by Meg Donohue
Dedication
For my family, dogs included,
King Oberon most of all
Epigraph
“Because of the dog’s joyfulness,
our own is increased. It is no small gift.”
—Mary Oliver, Dog Songs
“If you are reading this book,
there is a high probability that your heart is broken.”
—John W. James and Russell Friedman,
The Grief Recovery Handbook
Contents
Dedication
Epigraph
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Acknowledgments
P.S. Insights, Interviews & More . . .*
About the author
About the book
Read on
Also by Meg Donohue
Copyright
About the Publisher
Chapter 1
One.
Two.
Three.
Three deep breaths before I open the door to find that Leanne Hadley, my four o’clock, is nearly unrecognizable. Her endearing nest of hair has been tamed into a shiny bob, her mismatched sweatsuit replaced by a turtleneck and tailored slacks. She’s wearing makeup, too. My heart sinks.
It’s not that I’m surprised by Leanne’s transformation, or by what it surely signifies. This is therapy, after all—we’re working toward good-bye from the moment we say hello. But Leanne has come to see me every week since I opened my practice three months ago, and though I’m pleased by her evident progress, I’m going to miss her. Even in her grief, she has been excellent company. Her emotions are powerful; she’s quick to cry but quicker to laugh, her sweet disposition spiked with wry wit.
Perhaps I look forward to her visits more than I should.
Not “visits,” I remind myself. Sessions.
Anyway, it’s over now; that much is clear before she even steps inside. She’s practically glowing, back in the current of life, bobbing away from me.
“You look well,” I say, smiling. I have to push the words out around the lump that has formed in my throat. Beyond Leanne, fast-moving fog rushes through Sutro Tower, the enormous red-and-white transmission antenna that stretches high above the city. To the east, the sky is blue; to the west, it’s drained of color, as appealing as dishwater. Keeping track of the San Francisco weather is a battle I can’t seem to win, and I’m eager to shut the door.
We follow our usual routine, Leanne taking her spot on the tufted gray couch in my living-room-slash-office while I make her a cup of English breakfast tea. I know just how she likes it—sugary, with a drop of the cream that I started having delivered with my weekly groceries after she asked for it during our first session.
“Did you get a haircut?” I ask, making my way back to the living room. Afternoon light filters through the gauzy white curtains that I hung when I moved in four months ago and the effect is exactly as I’d hoped: cozy and intimate, peaceful without feeling solemn.
“No, I just blow-dried it,” Leanne answers pleasantly. “I forgot how much better I feel when I bother to do it. It lifts my mood.”
“There’s a joke here somewhere,” I say. “Something about the similarities between hot air and therapy.”
Leanne has a wonderful laugh, bold and bright. When she tosses back her head, I notice that the dark circles that usually fall like shadows below her blue eyes are gone, faded by sleep and erased by makeup.
“Oh, Maggie,” she says. “You’ve been so good at helping me keep my humor through all of this.”
My stomach twists.
Patients are full of flattery right before they say good-bye.
A FEW NIGHTS after euthanizing Sealy, her eleven-year-old Russian toy terrier, Leanne Hadley had done an Internet search using the words “dog” and “death” and “guilt” and eventually clicked her way to my pet bereavement counseling practice’s brand-new website. During our first session, she showed me a photograph of Sealy. Russian toy terriers, it turns out, are dainty little animals, shorthaired all over except for the long, crimped hair that trails like streamers from their upright triangle ears. Sealy appeared pert and pretty with a sharp nose and tufts of feathered strawberry-blond hair.
Debbie Gibson, I’d thought. Identifying dogs’ famous doppelgängers is one of my particular skills. My own dog, Toby, a flat-coated retriever mix, could have been the love child of Elizabeth Taylor (black, old Hollywood waves) and Bruce Willis (thick neck, sparkle in the eye)—though, in his later years, a strong resemblance to Ian McKellan (gray beard) had emerged.
