Gen's Dog Died (From the book Marilyn & Me)

‘Gen’s dog just died.’ Marilyn’s just rolled in from her sister’s house. ‘The funeral’s today at one. Kathy will dig the hole in Gen’s backyard. I thought you’d maybe do a couple of shovels full.’ I say I will and ask if we’ll sing a hymn. She said to choose one. I’d been joking, now I was the soloist. I scanned my archives—Old Shep? I’ll sing it like Elvis, wrench the tears from the congregation. Or take my guitar and sing Bach’s B Minor Mass, hum the words I may have forgotten.

Pebbles slept all night and during the morning when we went for a walk she slept some more. It was noon when we got back and she was getting up. I asked her if she wanted to do the oratorio and she wagged her tail. I wish I could do that when someone needed an answer right away. They’d know I was working on it. Pebbles is deaf but can read lips. Not just selectively deaf like Marilyn when I’m saying something about consciousness, ethos or samadhi, or me when she’s planning a revamp of the bedroom that is completely filled by our bed and a dresser.

Marilyn says Pebbles can come, and there will be the four of us for the service and internment. It won’t take long. I am on a No fast so I say Yes to everything. I’m getting so mellow these days I hardly recognize me. I smiled at myself in the mirror this morning. I like saying Yes, or Let me think about it, will you please? Last night when we discussed changing some travel plans, instead of me falling to pieces I simply said my brain wasn’t working and could we try again another day? Marilyn was touched by my honesty and didn’t pursue it.

We drove over the few blocks to the house where Gen and Earl had raised eight kids. The house was tiny, not much bigger than the garage, but had a huge backyard. The tractor tire the kids had swung on in the tree 50 years ago was still hanging there.

There were three pines all planted at the same time, the one in the middle was full and tall, the second was closest to the woods and was middling to okay, but the third one closest to the house was as raggedy as QT. The sandy soil here was perfect for digging the grave and Marilyn and I got to it with two spades Kathy brought. No one said anything but I think we were all rooting for the little tree making a comeback as it was nourished by QT’s closeness to its roots.

Kathy brought the bag with the small corpse and unwrapped it, peeled back the blue wrap and we laid him to rest about two feet down. QT’s eyes were open and still shiny. Something wet dribbled onto my hands. We swept the sandy dirt in with our hands until he was covered then used the spades to finish up, Kathy arranging the burial site by replacing the turf and laying on a rectangular stone that would be the base for the marble slab one of Jen’s kids had left over from a job. Gen was going to paint a scene with a live QT running about on it.

Kathy had helped bury a much earlier family dog named Duffy next to the thriving pine. She took us over and pulled the rotting post out to better show us the commemorative words she’d burned into the wood. Marilyn had assumed Duffy was Gen’s husband. She was horrified to be hearing they’d buried Earl in the backyard and appalled by the nonchalance with which her sister was uprooting Earl’s cross to show us her handiwork.

Back at QT’s grave Gen was crying quietly, upset by her emotion. She told Marilyn her mom always told her when she was little not to cry when the dogs or the lambs the kids hand-fed at their farm died, and here she was doing it anyway. Marilyn hugged her saying It’s okay to die, I mean cry. Kathy hugged her too. I wanted to but felt three hugs might be too much all at once. I was inclining toward the car carrying one of the spades back to Kathy’s station wagon. I got halfway there before I had to go back to Gen.