More than a week ago, my family terrier, Scotty, died suddenly and under very challenging circumstances. He was 9 years old.
Upon hearing the news of this death, I felt mired in melancholy. There were very few things that I loved in life more than playing “catch” with that dog – “catch” being a misnomer. What we played was more like, “Chase me mother fucker because you’re not getting this god damn ball.” In play, I somehow found incredible joy in being annoyed by this 10-pound asshole of a dog.
I often think it is silly to feel intense sadness at the death of an animal, especially amidst so much human pain in the world. However, Scotty was a dog that joined a very human family and remained family despite our hefty imperfections. He lived through the cycle of working class life – job losses, a dearth of money, more job losses, divorce, a destructive hurricane that destroyed much of what my family worked for, and imminent financial uncertainty. Despite living through a household of 4 that gradually dwindled in presence as he aged, Scotty was never angry. All he ever wanted to do was play “catch”.
Scotty died on a Wednesday after his health quickly deteriorated. My mother found him still warm, but absent of breathe, laying on the ground in the wing of our house that he is never in – the hallway leading to my room and my sister’s room. He was alone.
“I think it’s because he loved you two so much,” my mom said to my sister and I over the phone. If this is true, we were only there 1-2 times a year. And yet, he still loved us despite it all – always waiting for us to play “catch”.
In my grief, I have found myself ruminating a lot about time. Time has been unrelenting in its quickness – we are now more than halfway through 2018 and I am closer to 32 than I am to 31. Everyday, I am reminded of how time travels faster than I can process and, a times, handle. I hear it in the way my parents sound on the phone. I see it when I look at a clock wherein the hours have transpired, but my writing has not. I feel it in the financial concerns I harbor about my family’s future. Playing with Scotty was a way to stop time because he was never fixated about the past, had no obsession with the future, and only concerned himself with the resolute urgency of now – with ball, ball, ball, “catch”, “catch”, “catch”.
On the Friday after his death, I drove home after a long week of thinking about time, guilt, and sadness. On my way home, I noticed that the San Francisco Bay was blanketed in a magnificent, late summer sunset. It was a brilliant palette of rouge blending effortlessly into a hue of powder blue. The sunset was oddly late for an August evening and it lasted from the moment I walked out of my office, continued through my 10-mile traverse across California’s longest bridge, and remained as I inched closer to the San Francisco skyline where I met my partner. We watched the sun fade slowly as we ate dinner from a hilltop. I was convinced that it was Scotty.
“Thanks for the sunset, Scotty. You’re a good boy,” I said to no one.
When I visited Peru last year, I became infatuated with the country – the food, the biodiversity, and its rich indigenous history. I especially loved the country’s strong reverence for dogs. Peruvians believe that when humans pass away, it’ll be dogs that guide them across the river to the after-life.
I am not a religious person, but I am excited about the idea of seeing Scotty again, at a bend of treacherous river, with a ball in his mouth ready to play “catch”. I’m not sure how helpful we will both be in that situation given our talents (or lack thereof), but what’s the worse that can happen? We’re together, already dead and won’t be worried about time.
