The dog fur floated in the air, driven by the tabletop fan, to waft here and there, and then to finally land on the rose-colored carpet. It stayed there like it was home, this pile of fairy fluff. She watched it because she knew she would have to pick it up and put it in the garbage. But she also knew she wasn’t going to do that. This wispy mound of fluff was all that was left of her dog, an Australian shepherd she had cared for and loved for thirteen years.
“I’m so sorry,” her lover said.
She heard him somewhere in her mind, but she couldn’t fathom what the words meant or why he was saying anything at all. Sometimes, words were useless. There was nothing anyone could say in the emptiness of death that would bring comfort or assuage the anguish because, in the deepest part of your psyche, you travel the world alone. She was isolated by the very nature of being human with all her haunting heartbreak, as it had always been and would always be.
He stood silently and still, like one of the King’s Royal Guard. She had a sense of him, this man who had loved her for the past three years, who had played with her dog, fed him, bathed him, just like she had. But now he was lost in her absolute pain. She could feel his nervous vibration, his loss about what to do.
There was nothing to do. She stared at the fluff of fur, willing it to grow into her dog once again.
“I will never complain about dog fur again,” she whispered.
He nodded.
Her words bounced around the dog-silent room. Three, now two, in the room without a dog, in the raging, ragged stillness of a room without the click of claws on the wood floor, without the softness of fur whisking by bare legs, without the quickness of intelligent eyes searching for a hidden treat.
It was just her and him. And, right now, it was not enough.
“We can get through this,” he said. “Together.”
The echo of his words flitted around her bleeding sorrow. Together. What is together when the family is broken? When she told her father, he said, “It’s just a dog. You can get another one at the shelter.” She hung up on him.
“Your dad’s not an animal guy,” her lover had said. “He doesn’t understand.”
What does that even mean? Not an animal guy. Does that mean he doesn’t understand love? Was she just an offspring, an entity that could be replaced by ordering a new one from Amazon? Even though he raised her alone, he hadn’t been involved in her personal life. Feed her, keep her clean, make sure she goes to school, buy her Tampax and a bra when the time comes, give her an allowance so she can buy girl things like makeup and bracelets. And that was about it. Maybe she was just a body he either had to take care of or give away. Maybe for him the whole world was “just a dog.”
The puff of fur lifted slightly when her lover walked past it and started rolling like a tiny tumbleweed across the carpet. Where are you going? Come back. But she didn’t move. She sat on the sofa and watched it come to settle against the wall like it was waiting — maybe for her dog to come back and claim it. Which never happened in real life because the vacuum cleaner was the one to claim it. Her dog obliviously spent his life shedding, and she spent her life removing the wisps of gossamer fur.
Now it was over. Just two humans in a house that felt too big, too empty, too quiet, too clean. Where were the muddy paw prints? Where was the water sloshed from the water bowl in a trail on the kitchen floor? Where were the ragged dog toys tossed around on the living room carpet? Where was her dog sleeping curled up on the much-loved paisley dog bed in the bedroom corner?
“We will get through this,” her lover said again, touching her lightly on her knee. She nodded, tears racing down her cheeks, his words chasing them.
In her heart she knew she couldn’t follow her dog across the fabled Rainbow Bridge. In her heart she knew he was okay now, even if she wasn’t. Not yet. Not now. Maybe someday.
StoryGirl 