Over the course of our first session I learned that Sealy was an empty-nest consolation present from Leanne’s husband, Darren, after their youngest child left for college. Whenever Leanne watched television, Sealy would leap to the top of the couch and curl around the back of her head, as tight and light as a laurel leaf crown, periodically burrowing her cool, wet nose into Leanne’s hair for a good snuffle. In the car, Sealy preferred the backseat (“Driving Ms. Sealy,” Leanne joked). She performed a winning tap dance complete with a crazed, openmouthed grin whenever a can was opened in the kitchen, and would sulk below the table for a solid hour if the can turned out to contain something other than dog food. She tolerated Leanne carrying her, but no one else (“She had her dignity”). Sealy’s tiny toenails clacking against the hardwood floor, close on Leanne’s heels, had been the peppy backbeat of Leanne’s life for eleven years.
Leanne didn’t leave her bedroom for two days after Sealy died. Her cheeks burned with embarrassment when she told me this. I assured her that her reaction was not uncommon; she wasn’t alone.
“Love is love,” I told her, as I tell all of my patients who are ashamed to find themselves shattered by the death of a dog. “Loss is loss.”
She gave me a grateful smile, and I returned it.
NOW I OPEN my notebook. “How was your week?”
“Good, thanks,” Leanne says. Thirty years have passed since she left South Carolina, but she still has a lovely southern accent, as soft as her round face. “Lots of yard work. I pulled the dried-up geraniums out of our patio boxes and planted some of that snazzy horsetail.”
“What inspired the change?”
She takes a sip of tea, considering. “The time of year, I suppose. Spring is on the way, though you sure wouldn’t know it from the weather.” She looks down into her cup and a crease forms between her brows. “It’s hard to believe I’ve been coming to see you . . . that Sealy’s been gone three months. It still feels so . . .” She trails off.
“Three months is like the blink of an eye compared to thirteen”—I shake my head sharply, correcting myself—“eleven years of companionship.”
Leanne’s gaze flits to the rows of framed credentials that hang on the wall behind me—the bachelor-of-arts-in-psychology and master’s-of-science-in-clinical-psychology diplomas, both from the University of Pennsylvania, the row of certifications and licenses from the National Board for Certified Counselors, the American Academy of Grief Counseling, and the Pet-Loss Grief Recovery Program. I’ve noticed the wall is a touchstone for my patients, a reminder of why we’re now a part of one another’s lives. It’s my touchstone, too, though I wait until I’m alone in my apartment to look at it. On the best nights, those diplomas and certifications reass
ure me that despite recent developments indicating the contrary, I know what I’m doing. I am a skilled professional.
Leanne shifts her gaze back to meet mine. “The other big news from the week is that I was finally able to watch Titanic.”
I glance down at my notes.
“Holy smokes!” she says. “I never told you the Titanic story?”
“I don’t think so.”
Leanne brightens. She’s an enthusiastic storyteller, a trait she claims was encouraged by her childhood dog, Bert, a Great Dane who had tolerated her elaborate dress-up games and soliloquies with the stoic countenance of a Buckingham Palace guardsman being photographed by a drunken tourist.
“Well, the night Darren brought Sealy home,” Leanne says, settling back into the couch, “we watched the movie Titanic. And by that I mean I watched the movie while Darren sawed his way through a forest’s worth of logs. Our new puppy slept through the movie, too, curled up in the tiniest little ball on my lap. I remember petting her soft ears and thinking how crazy it was that I already loved her, how happy I was that there was another life in the house.” She shrugs. “Well, you know. I missed the kids a lot.”
“Yes,” I say. “And who wouldn’t fall in love with a sleeping puppy?”
“Exactly.” She smiles. “So she slept there on my lap through the whole movie until finally the credits rolled and Celine Dion started singing her big ‘My Heart Will Go On’ song.” She pauses. “You know the one, right?”
I begin singing dramatically, terribly, “Neaaaar . . . Faaaar . . . Whereeeever you are—”
Leanne laughs, begging me to stop. “I think you’ve got the right song,” she says, “but it’s hard to tell.”
