Startled.
That’s how many of Mike’s dozens and dozens of friends, fellow teachers, former students, and youth group members first feel when they come to visit. It’s not the hospital bed, or the smell of disinfectant, or even my brother’s appearance in these last few weeks of his life that gets to them. He can still get up, still carry on conversation, laugh, sing, gets a bath a couple times a week and is surprisingly spry for a man in hospice care.
What startles, and, occasionally scares the living shit out of our gracious visitors, are the dogs. It’s not their size or fearsome demeanor— you could fit all three of them together inside a golden retriever. But they have their weapons.
Georgie is a miniature poodle with a bark that can shatter glass. She is too lady-like to allow grass or any foul earthly thing to touch her tender rump when she poops, so she does a handstand on her front legs to raise her hindquarters. It’s really quite impressive, like a gymnast doing an iron cross on the rings. As the queen of the pack, she sits on the bed in the seat of honor—on Mike’s crotch. Kind of like a canine testicle warmer, and she’s just light enough to pull it off. I have dubbed her “the loin poodle.”
Mr. Tumnus is a French bulldog, compact yet powerful, whose favorite trick is the cannonballbuster. With enough of a run-up to build a full head of steam and when the loin poodle is away, he is able to clear the side of the hospital bed and land right on Mike’s nuts. He’s done it twice and is now banned from the bed, so he sits on the floor staring upward, ever able, never quite satisfied. He and I have become buddies because I walk him and take him for car rides. He likes to sit in my lap, which seems to be what he’s after anyway, and pretend he’s driving. It’s a bad idea but always makes me laugh. I’m going to have to break him of that habit before I leave—he is supposed to sit in the back seat. But these are difficult times, and it seems an innocent indulgence. Of course l won’t have to live with the newly entitled bulldog after I leave, so maybe we’ve got some more work to do.
He’s the ugliest therapy dog in the world. Shows up in the doorway with a snort, squatting there like a tiki statue, waiting for me to call him so he can run and jump up on the bed with me. I allow it, but I cover my crotch for the landing.
Darcy is a miniature long-haired dachshund that Mike adopted when Beth couldn’t keep him during one of the hard moments of her young life after she moved out to live on her own, one of the moments that helped make her such an empathic writer, but also a little hard to reach. All these dogs have been hers at some point, though. They seem to know her feelings almost as well as Mike’s.
And Darcy quickly became Mike’s pal for long walks for many years and, finally, his end- of-life doula. Darcy means well but he can barely see, hears even less, and complains by barking. And he has much to complain about. His best friend is dying, there are too many people in the house, his joints hurt, and these other dogs are overstaying their welcome.
Finally, there’s Finn, an ancient Yorkshire terrier who looks more like a marmoset and once fell down a ladder and broke his penis (we’ll get to that). Finn is also one of Beth’s finds, this one passed off to her younger sister, Sarah.
Those of us living in the house know that when we come home we have to sneak in the back door. The doorbell or the squeak of the front door sets off the loin poodle. It’s impossible to describe how piercing her bark can be, set at the exact frequency of fingernails against a chalkboard. Her screech has likely chased away death itself at least a few times. Some credited palliative radiation, steroids, and a trip to church for Mike’s remarkable rally the first week I was here, but anyone who has met the loin poodle knows better. Tumors shrink in the presence of her vocal prowess.
We actually have a “sherpa” entrance where those of us helping out can sneak in, and so far Georgie cannot detect us , even though she can hear a newt on the sidewalk and knows the sound of Beth’s Honda CR-V half a block away. But guests and even frequent visitors either miss the “Don’t Ring Doorbell—Dogs” sign or are distracted by the fact that they’ve come to visit a dying friend. They don’t realize that he is guarded by a miniature Cerberus who does handstands when she poops and has a bark that can burst their eyeballs. The doorbell or even a coy tap on the front door is like the spark that ignites the loin poodle, whose bark rouses the others to a canine cacophony of Metallica concert proportions. Often the first thing our gracious guests say as they walk in is “sorry.” The loin poodle thinks that’s hilarious.
Mike doesn’t seem to mind the dogs. Like he thinks they humanize the room. Sometimes they wake him up, sometimes they won’t let him move, but he enjoys their company and puts up with it. Except for Tumnus’s lap leap—St. Francis himself would have hurled that bulldog out the window if he’d been the target of a cannonballbuster.
All these dogs began their time in the family with Beth. The fourth dog, Finn, an ancient Yorkshire terrier who looks more like a marmoset and once fell down a ladder and broke his penis, is also one of Beth’s finds, this one passed off to her younger sister, Sarah. Beth is the family writer. You can see her smirk with pride as she tells the story of Finn’s broken penis, how he’s mostly blind and walked off the edge of a loft and tumbled down a ladder, stood up, shook himself off, and noticed his penis had grown large enough to be a fifth leg. Or how he was discovered in a hole and lived a hard life on the street before coming home to her and then Sarah’s unconditional love. Or of Tumnus’s younger days tearing around Beth’s her small apartment and leaping into and immediately out of the bathtub. There’s a video of that one. You might suspect she’s purposely brought the dogs into her life or planted them in someone else’s to be like story generators, and they’re cranking out the electricity here in her dad’s final months. Who could have guessed that the old dachshund she couldn’t take care of would become her dad’s constant companion through his cancer, someone to talk to when no one else could understand or even wanted to hear him. Who would guess that such a canine cacophony could provide such a wonderful distraction, a laugh, a relief that would humanize a room.
Now Mike spends hours sleeping during the day between visitors and Judy’s dutiful dosing of meds. We keep the bedroom door open at his request—our family’s only true extrovert has always liked to hear the voices in the other rooms, even the scuffing of feet on the carpet as we pass by. I stop in the doorway to check on him. Sometimes he’s sleeping.
Sometimes his eyes are closed but he’s doing what the hospice nurses call the “inner work” of dying and he’s in a place between life and death where none of us can walk with him, none of us can go, trying to find his way.
I look in and see his chest rising and falling beneath the quilt that keeps him warm, the rest of him motionless except the fingers of his right hand at his side on the bed, gently, rhythmically petting Darcy, who lays there with his eyes wide open.