Maggie and Geordie have both left this plain of existence-- and tragically within months of each other. Though they live in my heart eternally, this world is a lonelier place without their physical manifestations. I now, so belatedly, post tributes to my beloved companions.
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First posted as email on August 9, 2008.
A Gift Named Maggie
My tears won't stop for very long, but I could no longer let her suffer. I wanted her to be here forever, but no real choice remained; that never happens. Only three days ago Maggie and I walked around the block. She stopped many times to smell and the earth and delight in its vegetation, and less than a week ago, she still barked-that incessant but mellifluous sound-- to be fed.(Sometimes I called her "Audrey II.")
As time passed, it took longer and longer for her to clean her bowl as her head continued to tilt farther and farther to one side, this offsetting her equilibrium. She could barely get traction, and finally it became nearly impossible for her to stand for long.
For a few months, several times daily, I opened the door --(she no longer had the strength or coordination to use the dog door)-- and just a little wobbly, she'd run to the grass in the front yard, and when finished, return to the door. Dignified to the end, this morning I carried her outside, and true to her fastidious self, she waited but could only lie sideways to relieve herself.
I took her back to my bed and lay beside her for several hours; and whenever she began to pant, I tried to slake her thirst with a dropper full of water to quiet her for a while. Finally I made the appointment with my vet.
My son Alan has been wonderful. He is here only in Oregon until tomorrow morning, but he gave me so much love and reassurance, and when my will weakened, he reminded me that the kindest thing to do was to let her go. He drove me and Maggie the clinic and remained with me for as long as I needed to be with my sweetest little girl and look into her eyes for the last time. Then he took Geordie out of his crate and brought her to the table to sniff her perfume and to say his own good-bye.
After I had no tears left-- for then anyway, Alan took me out for dinner. I don't know what I would have done without him. He called his brother, Noah, to tell him that his Maggie, who years ago had played soccer with him--was gone.
("She's better than us," commented one teammate a short twelve or thirteen years ago.) And she was!
Later Noah called me from the road, crying while driving east en route to North Carolina and already crossing Nebraska. I urged him not to drive through his tears, and he agreed to pull over to the next exit until he could regain his composure. After all, Maggie was essentially his dog, a gift for his tenth birthday. Noah is now 24.
"I want a dog to tell my problems to," he said a mere fourteen years ago. How interesting that he is continuing his education to become a therapist! I am so fortunate to have two wonderful sons to comfort me. My vet was also kind and compassionate by giving me all the time and support I needed. On the wall across from me I read from a framed cross-stitch:
All things bright and beautiful,
All creatures great and small, All things wise and wonderful: The Lord God made them all.
All creatures great and small, All things wise and wonderful: The Lord God made them all.
I must have read these words four or five times.
I'm eternally grateful to Peggy Appel who lovingly insisted in giving me and Maggie only the best. Her soul departed with her body wrapped in a well-worn quilt, a precious gift from Barb Schuster, that will remain with her. She will never get the chance to wear out the second quilt; this brings me such sadness.
Maggie had the sweetest little nose-- petite, feminine and patent-leather black and shaped like the front of a sleigh bell-- so perfect that only God could have made it. She gave me fourteen plus years of loyalty, comfort when I needed it, and so much more. I am reminded that we are only our dogs' stewards; we only think that we are their owners.
I will always love Joywood's Maggie Simpson, CD, CDX, CGC, who graced this earth from May 16, 1994 to August 8, 2008.
From The Little Prince:
"And at night you will look up at the stars. Where I live everything is so small that I cannot show you where my star is to be found. It is better like that. My star will just be one of the stars for you. And so you will love to watch all the stars in the heavens... they will all be your friends. . .
"In one of the stars I shall be living. In one of them I shall be laughing. And so it will be as if all the stars were laughing, when you look at the sky at night... you-- only you-- will have stars that can laugh!"
One runs the risk of weeping a little, if one lets oneself be tamed...
Love,
Jill and Geordie
"On ne voit bien qu'avec le coeur. L'essentiel est invisible pour les yeux." -- Antoine de Saint-Exupéry
(It is only with the heart that one can see rightly; what is essential is invisible to the eye.)
First posted as email on November 4, 2008.
The Forever Muse-Boy Who is My Geordie
He never asked for directions, and he only followed them when they were his idea. In that respect, Geordie was a typical male. In other ways, he was anything but typical.
