The statistics relating to sexual assault in the United States are still abhorrent, and there is still a long way to go in this battle, especially considering the right wing’s insistent attack on women, including our contraception, our freedom of choice and even the very definition of ‘rape.’ We have to stay strong, and we have to get louder.

This Valentine’s Day, instead of giving the gift of candy or jewelry, give the gift of doing your part to end the epidemic of violence against women across the world. Give to RAINN if you are able. Thank you.

http://jennifersummer.com/artemis/

http://RAINN.org/

watercolor image © erin darcy

The day before, we had our poodle, Ace, put to sleep.  It was an agonizing experience, but it was necessary.  He had kidney failure and was in a great deal of pain.  We’d had Ace since I was five.  Before Ace, we had Champ, another poodle.  I was the one who found Champ when he died.  Deb and Nana were getting ready to take me back to my house and I went inside one last time to kiss him before I left.  But, when I leaned down, his face looked funny; he looked different.  Liquid oozed from his lips.  I ran back outside and said to Deb, “Something is wrong with Champ.  He’s blowing bubbles.”

That morning, a Saturday, the day after having buried Ace, Deb, Nana and I went to the movies.  We saw some stupid movie about a family who goes camping and gets chased by a killer or…something.  I cried silently through the whole movie, as did Deb.  We went to dinner and just kind of pushed the food around the plates.  I burst into tears and said, “Can’t we just go the mall and hold the dogs?  I just have to hold a dog.”  So, we did.  And we wound up at Petland.

Right before we had Ace put to sleep, we took him on one last ride in the car so he could hold his head out the window and let his ears blow in the wind.  We asked him to please come back in another dog so we could love him again.  When something you love is dying, you can believe in almost anything if you just convince yourself completely enough.  We believed that Ace not only heard us, but also understood and would of course do whatever he could to be with us again.

We walked through Petland and looked at dogs.  They were all precious, as most dogs are, little balls of newborn fluff, shipped directly from the horrors of the puppy mills.  But one little dog caught my attention.  One little dog looked through his glass window and his eyes weren’t just any eyes – they were Ace’s eyes.

It was instant love. I begged.  I pleaded.  I cried.  Deb started to waver.  Nana was the only one who said, “Has anyone noticed that this dog hasn’t stopped coughing and sneezing?”  ”Oh, he’s fine,” Rachel, our ‘pet counselor’ told us.  ”It’s probably just a cold.”

We didn’t have a whole lot of money back then.  We went around to several ATMs, using various credit cards and accounts to pull out enough money to buy Bear for the ‘reduced price’ of about $400.  I sat on the floor of the pet store and played with him, crying the whole time, while Nana continued to insist that he was sick.  ”He just needs vitamins,” Rachel says.  ”And his antibiotic.”  Oh, so he is sick.

Several hours and many dollars later, we were on our way home with Bear.  We chose his name in the car when I said that he reminded me of a tiny stuffed teddy bear.  The next Saturday was the day of Nana’s craft show at a local church.  She and Deb headed over early in the morning and I stayed home with Bear.  He wouldn’t eat, kept throwing up and having severe diarrhea.  Deb and Nana came home and Nana called the pet store.

“Hello, having a wonderful day at Petland!” they answered.
“I sure as hell am not having a wonderful day,” Nana responded.  ”I bought a dog from you last week and he’s extremely sick and needs medical attention.”
“Oh, that’s okay, it happens,” was the response.  ”If he dies, just have an autopsy done and if it concludes he was sick when you bought him, we’ll replace him.”

Now, if you haven’t met Nana, you probably don’t know for sure what her response to that was.  If you have met Nana, you are most likely cowering in a corner and hiding your face at this point.

“Is that how you think life works?  Do you think we treat our animals like they’re appliances?  They’re our family.  Listen to me.  I am going to take this dog to the vet and you are going to pay every single damn one of his medical bills and I don’t care if I have to fly in the top animal doctors in the country.  Do you know the people I know?  Let me tell you who I know.  I know Howard Ain.  I will call him.  I am good friends with Tom Brokaw (um, what), I’ll call him, too.  I worked at The Colony downtown.  Do you think I’ve lost those connections?  Oh, no, sir.  This dog will be healed and you will pay for every cent of it.  Got it?”

