Reflections: Chance
[He died at 8:50a.m., Tuesday, January 11, 2022. Coming home to a house where he was just an hour before, now empty and silent, was a soul-crushing moment. I had no clue what to do, so I sat down and wrote this. It’s what you would expect — nothing but an emotional outpouring from a broken spirit. I wrote it for me, not you, and I hesitated to make it public. It has no merit other than the brutal honesty of raw emotion. Read if you want. Or not. ]
9:35a.m., Tuesday, January 11, 2022.
Suddenly he's not here. He was here just moments ago but now he's gone. He came into my life on October 11, 2010 and he left my life at 8:50a.m., January 11, 2022.
His things are here. His beds, blankets, and towels. His empty food bowl next to a half-full bowl of water. Dirt and fur on the floors. Lots of collars because I always wanted him to look nice. Leashes and brushes are on the porch ready to be used. But they won't be used again. None of his things will.
My truck smells of him. So many trips to the park, a few longer trips elsewhere. Fur stuck to the seat covers. “That's OK, John, you get used to it,” so said Xiang Jinglin when I apologized for the smell. Actually I didn't notice it at all. It never bothered me. That's just Chance.
There is emptiness. He provided structure. First thing in the morning after he heard my eyes open, breakfast, a treat of peanut butter on toast, a gulp of water, then out the door to do his business. He'd come in and go back to sleep while waiting on me to return from the gym. He'd hear my truck in the driveway and greet me at the door ready for a long walk.
Sleeping in the day, sometimes in the yard when the temps were cool and the clouds blocked the sun.
I tried never to leave him alone for more than a few hours. Longer than that and I felt guilty. Until tonight, he has never spent a night alone, and I will feel haunted by knowing that from tonight forward into eternity, all of his nights will be spent alone.
The hopeful anticipation of dinner would start about 2:00, and the next hour or so was filled with anxious looks and licking his lips.
Walking after dinner, long when it was cool, short when it was hot.
We developed the same bedtime – 8:00pm so as to be rested when the alarm sounded at 4:00a.m.
When I think of time, so much of my life was structured around Chance. In winter, I bought extra heavy gloves for taking him on walks. I always dreamed of buying a pair of Bean Boots just so my feet would stay dry from rain walks. In his time with me, I can't recall a single day when he didn't get both a morning and evening walk. Driving in my neighborhood, I see the bushes, trees, and hydrants he always favored. None but me and other dogs know which of them marked his territory.
I don't have any friends. Long ago I did but none since. But I had a dog. Always happy to see me. Always loves me. Always there when I wanted to talk. Dogs were my friends. Chance was my best friend and now I'm back to being alone. “That's ok, John, you get used to it,” so echo Xiang Jinglin's words
He was with me at my happiest times and the lowest. Immense joy and elation, days of sadness and depression, he was here to share. The happy times wouldn't have been quite so happy without him, and I am certain that I would not have lived through the darkest times if for no other reason than not trusting another to care for him as well as I did.
I tell time's personal eras by the existence of a dog. Koko accompanied my daughter Shizuka from elementary school through high school, Buddy took her through university and graduate school, Chance was the marker for career, marriage, and the birth of a child. Each era was denoted by a dog.
In an instant, I've so much more free time – an extra hour in the morning and another in the evening – but to do what with?
In my mind, he was all that I had left. My parents are dead. I live alone. My daughter lives far away and has her own life. I am retired from my career. Chance was here through all of those enormous transitions and his presence and stability were everything to me. And now he is gone but those memories cause boundless grief and bottomless emptiness.
It's so quiet now. The silence of absence. And this quiet will last forever, a reality that I may or may not come to accept.
If you drag your finger through a pool of still water, there is an eddy, a small depression, a wake that follows. And when you stop pulling your finger through the water and lift it up, the eddy fills and the wake becomes still such that there is no trace. What was a thing became a void became erased and filled.
The very first Buddhist sutra I read so long ago, the Diamond Sutra, gave a voice to the transience of existence that to this day I remember:
“So you should view this fleeting world –
A star at dawn, a bubble in a stream,
A flash of lightening in a summer cloud,
A flickering lamp, a phantom, and a dream.”
I sit in my house less than an hour after his passing. He is gone but I see him everywhere. That's the problem with a dog – they always leave too soon, they never stay long.