On Monday, Geordie awoke in the middle of the night and told me something I never wanted to hear. It was a plaintive cry, both strange and haunting. His pleading eyes seared straight into my soul in that timelessness. I held his sweet and beautiful head in my hands, petting him and promising him that, difficult as it would be, I would let him go. His love was my refuge; his loyalty, my shelter.
In the morning, he refused food and water. He and I chose to complete this journey alone.
His wise sister, Maggie, had taught me only a few short months ago, that there is a tipping point, a pivot in a moment when your beloved requests an action that will shatter your heart.
I called the clinic where his favorite vet worked. She had been off for the day but honored my special request-- and we met to facilitate the painful goodbye. She would bid him her own goodbye.
Renée first met his litter of three boys and one girl when they were six weeks old. She commented that theirs was one of the most beautiful she had ever seen. (The three boys would all become champions.) Geordie was always ecstatic to see her, even if there was no “exciting adventure” in store—as in a breeding. At each visit, she gently told him what a good boy he was.
I needed to return to this exceptional woman to seal that circle of a lifetime of love. To Renée I will always remember the kindness, compassion, and love she gave both of us. When she tranquilized him, I wanted to hold my peaceful dog-child forever; but I had to free his spirit from the shell that was his physical manifestation. I sniffed the wonderful aroma of his feet for the last time.
After he was gone, it took six or seven false starts before I could leave the room.
As was with Maggie, I wrapped Geordie in the quilt that Barb Schuster made for him many years ago. There was a bee—he ate those like candy, a tree—he growled at trees whenever he could, a skunk—for the time he was sent after a rat that under my friend’s feed shed that turned out to be a skunk, and a wedge of Mozzarella cheese-- one of the more innocuous things he stole and ate.
I noticed—for the first time, a little red heart at the bottom of the quilt.
Over the years, and even as a puppy, a sleeping Geordie could be as vocal as one awake. When his cries told me it was sad dream, I could soothe him-- and myself-- with reassuring words and the gentle stroking of his black-masked head and that wondrous gray spectrum of fur—with an undercoat as soft and thick and fair as a cumulus cloud might feel if you could touch one. Then he would awaken and cross off whatever activities he had on his to-do list.
More often he’d growl in his slumber. A rat? A badger? A gopher? I’d wonder about those dreams, too. All I could do was smile and savor the moment. I knew he enjoyed them too, so I’d leave him alone and laugh a joyful quiet laugh. After all, Geordie was an Earthdog and a true bolter, as a Cairn terrier was made to be.
He had not barked for over a month, and I was afraid I’d forget that sound. Maggie’s mellifluous voice shimmered with overtones, and she barked till the very end. Geordie’s was confident, percussive, rhythmic with a deepness that defied his size.
Two weeks ago, he came back to me and filled me with a bliss and gratitude I had not felt for a long time. He had been slowly emerging from the nightmare that had fallen upon us so suddenly several weeks before. But on that magical Wednesday, Geordie was Geordie again, wagging the tail that when you scratched the front of it made him quiver and vocalize in that low, appreciative grrrrrrrrrrrr. He sat and waved, one of his most endearing “tricks,” and his attentive eyes again told me that, yes, he would always adore me. That day he sat and waved for a toothsome morsel. We walked around the block and he again lifted his leg high in answer to the larger dogs whose courage could never exceed his. Then he began to fade again.
Geordie was my muse. He inspired me—and at times he would horrify me and defy “death by chocolate” or the evil Xylitol. There was something invincible about that dog. There still is.
I never did catch that picture of him lying between the couch and the sunny window, on his back, large teeth exposed—like an exhibit at New York ’s Museum of Natural History
Whenever I’d shower, he;d wait till I emerged reminding me of one of those bathroom attendants whose eyes would inquire, “May I offer you a towel?” Geordie followed me everywhere. Never a lapdog, he would sit—contented—at my feet.
Many of you know about his antics. There were so many more. Fairly recently, a beautiful young woman named Janell was terrified of him. She thought he was chasing her and on the attack. It turns out that she misunderstood. He was not chasing her at all; he was merely pursuing a plate of broccoli that she was carrying to her room to eat. . .
It was raining outside. It is raining inside. At just 13, he left me way too soon.
CH. Joywood’s Geordie for MagaDog, CD, ME, CGC
August 7, 1995 – November 4, 2008
Love,
Jill
“And when I die
And when I’m dead and gone,
There’ll be one child born
And a world to carry on. . .”
Laura Nyro