That night, we took him to a highly recommended animal hospital in Mason, Ohio, which was a forty-five minute drive from our house.  They ushered Bear in quickly, got him examined and an I.V. started.  ”Of course,” they said, “there will be no payment necessary.”  Upon testing, they determined that Bear had Parvo. Not only that, but every puppy he had come into contact with at Petland more than likely also had Parvo.  They told us it would almost definitely kill him.

We were not about to accept that.

We were not about to bury another dog.

We were already hopelessly in love with him.

At the very least, they said, he would have extreme heart damage from the virus and, if he did survive it as a puppy, the heart damage would probably drastically shorten his life.  He would have to be hospitalized for at least two weeks, receiving 24 hour care and I.V. antibiotics.  Okay, we said.  Do it.

Every single night, when Deb got home from work, she and I would drive out to Mason to see him.  I would take my homework with me.  We’d sit on the floor and talk to him, tell him how much we needed him to get better, how strong he was, how precious.  We’d take turns cradling him and kissing his little nose.  Each time we would visit, he would get a little stronger.  His tail would start to wag when he’d see us come in, his eyes would light.  We were his people and he knew it.  And he fought for us.

After the long two weeks, the vet released him to come home.  We asked how she thought he would do, how long he would live, what the lasting damage would be.  She smiled weakly and said, “You know what you should do?  You should just enjoy him.  Just enjoy the time you have with him.”

That was eighteen years ago.

Here he is during his first few days home from the hospital.

In that second picture, you can see his little band-aid from where he had his I.V.

Bear didn’t just recover, Bear thrived.  He was vivacious, spunky, smart and extremely affectionate.  Nana loved him gruffly, from afar, as she did all the pets.  But she would have taken a bullet for him, and we all knew it, including (especially) Bear.  She would pat his head, let him sit in her chair with her and scratch his ears, but she wouldn’t kiss him like Deb and I were constantly doing.  That is, unless it was a major holiday.  And on those days, we’d make her kiss him.  Sometimes the ‘major holiday’ would just be a Tuesday.

Bear would sit on my bed and lick my face when I would cry, sit on my lap while I read, making a little whining sound when I’d have the nerve to stop scratching his belly.  He’d go on trips with us, we’d take him for rides to get hamburgers, he’d get free ice cream cones from McDonald’s, dog bones at the bank.  I could never get away with sneaking in (or out) of the house past curfew because he’d hear me and bark his damn head off.  We’d ask him, “Want to go for a ride?!” and he’d cock his head so far to the right he looked like some kind of wind-up toy.

When Deb had surgery once, she told me on the phone how much she missed holding Bear while she was in the hospital.  So, what did Nana and I do?  Yep.  We shoved him in a duffel bag and took him up to her hospital room.  The nurse said, “I think something in your bag is moving.”  Nana replied, “I have no idea what you’re talking about.”  We closed the door, plopped Bear on Deb’s bed and he proceeded to excitedly lick the tears from her face.

If something was wrong with me, Deb would say, “Do you need Bear?” and then she’d just bring him over and hand him to me or tuck him into my bed with me.  Bear could solve everything.  The question of “Do you need Bear?” made perfect sense.  Of course we needed Bear.

When Nana became very sick, near the end, we couldn’t get Bear to leave her side.  He’d spend every moment tucked in next to her in her chair and if she was in her bed, he stayed on her feet.  If we’d try to move him, he’d growl.  He was sad.

After Nana passed, and I had long ago moved out and gotten married, Deb and Bear became the dynamic duo.  She took him everywhere with her.  She got him a doggie car seat for the backseat of her car.  As he got older, she decided she would get him a stroller so she could push him around for walks at the park.  You no longer got cards and gifts from Deb, you got cards and gifts from Deb and Bear.  She took him with her one day to a consignment store for baby and children’s items and left Bear out in the car with the windows down slightly (it was spring).  She explained to the employee what kind of stroller she was looking for.

“Well, how big is he?” the saleswoman asked.

“Oh,” Deb said. “About yay big,” and held her hands out.

“Oh.  Well…”

Deb said, “I just want something nice to push him around the park in.  You know, on nice days.  He needs fresh air sometime.”

The woman looked at her strangely.  ”Um…right.  Where is he?”

“Oh, he’s out in the backseat of the car.  He’s sleeping, I didn’t want to wake him up and I wasn’t sure if you’d allow him in here.”

<insert woman’s horrified expression here>

“Wait right here,” the woman told Deb.  She soon returned with her manager who told Deb that he would have to retain her so he could call Child Protective Services.

