on Gigi, and death, and stories
Sep. 17th, 2005 06:39 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
edenfallingMy dog will be euthanized on Monday, if she hasn't already died by then.
She's 15 and a half years old. She's had a good long run, and her eyesight and hearing started going last year. Now her kidneys have nearly given out. It's a painless death, as these things go.
My parents will collect her ashes. They may bury some in their backyard, but I asked them to take at least part of Gigi's remains to the island, because they'll sell the house sooner or later, but the cabin isn't going anywhere, and I want to be able to visit her.
It is cosmically wrong that dogs and cats and horses don't live as long as the people who love them.
It's even worse that not half an hour after I finished talking to my parents, I found myself plotting how to use my emotions as grist for a story about Ekanu leaving her dogs when she first travels to Estara.
There are times I hate being a writer. I'm always living at least a fraction to the side of myself, watching, studying, and recording. Everything is food for stories. Everything gets dissected and analyzed. I can't feel an emotion with all of myself for more than twenty minutes, tops, before I step back from myself and start working out how to use this new feeling, this new event.
My dog is dying, and I'm turning her into a story.
Yes, it's immortality of a sort. But it's not her. And I want to be thinking about her.
I said goodbye to Gigi on Monday, when my dad drove me back up to Ithaca. He took a couple pictures of the two of us, out in the yard in the sun. I hugged her, and petted her, and scratched behind her ears and on the ruff of her neck, and she leaned into the scratching the way she always does, with her hind leg making vague sympathy scratching motions in the air.
I knew she wasn't doing well. I knew she was getting more and more tired, and drinking more, and on a special diet. But I thought I had months, not days. I thought I'd see her at Thanksgiving, at Christmas.
I could go down on Monday, to hold her and pet her while she dies, while they sedate her and feed in some poison that kills her brain. But I'm a coward. I can't take that. I'm not strong enough to make that choice, to be there as she stops.
Gigi has been a constant for more than half my life.
She's beautiful. She's half black lab, half beagle, and her coat is brindle, with each hair a different color -- black, brown, tan, auburn... and gray and white. Her eyes are brown, and when the sun hits them a certain way, they shine blue-green with reflected light. Her lip doesn't always close correctly over her teeth after she yawns, so it looks like she's snarling, but she can't actually feel that her teeth are exposed. She never understood how to play fetch, but she loved to tear around the back yard, and come when someone called her. She was suspicious of strangers and growled at anyone who showed fear or acted too friendly, but she loved us. She would lie down in patches of sun near where I was reading or working, and we'd be quiet together. She'd roll on her back and stretch to let me rub and scratch her belly. She hated baths, but she liked to wade in the shallow water at the edge of Cass Lake, and she thought the whole island was her private kingdom.
When we first got her, my mom tried to anthropomorphize her by calling me and Vicky her sisters. I told her that no, Gigi was not my sister. I was human; she was a dog. But Gigi was definitely a member of the family. I loved her. I love her.
And now she's gone.
She's 15 and a half years old. She's had a good long run, and her eyesight and hearing started going last year. Now her kidneys have nearly given out. It's a painless death, as these things go.
My parents will collect her ashes. They may bury some in their backyard, but I asked them to take at least part of Gigi's remains to the island, because they'll sell the house sooner or later, but the cabin isn't going anywhere, and I want to be able to visit her.
It is cosmically wrong that dogs and cats and horses don't live as long as the people who love them.
It's even worse that not half an hour after I finished talking to my parents, I found myself plotting how to use my emotions as grist for a story about Ekanu leaving her dogs when she first travels to Estara.
There are times I hate being a writer. I'm always living at least a fraction to the side of myself, watching, studying, and recording. Everything is food for stories. Everything gets dissected and analyzed. I can't feel an emotion with all of myself for more than twenty minutes, tops, before I step back from myself and start working out how to use this new feeling, this new event.
My dog is dying, and I'm turning her into a story.
Yes, it's immortality of a sort. But it's not her. And I want to be thinking about her.
I said goodbye to Gigi on Monday, when my dad drove me back up to Ithaca. He took a couple pictures of the two of us, out in the yard in the sun. I hugged her, and petted her, and scratched behind her ears and on the ruff of her neck, and she leaned into the scratching the way she always does, with her hind leg making vague sympathy scratching motions in the air.
I knew she wasn't doing well. I knew she was getting more and more tired, and drinking more, and on a special diet. But I thought I had months, not days. I thought I'd see her at Thanksgiving, at Christmas.
I could go down on Monday, to hold her and pet her while she dies, while they sedate her and feed in some poison that kills her brain. But I'm a coward. I can't take that. I'm not strong enough to make that choice, to be there as she stops.
Gigi has been a constant for more than half my life.
She's beautiful. She's half black lab, half beagle, and her coat is brindle, with each hair a different color -- black, brown, tan, auburn... and gray and white. Her eyes are brown, and when the sun hits them a certain way, they shine blue-green with reflected light. Her lip doesn't always close correctly over her teeth after she yawns, so it looks like she's snarling, but she can't actually feel that her teeth are exposed. She never understood how to play fetch, but she loved to tear around the back yard, and come when someone called her. She was suspicious of strangers and growled at anyone who showed fear or acted too friendly, but she loved us. She would lie down in patches of sun near where I was reading or working, and we'd be quiet together. She'd roll on her back and stretch to let me rub and scratch her belly. She hated baths, but she liked to wade in the shallow water at the edge of Cass Lake, and she thought the whole island was her private kingdom.
When we first got her, my mom tried to anthropomorphize her by calling me and Vicky her sisters. I told her that no, Gigi was not my sister. I was human; she was a dog. But Gigi was definitely a member of the family. I loved her. I love her.
And now she's gone.
