Those of us who have been lucky enough to love a dog sign up for the grief, too. Oh, we don’t talk about it, but we all know it. Some of us have also been there before, and we know what we’re in for.
Smudge, The Smudge, Smudgepuppet, Mudgepuppet, Mudge, Smudgie, Little One, Muds. We all seemed to have our own endearing name for her.
She’s gone. Just 3 months shy of 17. Maybe that’s a respectable old age for a dog, but let me tell you, that is nowhere near long enough. What I wouldn’t give to have her back again, because I just don’t know how to be without her.
She was more human than canine, and part feline too. She had a sense of humor, and―paradoxically—both a love of routine and a sense of adventure. Even people who didn’t like dogs loved her, almost against their will. She weighed 8 pounds and she was larger than life. She was smarter than any dog I have ever known, and that is saying something. We always said we didn’t want a small dog, especially one with Chihuahua in her blood, but she wasn’t needy, whiny, or yappy. Besides, fate has a way of setting you on a path even when you have other plans.
The thing about grief is this: it is a bottomless pit—it clouds every waking thought, and then it sleeps in fits and starts. It flares and settles like wildfire smoke. It’s hard to breathe. And somehow you must find room for it, and then carry its unwanted weight with you for the rest of your life.
Smudge and her toys
We could see the warning in the distance—rolling in slowly at first, and then picking up speed. And we bargained with it. We were more careful with everything. We cooked her food. We adapted our environment to accommodate her vision and hearing loss. We carried her down hard-to-see stairs, and up too, when she needed it.
In spite of her sensory challenges, she could still run like the wind, trusting the carpet runner to guide her down the long hallway. And she still had her amazing, nearly human, sense of humor.
We are left looking at the empty spaces everywhere. Waiting for the polite dinnertime tap on our legs. Finding tiny tennis balls all over the house, under all the furniture. Listening for the bell she would ring to go outside.
She spent her last day in the sunshine, walked all over the freshly cut grass, and she had two lunches. She had cheese. She had love. She had her people around her.
I hope Akila and Smudge find each other, and my mom too.
This is the beginning: The story of my mom and her beloved grandfather.
Trust
Don’t look down. The horses picked their sure-footed, fearless way along the path. Carol swallowed her fear and focused on the broad shoulders of her Grandpa Willis, who led the way on Blondie, his favorite palomino.
He looked back, squinting under the brim of his hat. “Trust your horse, and don’t look down.”
She did as he asked. And when a wasp would angrily buzz around her head, he would anticipate her panic and say, “Hold your breath, Carol. It closes your pores and they can’t sting you.”
And so it went every morning during the long, hot summers that she spent at her grandparents’ Wyoming ranch. None of the other kids was interested in following him out at sunrise every morning—for which he was silently grateful—but he came to look forward to Carol’s quiet company. He fixed the stirrups of a saddle that belonged to one of his favorite horses, and it became her saddle and her horse, and so it was.
She was small for her age, but determined, strong, and focused. And over the course of these quiet mornings, this unlikely duo came to share an unbreakable bond: a shy, skinny girl and a giant of a man that everyone knew as “Willis”. Many years later, from the only prison cell that would ever hold him, he would tell someone that he remembered Carol as she was then, and it made him cry because he loved her so much.
Heels down, toes up, left hand on the reins, hold your breath. He chose his words so carefully and he spoke so little that she heard his voice in her head even when he wasn’t talking. Sometimes the people who choose their words most carefully are the ones who leave the most indelible marks.
To be continued…
My mom’s obituary, 3 years after her death
After several close relatives died within a couple of years of one another, my mom started calling my sister Cindy and me – the designated family obituary writers –The O’Bitches. She laughed about that moniker for the rest of her days. (She was decidedly less enthusiastic about the fact that somewhere along the way, we also started calling her Ma – “It reminds me of Ma Barker” – but that stuck, too.)
And when our Ma died over a decade later? By unspoken agreement, The O’Bitches did not formalize her passing.
The manner of her death is not what mattered. It didn’t define her. Even so, by its very nature, death became part of her story.
She started feeling ill in June 2018 – and 4 short months after that, she was gone. We cared for her at home; our families worked in shifts, preparing her meals, and encouraging her to eat. When she no longer wanted food, Cindy created elaborate strawberry ice-cream milkshakes into which we poured the meal-replacement drinks that she hated. If not for the darkness that we could see in the distance, it might have been a heart-warming scene: Our old-lady-dog Smudge slept on the blanket beside Ma’s chair. Ma’s three grandchildren took turns sitting with her and watching black-and-white movies. Another sister, Kim, drove here from another province and curled into Ma’s tiny loveseat. When Ma would let us, we washed and dried her hair. “Oh! It looks so nice!” she would say.
When she was too weak to travel to the doctor’s office, her doctor made a house call. For the first time ever, Ma didn’t bake her signature banana bread for the office staff. “You know, Joy, that was just so nice of her, but I’m not sure I’m up to making banana bread.”