“Oh my God,” Deb said.  ”I just assumed you knew I was talking about my dog!” and she took them out to the car and showed them Bear.  She left with a pretty blue stroller and a very good story.

This is the last video I took of him, two years ago.

His hearing went first.  Before, he had always gone absolutely apeshit crazy when anyone rang the doorbell and one day he just stopped.  We’d pound our feet on the floor and yell, “BEAR!” and watch him look around in confusion.  And then his vision started to go.  We could see the cataracts in his eyes.  He’d stumble into things, fall into crevices.  Deb had to put up gates and pieces of cardboard in little maze shapes to keep him from falling into a hole or corner when she wasn’t home.  She had to put lights above his food and water dish so that he could see where to go to eat and drink.  And he had to start wearing diapers; men’s urinary guards, to be exact.  Last year, his breath became so unbearably awful that we just knew something was very wrong.  The vet determined that his back molars were rotten and he had surgery and had almost all of his back teeth removed.  The bad breath was gone instantly and he recovered from that just fine.

And then, recently, he started having seizures.  I never saw one, for which I’m very grateful, but according to Deb they were pretty awful.  The vet began to prescribe him a doggie sedative to keep him relaxed and hopefully thwart any seizures before they began.

She took him to the vet one more time this past Monday because he had had another seizure.  The vet said that his heart, which had always been exceptionally strong, contrary to the damage from the Parvo, seemed much weaker than it had the last time he saw him.  Bear stopped being able to use his legs.  You’d stand him up and his legs would slowly, slowly, slowly slide out to the sides and he’d be flat to the ground.

Deb called me on Tuesday, crying, and told me, “Bear is definitely dying.”  Dakota and I went right over and I sat on the bed and held him for about two hours.

I looked into those sweet little eyes that had led me to him when I was just a teenager, unsure of everything within and around me, except that abiding love exists and I knew that we would have that in him.  His breathing was uneven and he was extremely lethargic due to the Valium, but if I’d put him down he’d yelp like a baby seal, so I just kept holding him.  The day before we had unseasonably warm temperatures, so the ground had softened a bit.  As I held Bear, Deb was outside, digging.

Deb tried to sit him up and get him to rally so I could take a few photos of him.

Dakota and I went home with a heavy heart.

The next day, Tuesday, yesterday.  I went back to Deb’s as soon as I dropped Dakota off at school.  I held him again, just like I’d held Dakota when he was a newborn, swaddled, his head in the crook of my arm.  I sat like that for two hours.

Last night, Deb called me around 8:00 and said, “I think Bear is taking his final breaths.”  Luckily, our dear friend Mary was able to come and sit with Dakota and I rushed back to Deb’s.  He was slipping away fast, his bowels and bladder releasing, his eyes rolling back in his head ever so slightly.  But the oddest thing was that he suddenly smelled like a baby.  His nose, his face, his lips; they all had that very distinctive, newborn puppy smell.  I kept my lips pressed against his nose, and I breathed in time with him.  From the kitchen I heard Deb:  ”Mom, please just take him.  Please take him.  Please, please, Mom, take him, please.”

She came back in and we cleaned him thoroughly, wrapped him completely in a fluffy blanket.  I kept holding him, rocking him back and forth.  Deb went out to the kitchen and did what we thought was the most humane thing to do: she filled a syringe with the remaining amount of liquid Valium.  All the while, I just started whispering things in his ear, things like what a good boy he had been, what a good, good dog he was, how he’d get to see Nana and Ace and Champ, and how he had been so strong to beat Parvo.

His breathing changed.  ”Deb, Deb, Deb, Deb,” I called, frantically.  She came in and released the Valium into this throat, but I don’t think it did anything or even went fully down.  His head tipped straight back, in excruciatingly slow-motion, a tiny sigh escaped his mouth, his lips parted gently, and then his head came back forward, almost as slowly, and fell against my chest.

No breathing.

Deb grabbed her stethoscope and placed it to his chest.  ”Oh my God,” she said.  ”His heart.  His heart is still beating.”  She placed the ear buds in my ears and I heard it, too.  thump…………..thump……….thump……………thump.  Slow and weak.  But steady.