I grin. “What happened next?”
“Well, the moment she heard Celine’s voice, Sealy, who had been sound asleep on my lap, sprang onto her tiny paws, pointed her nose at the ceiling, and let loose the sweetest, crooning, elfin puppy howl the world has ever heard.”
“So Sealy is short for Celine?” I’d always assumed Sealy’s spray of black, seallike whiskers had inspired her name.
Leanne nods. “In her whole life, for the next eleven years, I never heard her howl at anyone or anything else. Only Celine Dion.”
“Do you think it was a sign of pleasure or agony?”
Leanne laughs. “Pleasure. Definitely pleasure. I think she thought Celine Dion had the most beautiful howl she’d ever heard. It moved her.”
“Did you ever play her any Whitney Houston? Mariah Carey? Maybe she had a thing for divas.”
“No, no, no,” Leanne says through her laughter. “It was just Celine.”
I nod, allowing a pause to fill the room. “What a gift.”
She gives me a questioning look.
“These memories,” I say. “They’ll always be with you. They’re the part of Sealy that has become a part of you.”
Leanne’s eyes glisten. I can tell she’s already thinking of another story and so I lean forward, happy there’s more to tell, ready to take it in.
PET BEREAVEMENT COUNSELORS hear a lot of happy stories. This always seems to surprise people, who assume sessions are soggy, heart-wrenching undertakings. Sure, there are tears, but there are also the stories of the dogs that made people feel less alone, the dogs that taught them about love, that made their hearts feel bigger and stronger. And dog people—the majority of my patients are dog people—have wonderful senses of humor. Some of the funniest, most uplifting stories I’ve ever heard have come from my patients. They’re an eclectic bunch, but the stories they tell have the same simple truth at their core: dogs make us better.
A lot of the counseling I do is as straightforward as honoring these stories—the happy ones and the sad ones. The stories commemorate the life. We laugh; we cry; we get it all out there. Often we discover that there are issues at play beyond the loss of a pet. Emotions can be sly. Years can go by before you discover the pain that lives inside of you, a spiky old barnacle clinging to your heart.
At the close of our session, I’m determined to walk Leanne all the way up the path that leads from my apartment door to the gate at the sidewalk, but with each step a now-familiar sense of dread builds within me. My heart pounds. I hide the tremble in my hands by pressing them into the pockets of my blazer.
In my chest, panic is a small dark bird threatening to spread her wings.
When I open the gate, Leanne walks through it and turns to wrap me in a hug. She’s on the sidewalk and I’m on the last stepping-stone of the path, so our hug starts out kind of loose and awkward, but then she shuffles toward me and closes the gap between us.
“Thank you for everything, Maggie,” she says near my ear. “Truly, thank you.”
I’m afraid she can feel how fast my heart is beating. I try to focus on the palm tree across the street, but suddenly the wind picks up and the tree groans, its dark, misshapen shadows morphing into wounded animals that thrash against the pavement. I close my eyes and suppress an involuntary shudder. Or maybe I don’t, because when I open my eyes I see that Leanne is pulling away, a crease denting her brow.
“Are you okay?” she asks, her hands on my shoulders.
“Of course!” My voice comes out breathless. It seems to me that the sky is darkening and I’m not sure how much longer I can stand there at the gate. I take her hands in mine and squeeze them, feeling her newly manicured fingernails press into my palms, and wish her well.
Leanne’s face softens into a smile, but I can tell there’s still a note of concern there, so I force myself to stay and watch as she searches in her bag for her car keys and then noses her old green Mercedes back and forth what seems like a hundred times, providing plenty of ammunition for my theory that there’s an inverse correlation between driving skill and vehicle size. When she finally frees the car from its parking spot, she beeps and gives a jaunty wave. I plaster on a grin and wave both of my trembling hands in the air above my head. It’s only when I catch a glimpse of Leanne’s face screwing into a puzzled expression that I realize I must look like one of those people who direct planes out of airport gates. Or maybe a Bhangra dancer.
