Lilly, the Boston terrier, watches the world through our bedroom window.
A gust of wind throttles the naked tree branches against a gun grey sky. Under a heavy rain two dogs, one on either side of their human parent, scurry across the street. A fine ridge of hairs springs erect at the base of Lilly’s spine. It’s not the old full-on Mohawk that used to rise when unknown dogs drew near.
Lilly emits a half-hearted growl. More like a stifled gurgle. That’s just four-legged, I say. She cocks her head and quiets. Her hackles flatten. Good girl.
She’s come a long way from the reactive dervish she once was. At the same time, she’s not seized upon her chances to make new friends. My heart wrings at this thought, but I don’t judge her for it. Lilly has had to weather many changes through her years.
So have her mommy and daddy. We both left friends behind when we moved to Oregon; others scattered upon the winds of semi-retirement to idyllic, wooded islands or harbor-laced coves in the subtropics. My wife, Susan, delicately threaded the needle of private practice through leaving California while I counted calls from healthcare agencies that would surely place me in a per diem assignment as a medical speech pathologist. I got one call. Not a good fit.
Through all this, our love for one another and for Lilly never wavered. Quite the contrary. Our experiences and processing of them have only steeled our resolve to love even harder — and find the wisdom in life’s arc.
Last week, I scanned the net for traces of my identity. Through the years, I’d dropped many bread crumbs in my professional forrest thinking I could return to myself should I ever get “lost.” Over the past fifteen months, I’ve watched those crumbs disappear. I’m no longer practicing at the VA. Come January, my Oregon license will be rendered inactive. Soon thereafter, my California license will expire. All this as I lay the cobbled road toward my future as a death doula in training; a road that will surely teach me far more of what I don’t know than what I do.
Lilly was at my side when I dropped those crumbs and remains so through their vanishing. She doesn’t give a lick about my resume or CV or the honors I garnered in graduate school or what achievements await me five years down the road. She only knows that mommy and daddy never left her. Through separation’s anxiety and whirls of fear; through spates of vomit and incontinence, we stayed. Through the twists of change, Susan’s and my love for Lilly burst through our chests. And we’ve found that we love her more now as a frosted-faced lady than we did when she was a precocious pup.
Loving our pets through their changes as they’ve loved us through ours is one way to blaze a trail toward ourselves and those we love.
Now I know: those bread crumbs were meant to feed the birds.