift. I am grateful.
NOTES:
I’ll be posting Milo updates on IG.
There’s going to be a truly amazing concert at the ranch on May 20th. Live music from the West Texas Exiles, celebrating their first birthday. There will also be a flea and art market and limited camping spots. Click This Link for All the Details.
The next Tiny T Tiny Flea Market is also May 20th, during the day. I can always use more vendors. Message me if you want in. We sure do have fun.
My friend who has had a bookstore in Maryville for 31 years is under constant attack from someone who just moved there from Texas. I always think about your experience -- bullies suck! Love you, Spike.
Ive had many dogs over the years, magical beings all of them and I have loved every single one of them more than 90% of the people I know. Empathy is magical without a big show, it whispers in each of us until needed. Grief has it's own time, dont fight it use it to heal and let it wash over you like a wave washing you clean. Speedy recovery Milo, we are all waiting xoxoxo