I have been extraordinarily lucky that very few people who were close to me have died. My father died over twenty years ago, & my grandparents (on my mother's side) not too long before that, but I was never close to my father (he descended into alcoholism when I was four), & might have been closer to my mother's parents if they hadn't lived in Germany. No, the two major deaths I've had to deal with in my life were two of my cats: Blue Boy, who died in 1999, & Buster, about whom I wrote
here. I have emptinesses in my heart from the loss of the two of them, emptinesses that never go away. Other animals come & take up space in my life, but they create new space for themselves in my heart, & I worry as I get older that the absences will be larger than the filled spaces. I think all people worry about that as they age.
We lost George, our eldest beagle, to cancer on December 10, 2012. The sadness & grief have not left me. I had never lost a dog before, & as much as I love cats, one's relationship to a dog is intrinsically more emotional. They have co-evolved with human for thousands of years, & they learn to read your emotions, they learn to be a comfort & they learn to protect you. I don't know if any animal "loves" the way humans do, but whatever it is that is "love" in a dog is often more profoundly real & deep than what any other human could ever offer.
I don't know if I can write as much about George as I did about Buster because I am still deep in my grief. He was my wife's dog first, he saved her life when she was broken & he was first & foremost her best friend. She adopted him from a hound rescue place in Austin, who rescued him from some rich twats in Austin who kept him chained to a tree outside for the first two years of him life. There's a bumper sticker we often see: "Who rescued whom?" George & Magda rescued each other, & his love for her - well, I don't know if I can ever love her as much as he loved her.
It was hard for me, as a cat person, to get used to George. George would climb between me & Magda in bed when she & I first met, so he saw me as much as a rival as I saw him. He had had some issues with men as well - perhaps his old twatty rich Austin owners had kicked him around - & I remember the first time I leaned over to pet George, he peed on me. I tried not to take it personally.
Of the two of us, Magda spent the most time with George. They would go on long walks, he'd go to school with her, he'd be next to her at night. He was a very loud dog, & he would cry & bark when we left & howled his happiness when we returned. He was a charmer, very handsome, & I admit with sadness I was always a little jealous of him in those early days. He was crafty, too - at the first Christmas I spent with Magda at my family's place, with no one watching him, he ate an entire cheese log in one triumphant gulp. It wasn't the first time he managed to steal food - as Magda has put it, "Gary never had a birthday cake that didn't have dog bites in it."
In 2004, we adopted another beagle, Ringo - I thought it was for Magda, & so did she - but it turns out, Ringo was a present for George. They became fast friends & partners in crime. (I wish Ringo could talk - it's hard to ascribe feelings to an animal - but I don't know how he's dealing with George's loss.) I didn't go on walks with Magda & the boys in those days - not much, anyway - but she'd take them off leash & the two of them would go wandering, having adventures we'll never know about. & always, always coming home.
It goes without saying that everyone adored George. He was prone to love others, too. When the band Bearsuit stayed at our place during SXSW in - gosh, I guess it was 2008 - I often found George sleeping on the futon with Iain. He had a twinkle in his eye & a spring in his step - he really did - I loved to watch him prance. He was a little big for a beagle - perhaps he was a mixed breed - so he had a deer-like quality to him.
I started feeding the dogs around the time Winston came along - that was in 2007. He was our third beagle & our problem child. He's a dwarf, & taking care of him because of his health issues became our focus (although to her credit, Magda would carry him on her daily walks, because he, too, wanted to be with George - & Ringo, naturally). Beagles, it might not surprise you to know, don't share well, no matter how good friends they are, & Magda was never able to discipline them. Dinnertime was a raucous mess. I took over just so there wouldn't be as much shouting. At that point, & when I began regularly giving them treats for going outside, it seems to have dawned on the dogs that I was the "alpha" in the household, & not just some guy who was around, & George started to pay more attention to me.
It wasn't until we moved to West Virginia, though, that he & I really became friends. I was home more, I went on walks with them, & we had the time to get to know one another. George was a senior citizen then, 11 or so, therefore less of a spazz, & I had the leisure to play with them. I finally understood what Magda had seen in him, & you can say we fell in love, because we did.
This is so hard to write. George hurt himself jumping off a porch sometime in the summer of 2010. He slowly recovered but even so he couldn't go on the super-long walks we do daily. We bought him a carriage to carry him around in, & surprisingly, he didn't much complain. He just loved to go on walks. He loved to be with us & with his brothers. He also loved that I gave him treats as we walked.
This past summer, it seemed as though the injury he received in Huntington had returned, & we took him to a specialist in Louisville -
these guys, who come highly recommended by me - thinking he might need back surgery. They discovered a cancerous growth in his right front leg & it was amputated. The doctor thought he had "gotten it all." We hoped so too.
Three-legged George was still very Georgie. I told someone, "He's the bravest person I ever met." He didn't let his "disability" deter him - one night I dropped a tortilla (accidentally) on the floor, & he beat his two younger, healthier brothers to it. But though he made it through a rough couple of weeks of recuperation, it was only a few months until the cancer came back, like cancer does, because cancer is sick & deceitful & evil.
The saddest thing, to me, as the cancer spread, is that it took his sight. George had steadily grown more & more deaf, & I hated that he couldn't see for the last week of his life. He never stopped relying on his magical nose, & he never stopped loving to eat.
He died Monday night on December 10. He would have been fifteen in April. He was a remarkable dog, he was a remarkable person, he was more loving & caring & friendly & loyal & kind than most of anyone I've ever met or will meet. I understand why people want to believe in an afterlife - it's very hard to believe that I'll never see him again. It seems crueller than any torture imaginable.
I dream about him, I miss his touch & smell, I even miss his extraordinary lungs. He is another absence in my heart that I will never fill. I can only hope I grow used to the absence, & find a way to live with is, as I did with the space left by Blue Boy & Buster. But right now, that seems too difficult for the poor, poor likes of me.
I will try not to cry on the radio as I celebrate his life on Monday.
