A Dog's Journey

  At this place, though, I had no particular person at all—my purpose seemed to be to love each one of them. It made them happy.

  I was a dog who loved many people—it’s what made me a good dog.

  My name might be Toby, but I had come a long, long way since the first time that was what people called me. I knew many more things now, things I had learned along my life’s journey. I understood, for example, why I was being told to “Be Still.” Many of the people lying in bed had pains in them that I could sense, and if I climbed on them to play I might hurt them. I only had to step on one man’s stomach one time to learn my lesson—his sharp cry rang in my ears for days, making me feel awful. I was not Duke, a rambunctious dog who couldn’t control himself. I was Toby. I could Be Still.

  When I was wandering around on my own and not being taken places by Mona, Fran, or Patsy, I would go see the man I had stepped on. His name was Bob, and I wanted him to know I was sorry. As was the case in most rooms, he had a chair pulled up next to his bed, and by leaping first onto this I was able to land on his blankets without hurting him. Bob was asleep every time I went to visit him.

  One afternoon Bob was alone in his bed and I could feel him easing away from this life. The warm waters were rising up around Bob, washing away his pains. I lay quietly next to him, being with him as best I could. It seemed to me that if my purpose was to provide comfort to people who were ailing, it was even more important that I be with them when they were breathing their final breaths.

  Fran found me lying there. She checked on Bob and covered his head with his blanket. “Good dog, Toby,” she whispered.

  From that point forward, whenever I knew someone’s time was close I would go into their room and lie on their bed with them to provide comfort and company as they left this life. Sometimes their families were gathered around and sometimes they were alone, though usually one of the many people who spent their days in the building helping the sick was sitting there quietly.

  Occasionally family members would feel fear and anger when they saw me.

  “I don’t want the death dog near my mother!” a man shouted once. I heard the word “dog” and felt the sharp lash of his fury and left the room, not sure what I had done wrong.

  Most of the time, though, my presence was welcomed by everyone. Having no single person as my master meant that I was given a lot of cuddles. Sometimes people would be grieving as they hugged me and I could feel their sadness lose its grip a little while I was in their arms.

  What I missed was other dogs. I loved all the attention from the people, but I missed the sensation of another dog’s throat in my mouth. I found myself dreaming about Rocky and Duke and all the dogs in the dog park, which was why I involuntarily barked in surprise when Fran led me out into the yard and there was another dog there!

  He was a compact, stocky, strong little guy named Chaucer. He carried the scent of Patsy’s cinnamon on his fur. We immediately began wrestling, as if we’d known each other for years.

  “This is what Toby needed,” Fran said to Patsy with a laugh. “Eddie says he’s seemed almost depressed.”

  “It’s a treat for Chaucer, too,” Patsy said.

  Chaucer and I both looked up. Treat?

  After that day, Chaucer came to visit a lot, and though I had Be Still to do, I always found time to wrestle with him.

  Other dogs sometimes came with families to be in the rooms with the beds, but they were always anxious and rarely wanted to play, even if they were let out in the yard.

  A few years went by like this. I was a good dog who had done many things and could be comfortable in my new role as the dog who belonged to no one and yet to everyone.

  When it was Happy Thanksgiving there were always lots of people and lots of smells and lots of treats for a deserving dog. When it was Merry Christmas time the women who wore blankets on their heads came to play with me and give me treats and to sit around the big indoor tree. There were cat toys on the tree, as always, but no cats to play with them.

  I felt content. I had a purpose—not as specific as taking care of CJ, but I still felt important.

  And then one afternoon I jerked out of my nap, my head cocked. “I need my shoes!” a woman called from one of the rooms.

  I instantly recognized her voice.

  Gloria.

  THIRTY

  I scampered down the corridor, nearly knocking over Fran as I barreled into the room. Gloria was in the bed, her strong perfumes filling the air, but I ignored her and focused on the thin woman standing next to her. It was my CJ, watching me in amusement.

  I completely broke protocol, abandoning the reserved composure I always adopted in people’s rooms, and instead leaped up on my girl, my paws reaching for her.

  “Wow!” she said.

  I sobbed, my tail low and beating the floor, spinning in circles and jumping. She reached out and put her hands around my face and I closed my eyes and groaned with the pleasure of feeling her touching me. CJ had come for me at last. Elation went through me in a shiver. I was back with my girl!

  “Toby! Get down,” Fran said.

  “It’s okay.” CJ dropped to her knees, her joints firing off snapping sounds as she bent them. “What a good doggy.”

  Her hair was short now and did not drape me as it once did. I licked her face. She smelled of sweet things, and of Gloria. CJ was, I realized, frail and weak, her hands trembling a little as they touched me. This meant I needed to contain myself, which seemed scarcely possible. I wanted to bark and run around the room and knock things over.

  “Toby is our therapy dog,” Fran explained. “He lives here. He comforts our guests—they really love having him around.”

  “Well, not Gloria,” CJ said with a laugh. She gazed fondly into my eyes. “Toby, you’re a therapeagle!”

  I wagged. Her voice had a slight quaver to it and sounded strained, but I loved hearing it all the same.