Her humor carried us through those dark days. The very last words that she spoke out loud to us, several days before she died? Cindy and I were struggling to move her from her bed to her walker, and Ma piped up, “I have such useless daughters!” You had to know her sarcastic humor to know how hard we all laughed. And, later, how hard we cried, knowing that she was still taking care of us.
To back up a bit, and for context: After we were all adults, and had the freedom to move anywhere we wanted, we did not live more than 10 minutes away from her. That’s how much we relied on her. And during the last 14 years of her life, she lived in the same house with me and my husband, in a beautiful suite that she nevertheless dubbed The Bunker.
After she was gone, the silence was the loudest thing we had ever heard. We very slowly started going through her things – like peeling an onion, we opened one drawer or cupboard at a time. Often we’d glance at the contents, then just close the drawer again. Surprisingly, some of the things we found made us laugh out loud. “It feels so good to laugh,” she would say.
JOY & CINDY, THE OBIT-CHES
We weren’t in a hurry to clear out her presence, and so her home (The Bunker) became a place to which we’d retreat for comfort. To see flour still powdering her measuring cups and mixing bowls meant that she had just stepped away to get another ingredient. To tend her plants meant that they were still loved by her. To sit at her table with her teapot meant that she was still listening. That’s how we processed our grief.
What is a legacy, really? Is it the career that paid the bills? Is it family? The degrees that line the walls? The gardens you have tended, and places you have lived? Is it Polaroids of vacations, and people, and Christmases?
Legacy is the smell of her hand lotion, the clothes she wore. Her favorite sweater, hanging on the back of her chair. It’s her needle and thread, her cookbooks and crosswords, her solitaire game, her voice in our heads. Her laughter.
Morning Coffee, Solitaire, and Crossword Puzzle
Through the silence, I know this: Whenever I bake, or cook her recipes, I hear her voice, still teaching me: “Watch the sugar when you measure it – it jumps!” And you know what? It does jump. She made the best gravy, and now I make the best gravy. I hear her voice still directing me to add flour to the cold water. How much? “Oh, I don’t know, Joy – three or four forkfuls? You’ll learn to judge it.” She taught me how to make turkey dressing, and then – when she thought I was ready – her legendary Yorkshire Pudding. We both rejoiced to see them rising in the oven. (She was as surprised as I was.)
Carol’s Yorkshire Pudding
Legacy is comfort food. Up until only a few months before she got sick, she would still surprise me by making chicken noodle soup for my lunch. I took photos of these comforts because I was over 50 years old and my mom’s soup still made everything a little better.
Carol’s Chicken Noodle Soup
More recently, however, my attention turned to this box. My mom wrote my name on it, taped it shut, and for 40 years, I moved it from one house to the next, from her house to mine, from one room to another. It eventually migrated to the back of a storage-room shelf, where it was out of sight for 15 years.
JOY: BARBIES
When I saw it on the shelf, I wiped off the dust, took it into her kitchen and opened it. It was, in fact, a time capsule, a family record, a childhood. A legacy.
A mess of Barbies, as it should be
When we were kids through the mid-1970s, our parents didn’t buy toys the way many parents do now. Brands and logos meant nothing to us. Sure, my two sisters and I had Barbie dolls and some Barbie-branded clothes, but we also had a mom who was an expert seamstress. So she did what she loved to do: she sewed. She not only made many of our clothes, she also made Barbie clothes. And sometimes, if she had leftover scraps, the Barbie clothes were miniature versions of our own clothes.
Our dad traveled a lot, so Ma lived the life of a single parent. She would work during the day, drive home and make dinner, and then she would take care of literally everything else – and those responsibilities usually involved a dog, a horse, and (once) twelve pheasants that my sister rescued. But, after we were in bed, we’d hear the crinkle of tissue-paper patterns, the scrape of her pinking shears on the table, followed by the rhythmic whirr of her sewing machine.
Our Barbies were impeccably dressed. We played with them daily for years, until – one sister after another – we all eventually outgrew them. One day we crammed everything into cases, and then we never took them out again. And somehow, after all these years, the clothes still look almost new.
Carol Birck’s Clothes for Barbies
The detail is astounding, really, and of course we didn’t appreciate it then. The lace, the ribbon, the tiny buttons, the matching accessories – all of it was just so Ma. She didn’t do anything halfway.
Bubble-cut Barbie models dress and matching coat
I have learned so much about her since her death. There’s always something to learn, even when it’s a lesson. Her own mother died when Ma was only 36. I don’t know how Ma navigated the next 50 years without her mom. We didn’t remember our Gramma’s laughter, but we knew her tiny handwriting on recipe cards and letters. We knew her humor and love of Christmas. We knew our Gramma’s legacy.
Carol Munroe Birck lived until she was nearly 86 years old.