“He’s still alive,” Deb said.  She pried his lips open and blew into his mouth.  I pressed down on his chest.  A pause.  More air into his mouth.  Press.  A beat.  More air.  She brought the stethoscope back to his chest.  ”Do you hear it?” she asked.

thump……………….thump………………

…….

And that was it.  I shook my head no.

For almost a full two minutes after he stopped breathing, his heart had continued to beat.  His heart, that was supposed to be the most frail of his organs because of his near-death as a baby is what had outlived the rest of him.  His heart didn’t want to let go.

We put his favorite sweatshirt on him.  We sprinkled some powder on his belly.  We placed him inside the Rubbermaid container Deb had gotten for him and in between his paws, we placed his soft ‘duckie’, the toy that we had gotten him when he had only been with us a few weeks, the toy he had loved faithfully for all these years.  And then we softly sprinkled tiny handfuls of Nana’s ashes on his body.

I came back to my house to retrieve Stroke Mouth, who, I know, I know, was still in my freezer.  Deb said we could bury them side by side.  We took them both out to the hole she had dug the day before, but the rain had filled it with water and the mud was unbelievable.  We fumbled in the dark, sliding this way and that.  I had run out of the house in such a hurry that I had just grabbed the first pair of shoes I’d seen.

Deb sank down into the hole to get the rest of the water out of it.  And when I say ‘sank’, I mean that quite literally.  The mud sucked her in like a swamp.  She said, “I feel like Jimmy Hoffa in his cement shoes.”  We stood in the dark, a tiny flashlight illuminating our work.

When it was done, we went inside.  She gave me the last sweatshirt he had worn to his vet visit, his name tag that was on his collar and a small baggie of some of his hair that she had snipped off the day before.  I slept with the shirt, and put his tag on my keychain.

I’ve never seen anyone die.  I don’t know how yet, but I feel changed.  Deeply and irrevocably changed.  I don’t yet see the beauty in it.   I feel haunted and devastated.  But I don’t feel cheated or like life is unfair.  Bear was a dog who really did beat all odds and lived an absolutely beautiful life, one to be envied by dogs the world over.  And it’s easy to say, “He lived a long, happy life,” but the truth is, the longer that someone you love lives, the harder it is to finally lose them.

Bear: You were a wonderful dog.  You were my baby boy, my friend, my love.  I already miss you so much.  The house feels empty and odd without you.  I’ll never forget you and I’ll never stop loving you.  Thank you for trusting me with your life – literally – down to the last moment.

–

And now it was evening.
And Almitra the seeress said, “Blessed be this day and this place and your spirit that has spoken.”
And he answered, Was it I who spoke? Was I not also a listener?
Then he descended the steps of the Temple and all the people followed him. And he reached his ship and stood upon the deck.
And facing the people again, he raised his voice and said:
People of Orphalese, the wind bids me leave you.
Less hasty am I than the wind, yet I must go.
We wanderers, ever seeking the lonelier way, begin no day where we have ended another day; and no sunrise finds us where sunset left us.
Even while the earth sleeps we travel. We are the seeds of the tenacious plant, and it is in our ripeness and our fullness of heart that we are given to the wind and are scattered.
Brief were my days among you, and briefer still the words I have spoken.
But should my voice fade in your ears, and my love vanish in your memory, then I will come again,
And with a richer heart and lips more yielding to the spirit will I speak.
Yea, I shall return with the tide,
And though death may hide me, and the greater silence enfold me, yet again will I seek your understanding.

- ‘The Farewell’ | Kahlil Gibran

Named after many trips to Findlay Market with my dear friend Mary, this is the only bag you will ever need for trips to your local farmer’s market. Made from a natural linen, this bag is absolutely enormous, measuring at 21 x 20 inches. The strap is very long so it may be worn across the body, leaving your hands free instead of having to pull your bag up on your shoulder repeatedly as it gets heavier from all your shopping! The front of the bag features a long rectangular pocket that is the perfect size to allow a cell phone to slip easily inside. On the inside side of the bag, a small metal ring holds a matching zipper purse, perfect for holding your cash, credit cards and I.D. No more having to dig through a huge bag to grab your money in a hurry; everything is at your fingertips.

Constructed with a light-colored natural linen and lined with a heavy, 1970s vintage pattern material, this bag may be washed in your machine on the delicate cycle and then tumbled dry on low. The bag may also be ironed.

Support our environment by using your own bag for groceries and do it in style!

This bag may be purchased here. And stay tuned: I’ll be making more in this style soon!