Dogs and Other Things That Eat Us Up

You're gone nine and a half days before the Dog shows up. 

Which may not seem long, but after a week with no sign of one, I'm starting to sweat. They say it’s different for everyone, that plenty of people don’t even get them, but I suppose my tragic situation comes with certain expectations.  

In the office, at the funeral, with friends, I watch their eyes. First, they meet my gaze, full of sympathy and sorrow, and then dart away, looking for what should rightfully be there. As days pass still Dog-less, I swear I can see the sympathy in their eyes waning, and judgement taking its place. 

I can't hear the conversations that happen around corners, over the water cooler, in the back of the funeral home, but I can guess at them.  

Yeesh, widowed out of the blue, and nothing?  

I didn’t realize things were that bad between them. 

You’d think she’d try to feel something 

I am trying. I'm trying to feel.  

I should’ve just taken the bereavement leave when they offered it. At least I could’ve hidden away until I figured out how to mourn properly. You wanna know why I turned it down? Oh, you’re going to love this. They could only offer a fraction of my pay, and I didn’t want to take the cut because you and I are saving up for the Bahamas this winter.  

That's right. You and I. 

It takes me longer than it should to realize why that isn't going to work out.  

And I think that, more than anything else, is why the Dog is so late. Because I'm just not getting it. It doesn't click. 

Three days after, I come home to an empty parking space and my first instinct is irritation. We’d both fallen into the habits of dodging evenings together - working late, or drinking late, or whatever late so long as it wasn’t at home, but we’d mutually agreed that at least a text was required. The catch up takes a second. You haven’t texted because your shattered phone is dead in my nightstand, and your car isn't in its spot because they’d had to sweep it off four lanes of highway.  

Five days after, I'm pleasantly shocked by an empty sink – had you, by some miracle, washed your breakfast dishes unasked? I hum down the hall before I notice there's no scent of coffee or eggs or too-blackened toast. There had never been any breakfast eaten, no dishes to clean.  

Nine days after, I note the empty space next to your sink. That was always a good sign. It used to mean you wore your ring to work that morning, instead of ‘forgetting’ it, after a fight. You did that sometimes, near the end. Not a lot, but sometimes. But you can't remember or forget anything anymore. And I know where your ring is. 

When I come home that day, the Dog is waiting for me.  

I don’t know why we call them that. They don’t really look like dogs. Perhaps in some distant time, a child came home to a mother gazing at a vacant cradle, with one of them pacing at her feet, and without a better word, the child called it Dog. And it stuck.  

I’ve never had a Dog personally, but plenty of people around me have. My tenth-grade history teacher had one, though it almost seemed like he was trying to hide it. He didn’t do a very good job. We’d catch glimpses of it curled beneath his desk. No one said exactly what happened, but his eyes were always red-rimmed, his class became basically a free ride, and his wedding band was replaced with a fading tan line. He wasn’t there the next year.  

I knew a girl in college whose Dog appeared before her dad even passed. It came to her a few days after his diagnosis and stayed long after he was gone.  

I’ve heard them called a comforting presence, or a cruel one, or sometimes just nothing, neutral, a lingering echo of what is no longer there. My Dog is irritating. 

I know there’s a certain sanctity about Dogs, and you’re dead and there’s a certain sanctity about that too, so that’s probably not something I should say, but who am I kidding? You remember that argument on our fourth anniversary, right? Or the fight after dinner at my parents'? ‘Things we shouldn’t say’ is a hurdle we got over a long time ago. 

Initially, the Dog's arrival is a relief, in whatever way being a widow with a Dog can be relieving. It means I'm doing something right, going through the proper motions. If the Dog is here, it means I can deal with it until the day it isn't. That someday I'll stop looking for cars that won't come home and phantom breakfast dishes, and I'll be able to go through your things and use the whole bed and confront what's lurking in my nightstand. 

The Dog is a means to an end. A treatment plan. What would you think of that? You had words you liked to pull out in arguments. What would it be this time? Cold and clinical? Or heartless? 

On day ten, the Dog does its job beautifully. The office is all hugs and handholding. Everyone fills a massive card with line after line that twist my stomach. Friends and family coo over photo albums that I haven't pulled out in years. I try to cry an appropriate amount. Neighbors bring casseroles that turn to ash in my mouth. 

That night, I lay on my side of the bed, and the Dog curls up on yours. Even on all the nights when you were on the couch, or at a friend's house, or wherever, I never slept on your side. Did you know that?   

And that night, the Dog bites me. I don't sleep. I cradle my stinging hand and fight tears that won't come anyway.  

We settle into a pattern of pretending, the Dog and I. In the day, it preens in my lap as I dutifully carry on amongst the array of flowers and tissue boxes at my desk. It trots at my side as I ferry yet another homemade meal to the growing, moldering collection in the fridge. In the night, it gnaws at my flesh as I think of us– behind all those bouquets, is there a single photo of us at my desk? When was the last time the fridge held a meal that we made together? 

And every morning, we go out and do it again, playing the dutiful widow and her sidekick. No one sees the invisible bitemarks. We put on a good show of being healthy and functional. Sound familiar? 

Like I said, irritating.  

I do all the things you're supposed to do. And the Dog doesn't go away. 

I discover people quickly tire of grief that isn't their own. The flowers wilt on my desk and the food-laden visits slow, then cease. The Dog has overstayed its welcome enough to become 'unprofessional' and 'concerning to clients,' so when HR politely (insistently) offers leave again, I accept. Why not? We won't be headed to the Bahamas anytime soon. 

I miss you. I think I hate myself for not missing you more. I think I hate you for not being someone I can miss more. If I knew how I feel, I think I could be done with this by now.  

"I want to be done with this now!" 

I scream it to you, to no one, to the Dog chewing at my ankle.  

It pauses to look up, its eyes glittering in the dark of our bedroom, then resumes, sinking its teeth even deeper. It hurts. I know it hurts, but I've forgotten what it is to live without pain. If I could sleep, maybe it would have the mercy to do more than gnaw, to eat. Eating me up. I'd be gone forever, smaller and smaller, eaten away until I was nothing. A million bite-sized pieces of me, scattered like a star-field of windshield shards on asphalt, sparkling in the streetlights.  

Did it hurt like this? For you? Did you have time to regret it? 

I reach for the nightstand. Your wedding ring seems to sear my palms as I twist it in the blind-slashed moonlight. It didn't make any sense to me when I got the call that morning. The accident happened on the South-bound highway. You had just left, why would you be coming home? Surely, they were mistaken. Surely, they had the wrong car and the wrong person and some other poor woman was widowed that morning. I didn't put the pieces together until I found myself dazedly wandering the house and my gaze landed on your ring, shining in a shallow puddle of sink-side water and beard trimmings. 

In an argument the night before, our last conversation, I made a jab about your habit of forgetting your ring. You said you would try to do better. You said you would remember it next time, even if it meant coming home to get it. 

The teeth sink deeper.