  “Clarity stole my money,” Gloria declared. “I want to go home. Call Jeffrey.” CJ sighed but kept stroking my head. Gloria, I realized, was still as unhappy as ever. She was also really old; I could tell by her smells. I had been around a lot of really old people lately.

  Patsy came in, smelling like cinnamon and Chaucer as usual. “Good morning, Gloria, how are you?” Patsy asked.

  “Nothing,” Gloria said. She slumped in her bed. “Nothing.”

  Patsy stayed with Gloria while CJ and Fran went into a little room with a small table. “Why, Toby, are you coming, too?” Fran laughed when I darted in the door before it closed.

  “Such a nice dog,” CJ said. I wagged.

  “He certainly seems to have taken a shine to you.”

  CJ sat in a chair, and I picked up a quick flash of pain as she did so. Concerned, I pressed my head to her knees. Her hand came down and absently petted me, a light tremor in the fingers. I closed my eyes. I had missed her so, so much, but now that she was here it was as if she had never left.

  “Gloria has good days and bad days. This is a pretty good day. Most of the time she’s not really lucid,” CJ said.

  I wagged. Even hearing Gloria’s name spoken by CJ gave me pleasure.

  “Alzheimer’s can be so cruel, its progression so inconsistent,” Fran replied.

  “That thing about the money drives me crazy. She tells everyone I stole her fortune and her house. The truth is I’ve been supporting her the past fifteen years—and of course whatever I sent her, it was never enough.”

  “In my experience there nearly always will be unresolved issues in situations like this.”

  “I know. And I should be better able to cope with it all. I’m also a psychologist.”

  “Yes, I saw that from your file. Do you want to talk about how that affects your relationship with your mother?”

  CJ took a deep, reflective breath. “I guess. The light went on for me in grad school—Gloria’s a narcissist, so she never really questions her own behavior or thinks she’s ever done anything to apologize for. So no, th
ere will never be any closure with her—there wasn’t a chance at that even when she was fully functional. But a lot of children have narcissistic injuries, so having her for a parent has really helped me with my work.”

  “Which is in high schools?” Fran asked.

  “Sometimes. My specialty is working with eating disorders, which are nearly always most acute in adolescent girls. I’m semi-retired, though.”

  I realized at that moment that there was a ball under one of Fran’s cabinets. I went over and stuck my nose under there, inhaling deeply. It had Chaucer’s scent painted on it. What was Chaucer doing with a ball in here?

  “I also read that you’ve been on dialysis for more than twenty-two years? I hope you don’t mind my asking, but it would seem you’d be a good candidate for a transplant. Was that never a consideration?”

  “I guess I don’t mind answering that,” CJ said, “though I’m not sure what these questions have to do with Gloria.”

  I dug at the ball with my paws, touching it but otherwise failing to dislodge it.

  “Hospice isn’t just about the guest. It’s about the needs of the whole family. The better we know you, the better we can serve you,” Fran said.

  “All right, sure. I did have a transplant, actually—the twenty-two years is cumulative. I received a kidney from a cadaver donor when I was in my thirties. It gave me more than two decades before it began to fail. They call it chronic rejection, and there’s really nothing that can be done about it. I restarted dialysis seventeen years ago.”

  “What about another transplant?”

  CJ sighed. “In the end, there are just so few organs available. I couldn’t see taking one when there were others more deserving who were waiting in line.”

  “More deserving?”

  “I destroyed my kidneys in a suicide attempt when I was twenty-five years old. There are children who are born with conditions that, through no fault of their own, require transplant. I’d already taken one. I wasn’t going to use up another.”

  “I see.”

  CJ laughed. “The way you just said that brought back about fifty hours of psychoanalysis. Believe me, I’ve thought this all out.”

  I leaned into CJ’s leg, hoping she’d get the ball for me.

  “Thank you for even discussing it, then,” Fran said. “It just helps to know.”

  “Oh, my mother would have mentioned it to you. She delights in telling everybody I drank anti-freeze. I’ve had her in assisted care for the past three years—she had all the people there convinced I was the spawn of the devil.…”

  I yawned in agitation. Did no one else care about the ball?

  “What is it? Why did you just pause?” Fran asked after a moment.

  “I was just thinking that maybe she won’t tell you. She’s been more and more unresponsive, and, of course, she’s pretty much stopped eating. I guess part of me is having trouble adjusting to the idea that this is truly the end.”

  “It’s hard,” Fran said, “to lose someone who has been so important in your life.”

  “I didn’t think it would be,” CJ said very quietly.

  “You’ve experienced loss before.”

  “Oh, yes.”

  I sat up, watching my girl, the ball forgotten. She reached for a fluffy piece of paper and pressed it to her eyes. “My husband, Trent, died last fall.”

  They sat quietly. My girl reached down to me and I licked her hand. “That’s how I came to be exposed to hospice. Trent passed peacefully, surrounded by people who cared about him.”

  There was another long, sad pause. I liked hearing Trent’s name, but there was no scent of him clinging to CJ. It was similar to when, as Max, I realized Rocky’s smells were no longer all over Trent. I knew what it meant when a smell faded away, whether it was man or dog.

