Dom, Five Years Gone

Photo copyright Wings, 2016; all rights reserved.

Lilith was four short days ago. Now it's Dom.

She left us longer ago, in 2011. I'd been in Washington for over a month, and we didn't even know she was ill. Two weeks after my return, she was gone. Cancer, throughout her whole little body, with an especially large tumor suddenly distending her stomach. She was, as near as anyone could tell, roughly eleven and a half, making her the second-oldest of our pack at that time. While I was gone, she'd learn to ride on the back of the ATV with Wings, and that is his fondest memory of her.

Like all the rest, she'd had a hard life, too: used as a bait dog; left front leg broken and left unrepaired for who knows how long, then a botched surgical attempt at repairing it that was already infected by the time she found her way to me. She was by turns skittish and fierce, and fiercely independent, and wanted nothing more than to take up space on your lap (or shove you out of bed). I've never known such a small dog to take up so much space, much more than any of the large ones. 

She took up a lot of space in our hearts, too. It's hard now to recall exactly how huge the void was in this place when morning rolled around on April 15th of that year. Harder still to believe that it's been five years already. Her name was officially Domina, the feminine of Domino for her little half-mask, but also for the Latin used for the feminine of "teacher" or "master." She was a beta girl, or maybe even gamma or delta, but she could alpha right up when she damn well felt like it; she gave orders, and she usually got her way. Her name fast became Dommy, Dommers, Dom-Dom, or just Dom for short. 

She left us in my arms, on my lap, about 10:42 PM on the night of the 14th. It was bitterly cold that year, so we wrapped her in a blanket, but we had to leave her burial for morning, and the ground was unbelievably hard for mid-April, but Wings managed it. She is with Lilith and Major, beneath the big blue spruce by the garden, and in a little while, I'll limp my way outside to set some cedar on her resting place.

The Saturday after she left us, I was going in and out to shake the rugs. I took one inside, went out with another, and saw that something had changed: At the foot of the stairs there was a little divot in the earth that had been empty a moment before. Now, it contained a sherd of ancient pottery, the old black-on-white that predates the micaceous variety in this area. The earth here still tosses them up periodically, random gifts of the spirits, but not on the lawn where grass covers everything. I know, rationally, that a magpie dropped it: a black and white bird with a black and white sherd for a black and white dog. I still think Dom arranged it, and the sherd is still in my medicine bag.

Thank you, little Dom-Dom Girl. We love you.

All content, including photos and text, are copyright Wings and Aji, 2016; all rights reserved. Nothing herein may used or reproduced in any form without the express written permission of the owner.