Monday, April 13, 2015

Go gently into that good night, Logan

            It has been terribly hard for Mary and I at our house the past couple weeks as we watched our dear dog Logan fade. Quite literally she fought with all she had, till we decided she need fight no more.
            Both Mary and I awoke about 5:30, as the darkness still covered the earth, and we decided this was enough. She had lay on a pillow breathing but not much more for far too long. It was enough. Her strength reached the stage where nothing but her breathing showed her to be alive, and it broke my heart with each breath. There was nothing more the three of us could do together, and the helplessness we felt was beyond any in a long, long time, back to the death watch with my mom eight years past.
            To the end Logan’s heart was strong as it carried her around the house, noticeably tangling with that dang ol’ thing we call death.  But her great inner strength waned as she stopped eating Saturday, then lay down as if she knew there was no need any more. Frequent visits to the vet had provided nothing but consolation and shed tears. Over and over we went, till the last one this morning.
            Till Logan, nor Mary, nor I could let this go on.
            Till is was simply enough.
            I’m not sure the good all die young, as Billy Joel told us, but the good die fighting sometimes. And sometimes the fight is enough.
            The Bible isn't all that clear on the fate of pets. But in the book of Revelation, it says this in the fifth chapter, the 11th verse:
            "Then I heard every creature in heaven and on earth and under the earth and in the sea and all that is in them singing, "To the one seated on the throne and to the Lamb, be blessing and honor and glory and might forever and ever."
            To me that means there will be creatures in heaven. And what better creatures to sing than the dogs (and cats and three or four ferrets along the way) who showed such incredible unconditional love.
            Logan always was if not a wonderful singer at least a loud one. She often greeted us when we got home by barking that turned to high-noted howling. She would bark a couple times, then she would sing like someone in one of the choirs I’ve been around over the years, high and long till we could get the key into the lock and the door open.
            She was a also a leaper, always going high, onto beds, onto wherever the cat food had been placed to keep her away from it, and perhaps just perhaps it was jumping just a couple of months ago that finally began the long slide toward Sunday where she couldn’t move any longer. She was always thin, like a lifeline to God himself in heaven but my goodness she loved her food.
            My wife, Mary, and youngest, Carrie, brought her home 15 years ago.
            She was perhaps the most active dog we’ve ever had. But as she approached her 15th birthday this year, she began to waiver. Time, like an enemy combatant with leverage that couldn’t be defeated naturally, grips us all in its wretchedly cold hands.
            Logan always rose first, from the time when I was so much younger till I made joint creaking sounds while rising myself. I would open the bedroom door and she would sprint down the hall to the kitchen, flying through it to get to the table that houses the cat food bowls. She always assumed those dumb old cats over the years would spill some food. Usually she was right.
            When she was much younger and we lived in Lacombe, La., she did this sort of thing with the back door and a squirrel who lived somewhere in some tree in the back yard. She waited for the door to open, then flew out onto the deck, down the stairs, hoping this was the one time when the squirrel wouldn't notice. He always did, and always escaped. I'm not absolutely certain what would have happened had the squirrel been asleep at the switch just once, but I'm certain Logan was convinced the day would come.
            Many of you regulars have read about her over the past years of blogs and back to when these things started in as the back of church bulletin covers.
            She was named Logan because in the year she was born, 2000, the first X-Men movie came out, and our daughter Carrie (who was almost 13 at the time) liked the movie character Wolverine most. Wolverine's real name is Logan. Hence the new girl pup became Logan. Don’t try to understand just go with it.
            I always loved the way her lips folded back when she growled, which she only did when she was protecting food from other varmits, which was anytime she gets fed. In fact, food was her main if not only obsession. Getting a treat, which we do when the dogs go outside, would have her going outside every 15 minutes if she could have gotten away with it. Friday when she turned down a Beggin Strip I knew the end was near.
            I've written this story before, but it's the quintessential Logan story, so I must tell it again. When we evacuated for Hurricane Katrina, 10 years ago, we did so to my mother's house in the country north of Meridian, Miss. Other dogs and cats who left New Orleans with us didn't care for the culture shock of Lizelia versus New Orleans’ west bank. But Logan loved it. Trees and grass and open fields were her cup of wet dog food. She ran and she ran and then ran some more.