I wait until her car turns out of sight before spinning around and hurrying back down the path to my apartment.
The relief floods through me as soon as I’m inside. I make a beeline for the bathroom and scrub my hands in the sink. Leanne looked like the picture of health, but you never know the truth until it’s too late. The water is so hot that my skin turns pink. I persevere, humming the “Happy Birthday” song twice under my breath—a handy little tip I picked up during a recent study of the Centers for Disease Control’s website. When I read the CDC’s advice, I immediately wondered if my mother knew it. I managed to stop myself from calling her in Philadelphia and asking, but I can’t stop myself from thinking of her every time I put my hands below that scalding water and watch my skin change color.
I shut off the water and listen as my shallow, uneven breathing slowly quiets.
Ninety-eight, I think.
I look at my reflection in the mirror above the sink. I’m paler now than I was when I moved here, but my eyebrows are unchanged: amber-colored, well defined, expressive. My best friend, Lourdes, tells me I have trustworthy brows. She calls them my moneymakers. Who knows? She might be right. Even the most reticent patient eventually reveals her secrets to me . . . black pieces of coal held so tight they’ve turned into sharp, gleaming diamonds.
“Ninety-eight,” I say aloud. It’s an interesting number, the silky shimmy of ninety, the slammed door of eight. I say the number again. Tomorrow a new one will take its place and it seems important I keep track. “Ninety-eight.”
It’s been ninety-eight days since I set foot beyond that gate at the sidewalk.
Chapter 2
I blame Google.
I’m kidding, of course. I’m a therapist; I know I can’t pin this on the Internet. But it is true that the logistical difficulties of not being able to leave your home practically disappear whe
n you fall into the welcoming embrace of the World Wide Web. Groceries, books, vitamins and supplements, even alcohol . . . they can all be delivered. The Internet enables me with the faux-casual finesse of a beady-eyed drug dealer. No need to leave, Amazon purrs when I run low on antibacterial hand soap. I’ll have a box on your doorstep tomorrow.
In my friend Lourdes’s version of my life story, she is the one who pried me out of Philadelphia four months ago, yanking me from yet another of the sort of dead-end relationships I seem to be particularly skilled at cultivating, and from a job that, while satisfying, never felt like the exact right fit. I let Lourdes believe she was responsible for my move because there’s some truth to the claim—I am, after all, now renting the first-floor apartment of her San Francisco home. There’s no need to burst her balloon, no need to assert that the real catalyst for the life change was my dog, Toby.
After graduate school, I’d accepted a counseling position in Philadelphia Hospital’s grief clinic. I stayed there for seven years, but it wasn’t until I began volunteering after work as a pet bereavement counselor at the SPCA that I experienced an “Aha Moment” that would have made Oprah proud. Helping people who’d lost their beloved pets felt like my true calling, the one that aligned my training and experience and personal interests.
By personal interests, I mean dogs. I’ve always loved dogs. You know how some people can’t pass a baby without stopping to coo in his pudgy little face? I’m like that with dogs. And puppies? Forget it. I’m convinced that petting a puppy is good luck. Some people rub Buddha bellies; I pet puppies. I’ve been known to trail a puppy for blocks just to have the chance. It seems to me that believing in the luck of puppies makes a lot more sense than believing in, say, a lucky number. Can a number remind you of the power of pure, unconditional love? Can a number embody loyalty or joie de vivre or goodness or friendship or . . . Well, you get my drift. I love dogs.
Despite the strong sense that I was meant to be working with other animal lovers, I held on to the hospital job because I felt a responsibility to my patients and it was steady work that paid well and I had a comfortable, if not particularly exciting, routine in place. It’s hard for me to accept change (for this, like all good therapists, I blame my parents). Besides, pet bereavement is not exactly a cash cow as far as therapy niches go. The idea remained stuck in pipe-dream territory for a long time.