  It was good to be with CJ, but I was sad to think I would never see Trent again.

  “Does Gloria’s disease stir up feelings about your husband?” Fran asked gently.

  “Not really. This is so different. Besides, I always have feelings about Trent. He was the friend I could always turn to who never asked for anything for himself. I think for a long time I modeled my understanding of love based on my relationship with my mother. When I finally shook that off, Trent was waiting for me, and we had the most wonderful life together. I couldn’t have children, so it was just the two of us, but he made every day seem special. He liked to surprise me with trips—and planning a getaway when your wife needs dialysis takes some doing. But that was Trent, the most capable man I’ve ever met. He could do whatever he decided to do. Through everything that happened—and it was no picnic, with my transplant and the immunosuppressants and the trips to the emergency room—he was always my rock. Even now, I can’t really believe he’s gone.”

  “He sounds very special,” Fran said. “I would have liked to have known him.”

  From that day forward, my girl would come to visit Gloria and I would greet her at the door and stay by her side until she left. Sometimes CJ pulled treats out of her pocket and fed them to me without me having to do any tricks. “Such a good dog,” she would whisper.

  Eddie told me I was a good dog, too, and he reinforced the sentiment with meat treats!

  “‘Dog’ is ‘God’ spelled backward; you know that. That’s why you’re here, to help the nuns do God’s work. So I figure a little stew meat between us boys is the least I can give you,” Eddie said. I never knew what he was saying, but his treats were the best I’d ever had!

  Just as I had once watched the baby Clarity for Ethan, I now reasoned that it was my job to take care of Gloria for CJ. I spent a lot of time in Gloria’s room even when CJ wasn’t there with her. I didn’t try to jump on Gloria’s bed, though, because the one time I tried it her eyes were filled with terror and she screamed at me.

  Some people just don’t appreciate having a dog around. It’s sad to think there are people like that. I knew Gloria was that way—maybe that’s why she could never be truly happy.

  Fran and CJ became friends and often ate lunch together out in the courtyard. I would lie at their feet and watch for falling crumbs.

  Falling crumbs were my specialty.

  “I’ve got a question for you,” CJ told Fran at one of these lunches, “but I want you to think about it before answering.”

  “That’s exactly what my husband said to me when he proposed,” Fran replied. They both laughed.

  I wagged at CJ’s laughter. She seemed to have so many sharp pains digging at her from inside; I could sense them from the way she’d start and gasp when she moved, or when she exhaled in a long, loud sigh as she carefully sat down. Any time she laughed, though, the pain seemed to retreat.

  “Well, it’s not that kind of proposal,” CJ said. “What I’m thinking is that I’d like to work here at the hospice. In counseling, I mean. I see how hard it is for you and Patsy and Mona to keep up—and I’d volunteer. I really don’t need money.”

  “What about your current practice?”

  “I’ve been winding that down for a long time—I only work as a consultant now as it is. To tell you the truth, I’m finding it harder and harder to relate to teenagers—or maybe it’s the other way around. I tell them I identify with what they are going through and I see the skepticism in their eyes—to them, there’s little difference between being in your seventies and being a hundred years old.”

  “We normally discourage any volunteer relationships with the hospice by family members until a year after the guest has passed.”

  “I know; you said that. That’s why I want you to think about it—I believe an exception could be made for me. I know very, very well what it’s like to lie in bed and feel horrible—I do it three times a week. And certainly what I’m going through with Gloria gives me tremendous insight into how families feel.”

  “How is your mother?”

  “She’s … It won’t be much longer.”

  “You’ve been a good daughter, CJ.”

  “Y
eah, well, maybe under the circumstances. Not sure Gloria will agree, or would ever have agreed. So will you think about it?”

  “Of course. I’ll talk to the director and to the nuns about it, too. It’s really up to them, you know. The rest of us are just employees.”

  About a week after that, I was sitting at CJ’s feet in Gloria’s room when I felt a change come over Gloria. I could hear that her breathing was getting lighter and lighter, and then it would stop, and then she’d take a couple of deep breaths. With each cycle, though, the breathing was weaker, the exhalations more gentle.

  She was passing.

  I jumped up on the chair next to her and looked at her face. Her eyes were closed, her mouth open, her hands clutched across her chest. I glanced back at CJ, who was asleep. I knew she would want to be awake, so I barked, a single, sharp yip that sounded very loud in the silent room.

  My girl awoke with a start. “What is it, Toby?” She stood and came over to stand beside me. I lifted my nose and licked her fingers. “Oh,” she said. After a moment, she reached down and clutched Gloria’s hand in hers. I saw tears falling from her eyes and could feel the sad pain in her. We stood like that for several minutes.

  “Good-bye, Mom,” CJ finally said. “I love you.”

  When Gloria took her last breath and faded away, CJ went back to her chair and sat down. I jumped into her lap and curled up and she held me, rocking softly. I did what I could for her, being with her as she grieved.

  At the end of that day, I walked with CJ and Fran to the front doors.

  “I’ll see you at the service,” Fran said. They hugged. “Are you sure you’re okay to go home alone?”

  “I’m okay. To tell you the truth, it’s actually a relief to have it over with.”

  “I know.”