            I was petrified she was going to run off and get lost, because that's what humans do in unfamiliar territory. But not sweetness wrapped in blonde hair. The fact she was a dog with a wonderful sense of smell didn't register, at first. Anyway, one day she came up missing. I scoured the back pasture from a hill behind the house, and no Logan. I looked toward the tree line to the north of the house I grew up in, and no Logan. I looked beyond the barbed-wire south of the house, and no Logan. I walked around to the front of the house, and no Logan. Wait, wait. There she was, racing across the front pasture like her behind was on fire. I wondered for just a second what was going on, then I saw it. Three steps or so in front of Logan was a rabbit making like The Flash. I followed them with my eyes all the way across the front pasture, a quarter-mile or so, and the separation stayed the same. Logan never caught the rabbit, but never fell farther behind. I shook my head, walked back toward the house, and waited. A few minutes later, she came trotting up, breathing heavily and happily.
            Later that same week, when Frankie my beloved Doxie was down the way from my mother’s house and somehow made my cousin’s Labs angry enough to roll him over and make him scream, it was Logan beating me down to my cousin’s house and jumping into the fray to “save” Frankie. 
            That was Logan, running everywhere she went, always three steps behind but never falling farther. Always fearless despite her small size. Always putting up with the animals around her but only so far.
            And loving the process of the run as much as the success of the run. The journey, not the end of the journey, was what was important to her. I have grown to understand that much more as time has begun to catch me, as well.
            At the end, her face was as white as the hairs in my beard, as if she was, oh, say 75 or so -- which is what the seven human years for one canine year turns out to be. She was at least partially deaf, and she missed the thrown treat at the end most of the time as her eyesight began to wane, and then had great gobs of trouble finding it on the ground with only the use of her nose.
            She had surgery in January. She had a swollen ear caused by who knows what. She had had a couple lumps on her belly for a while that she loved to scratch at. I had read that probably meant cancer, and I just didn't want to know so she hadn't visited the Vet about them. Not knowing was bliss, I figured. Turns out, they were cancer but the Vet got all of them, or so he said. Then something happened to her.
            It was like she had a 150,000-mile repair job, removing the cancerous tumors and slicing into the ear so the fluid could be removed, and she went on a series of antibiotics.
            Then something happened to her spine, some discs pressed here and there, the pain became a constant, she didn’t handle pain killers and, and things went sideways, then down as fast as sand through the largest of holes in an hour glass..
            Logan lived with us a fourth of my life. Mary and I will celebrate our 30th wedding anniversary next Sunday. Logan lived with us half of that time. She lived in five houses. I thought she would be in a sixth rather soon, but she had other places to visit.
            I know all those trials of this life might be mercies in disguise stuff. I’ve read it. Heard it sung even. Heck, I’ve told folks this, and I believe it most of the time that my pain doesn’t reach the top of my mercies-in-disguise limit.
            But it's hard. It’s just hard. For the only way this can truly be good is if I can see Frankie, and Scrappy, and Tweety, and Squeaker, and Buttons, and Harry, and especially Logan again. If all this pain I’m feeling, we’re feeling is simply folly, if all this grief is just time spent, if all the love we’ve been given by saving pets as we’ve done all these darn years means absolutely nothing, then what in the heck is the meaning of it all?
            Oh, they’re just animals, someone reading will say.
            Just.
            Animals.
             Friend, I have limited knowledge, and even less wisdom, but here’s what I’ve learned over a rocky road. Love is a complete letting go of all things reasonable. Just take reason and pitch it like a summer curveball. It won’t be needed in the this lifetime if you’ll just listen to my advice for a brief moment longer.
            See, love is surrendering to someone or something outside yourself without condition. Just forgetting who you are for a moment and pouring yourself totally without reserve into someone or even something else is love.

            I know some folks don’t care for dogs or cats, but they are wrong or have been wronged by parents who wouldn’t let them have them for fear of, uh, what soiled flors. But it is in the dog especially that true love, complete letting go, pouring themselves totally without reserve into someone who often forgets to love them back if they have a bad day.
            But this I know: God loves you, and so does your pet till the last stinky loving breath is taken.
            Its, nah not its, his or her lavish love and kisses hold true whether you’ve done anything at all to deserve it. The only place you can cuddle up unconditionally is in the Father’s lap. And you might have to get Frankie out of his lap just to sit down.
            Till the next time, old friend, hold me Jesus, and give Logan a treat for me when she stops running around the huge area that is heaven.


1 comment:

kevin h said...

Sad but lovely, Billy. Your recent words about Logan have made me appreciate anew the old stinky rag mop that is my dog.