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| Photo copyright Aji, 2021; all rights reserved. |
It's been a terrible day in so many ways today, but the worst is the one that repeats on this day every year. As of 5:00 PM tonight, it's been exactly half a decade since Griffin left a hole in our hearts.
It can't possibly be five years, and yet it is. We were gearing up to build the house, and he was supposed to live in it with us. He was fifteen and a half, after all; we wanted him to age in comfort, instead of that rattletrap RV in which we spent seven long years, and him with us. There's no question, of course, that that toxic tin can shortened all their lives. They all hurt, but this one hurt the most.
Griffin found me; literally saw me, at the shelter, before I could see him, because of the angle of the walkway. He was five months old, abandoned, abused, and supposed to be going elsewhere, but he had other ideas. He seized my heart immediately, and I have yet to understand how he arranged it, but he was always conversant with more powerful spirits, and he made sure everything else fell through so that he could come home with me.
He was the dog of my heart and my spirit, and not just a dog; he thought he was human, and damned if he wasn't. He managed to save my life in very literal terms more than once. He would capture Wings's heart the same way.
He was not a fighter, and yet he was always, always the pack alpha, even as a puppy. Oh, he would fight to protect them, but only for that reason. More often he just . . . laid down the law with a look, and everyone fell into line. And like all good leaders, he needed time to himself, and he would often follow me outside and then find a nice shady spot in the cool grass; at night, he'd do the same on his own. It was always clear that he felt the responsibilities he'd taken on himself weight heavily, and that he needed a little time apart from the other dogs to recharge every now and then.
He was my my baby, and yet not; he was my best friend, and there is not a day that goes by that I don't feel that gigantic hole in my heart. He was always incredibly healthy, until one September day when the then-"puppies," She-Wolf and Raven, decided to escape onto the highway to chase something. Griffin went to round them up and herd them back, and he was the one who got hit. I went flying out of our old house, and he was "running," as much as he could with a fully dislocated right hind leg dragging behind him, one eye bleeding, scanning, scanning, looking for me the whole time; he found me and ran straight to me, and we took him straight to our vet, with Wings's instructions to save him no matter the cost.
It turned out to be mostly superficial, in the sense that torn hip ligaments and a leg that needed resetting in the joint and a blow to the eye that necessitated removal of an inner lid and would cause eventual blindness can be said to be superficial. No damaged organs, no internal bleeding, no broken bones. We were able to bring home the next day, as I recall, and he wore his left hind leg bound up for five weeks and learned to run on three.
There would be other damage, but we didn't know that yet.
After losing Lilith in 2014, he grew withdrawn. He lay apart from the other dogs, the sadness evident on his face. he had long experience with mourning, but we thought maybe her death had hit him harder. And then one day, I called him from a few inches away, and he didn't even twitch an eyebrow.
He couldn't hear me.
It would turn out that he had been steadily going deaf for months, and by then was pretty profoundly deaf, and as his world grew more limited, he was beginning to fear for his daily life with us. The moment I realized it, I tested him enough to confirm it; then I knelt down in front of him, alternated putting my hands over his ears and pointing to my mouth and touching his chest repeatedly, and he visibly relaxed right before my eyes. He had been afraid of what would happen if we knew, or if we didn't know, and once I told him that we would be his ears, he was instantly, as in that very second, back to his old self. We think the impact from the truck that hit him probably hastened it.
It hastened something else, too: Grif developed canine vestibular syndrome. It's terrifying as hell the first time you see it; it looks as though your dog is having either a seizure or a stroke, and of course the first time it happened was one year on Easter Sunday, when our own vet was not on call. So we took him to the other one, and they rehydrated him with fluids subcutaneously and checked him over. I was there for about three hours with him, and we would have to take him back a year or so later for the same problem, but by then we knew how to manage it and we got him through numerous smaller episodes on our own.
Until the last one, in the early weeks of April in 2016. It began the same way, and so we thought that was all it was, and even though he didn't bounce back the same way, we attributed it to age and the vagaries of the weather, which were brutal that year. And then, on the 16th, we had to carry him outside, and he couldn't really stand without help. So Wings brought him in and put him on the couch where he could be next to me. It was better to have him indoors anyway; we had gotten a full foot of snow that morning in one hard, heavy storm . . . snow that had melted almost wholly by noon. And while outside, I saw the Cooper's hawk, who had her own history with us, land in the aspen by where I stood and stare down at me. I thought she was there as a friend; little did I know she was there in her role as guide.
Griffin by then was tired, and we had placed his bed on the floor of the RV's kitchen so that he could stretch out and be comfortable, and still we had no idea of what was coming. Periodically I'd go and sit with him, but not because I expected his spirit to leave anytime soon; I did it merely so he'd know I was there with him, and he always relaxed and breathed more easily as soon as I laid my hand on him. It was a day that I did not help with the outside chores; Wings had told me to stay in with Grif and let him handle it, so I did. He came inside about five minutes to five, went over to greet Griffin and stroke his velvety head and ears, and then sat down beside me.
And then I saw Griffin stretch suddenly, and I knew exactly what it was, and I went running for him to hold him and beg every being I could imagine not to take him from us, but he took only a few more breaths, then rested in my arms and let his spirit go. It was five o'clock on the dot.
And the moment that life force left him and all the remained was the body, with gravity pulling at it now, I felt along his spine what we had not been able to feel while he was alive: a tumor of some sort. It would, given the size and location, probably have been pressing on his heart and lungs and airway by then, and coupled with TBI-induced CVS, it was more than his body could overcome. And it wasn't for lack of watchfuless; I had monitored his whole body regularly after what had happened with the girls, but it was too deep to be felt until he was gone, and up until then, he showed not a single sign that would have sent us to the vet to try to catch it.
Once more, it was too cold, the ground too hard in the fading light to dig, and so we wrapped him gently and laid him in the studio until the following morning. And we both wept like we have never wept for any other being.
At five o'clock, I did as I promised Wings I would always do for all of them: took him water and cedar and tobacco, this time with a little sweetgrass in it. There was no hope of anything more than the faintest tendril of smoke; the wind, mostly lying low all day, had kicked up at five minutes to the hour, and has howled most of the evening since. But I managed a little, plus the rest, and I stood there beneath the big blue spruce with the tears, and the tear, in my soul, and I remembered the spirit who took care of me when no one else would, or even remotely cared, this small sweet spirit who saved my life more than once, and whose absence is as raw today as it was five years ago. Some spirits are more than they appear to be, and he was — is — one.
All content, including photos and text, are copyright Wings and Aji, 2021; all rights reserved. Nothing herein may used or reproduced in any form without the express written permission of the owner.
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