Measuring Life

Deaths, I would have told you, measured my life. Was it before C died, or around that time? Wasn't that the year R died? And indeed, deaths have punctuated my life like irregularly spaced holes in a belt. Friends, most of them, the first died when I was six and so was she. One for every decade. Good friends, five decades, five friends.

But yesterday, walking the dogs across a grey and cool fall field, I thought that perhaps it is in fact dogs that have measured my life, provided those intervals for memory, tick marks of passage. There have pretty much always been dogs, and they have always given comfort and do now. When needed most a dog will lie still and allow a tearwet face to bury itself in  her neck, will look worried and lick a face, and will allow a person to lie beside them, face to face, breathing the same air. They always know, dogs, they always know and they are always compassionate.

Silky, the lab pye dog we got in Calcutta (I arrived home from school to have a servant say, "Baba, mummy brought one e-small dog. Black." and I ran upstairs and running around the table was Silky, her curly tail wagging.) When my parents were unfair, or so I thought, I would take her to my room, "Come on, Silky," I would say, putting my arm around her and we would lie together on the bed, me feeling as if she were my only friend.

When my father died there was Kali, a daschund, the second, Lizette had joined Silky in our Calcutta house. Kali liked to have her head on the pillow, and she was small, but could sit in laps and lick faces in times of need. She was there for an extended period of need, and never failed those who sought her out for comfort.

Toto, a Chesapeake, was there when my friend R died. Not a characteristically demonstrative dog, she let me bury my face in her neck fur and cry all I could cry. Her compatriot, Chloe, was good for the same, and so they absorbed some of the pain of that loss until I could not stand to feel that pain any more.

And so now, as I feel so sad, so very sad, and as all of those past losses roll together like a slow wave with this newest and so very present loss three dogs are there for me. Wiggles with his worried face; his sweet brown eyes look into mine begging me not to feel so sad, and he licks my face, watching me all the time. One evening this summer I took him out to the pond to swim, but instead he ran around, kept getting back into the car and out again, coming over to lick my face as I cried by the edge of the water. Hot Scotch, the newer Chesapeake, lets me hug her and rub her back, and she twists and turns with infectious happiness, and gratefulness that she was rescued and she is loved. She then jumps up, her golden eyes looking into mine and runs off. Who could not feel better after that?

And then there is Georgey, the bull mastiff who acts like a toddler usually, but when tears are present he lies still beside me, and I put my arm over him, and he is warm, and his nose breathes onto my face, and we breathe together, and fall asleep, often sharing a blanket on the sofa, and we sleep, and we are at peace. He for giving it, me for receiving it.

And so, I see my life measured in dogs. Better dogs than deaths, most certainly, and such certainty brings them into the present, all those dogs, here and gone. And that is a happy thought: A life measured out in dogs. The dogs would want it so.