Letting go

By Anna Rumin

“I’m stuffing a mink teddy bear with my dog’s ashes. My cats are in pots on the mantle – they’re with me all the time.” I expressed my condolences, she snapped her gum, thanked me, said she was waiting for a puppy, and continued to knit while we waited for the yoga studio to open.

Instead of concentrating on breathing, I thought about my own darling Rubli who arrived in our family when we needed her most. It never mattered how long any of us were gone she would greet us as though she hadn’t seen us in a year – her tail wagging, her nose thrust between our knees, groaning, and eventually flopping onto her back demanding a tummy rub. She was under the table at every meal, cleaned the roasting pan and carving board every Sunday, and attended every party leaving her black fur on guests. She accompanied us on most holidays and after being pecked at by the pet-bird of one dog-sitter we only ever left her with people we knew. She panted in thunder, howled at lightning and when it was hot, she’d crawl far under the cottage and refuse to come out. Her recall was mostly good, she never ate garbage, and once had a fight with a groundhog that was teasing her; the groundhog won. In the mornings at the lake she’d sit up on the double Adirondack chair and have coffee with me. While she didn’t wear an apron and cook, the children knew she was watching them and demanded their attention which especially in her later years they gave freely.

Right from the start I began brushing her and leaving the clumps of fur in the bushes, trees and plants around our home hoping the birds would collect it and use it in their nests. Sometimes I’d open the window and just let the fur go watching it travel on gentle airwaves. At our cottage I left handfuls around the hydrangea, hosta and lilac hoping to scare away the deer, but I can only imagine them sniffing her fur and knowing she would probably have only stared them down, too comfortable in the sun to get up and do anything. The first time we travelled without her, we found her fur in our towels and bathing suits and t-shirts; we grew used to finding stray white hairs in say a sandwich or stew; we went through five vacuum cleaners in thirteen years.

I’m not sure when the tumours started growing but the vet check-ups changed and the cantaloup-sized bulge on her belly was being monitored. We had decided that surgery and cancer medication were out of the question past 10 years old and that we would nurse her the way she had nursed us. Two vets diagnosed her with dementia and while we giggled, it wasn’t funny. We put carpets down all over the first floor so that she could stand up, when she fell down the basement stairs we closed them off, and we stopped counting the times she threw up her food. Brushing her was no longer an option so her fur grew, became matted, and only occasionally would she let me cut out the matts and push them into the soil around the bushes. She couldn’t crawl up on the Adirondack chair anymore although she did stare out at the lake.

A few weeks after her 13th birthday Rubli disappeared as a storm was approaching. For the better part of four hours my husband, our neighbours and I searched the forest floor and lakeshore looking under every fallen tree, behind every rock under every cottage without any luck. My greatest fear was that a tree had fallen on her. Then, a neighbour far up the road came through the forest with Rubli trailing behind him, ecstatic to find us. A week later the skies turned steel grey, Rubli began howling, snapped at my husband when he tried to leash her, and reappeared again three hours later. It was my decision that Rubli had given us a sign; that the jellied tumours, the legs that did their best to support her but too often gave out, that the vomit and howling and panting hadn’t been enough. I made the call.

Her last morning, I clipped the dangling fur from her ears and put it in an envelope as did my husband. We didn’t spread her ashes or keep them in a pot. I began gardening and found some fur – had it been from this year? It didn’t matter; our darling old girl was everywhere and had been filling nests and trees and the skies with her fur from the very first day she came home. Sometimes I look at pretty pots I’ve collected and wondered if I made a mistake but know she had taught us to let her go.

Anna Rumin designs and teaches memoir-based writing courses.

(Editor’s note: See this month’s Poetry Quarter for poems inspired by pets.)