by Tom Ryan
Because I continued to tuck Will in almost every night to music and sometimes shared the videos on Facebook, some of his fans sent blankets to cover him with. They were all handmade, with “a hug in every stitch,” as Betty Teller Fagen from Long Island noted with the one she had knitted.
The first were a couple of prayer shawls from Lisa Money in North Carolina, a cancer survivor and a thriver. One was a deep red, the other blue and white. The note said, “One for Atticus and one for Will.” But other than on chemotherapy days, Atticus never needed them. They were all Will’s.
Through summer and into autumn, I was grateful for the way people were connecting with Will and Atticus. Will was receiving a steady supply of flowers, and eventually he had close to thirty afghans and prayer shawls.
I was thankful for the blankets for Will. As had happened in his first year with us, Will’s skin started breaking down. It became crusty and hard, spreading over his forehead, down his neck, onto his back and across his chest and sides. I kept those areas closely shaved, applying medicated ointments, and gave him daily baths with a special shampoo.
Unlike Atticus, Will enjoyed water. He was a good patient when I kept him in the tub for up to twenty minutes.
During that second autumn with us, I noticed Will was losing weight. It wasn’t much, but those blankets made a lot of difference, because for the first time in over a year, he was beginning to shiver again.
At Four Your Paws Only I bought a red coat—handmade in New Hampshire—to keep him warm. It was lined with thick white fleece that also showed around the edges, and it had a thick white Santa Claus collar over his shoulders. It was quite the fashion statement, and as the leaves fell, Will bounced around in the backyard in his new coat looking festive and comfortable. Those following Will’s story loved these photos of him, and the staff at Four Your Paws Only was besieged with requests for the red coat Will was wearing. I’m told the woman who made them was a one-person operation, and as a steady stream of orders came in, she’d say, “Don’t they want anything but red? I’ve made all these other colors already.” But Will’s friends wanted the coat Will wore.
His little red coat became Will’s constant companion if it was under seventy degrees. Even during the next spring and summer, if there was a slight breeze, he’d need it for warmth.
This was Will’s first sign of decline after a year and a half of improvement.
Will’s baths were not only good for his skin, they were therapeutic for his body. I towel-dried him when I took him out of the tub. He’d look at me with such seeming clarity that I’d say to him, “Hey, who are you, and what did you do to the fellow who came from New Jersey?”
I carefully dried his ears, his belly, and each leg. The next step was to put him on an old massage table and warm him with a heating pad. I massaged him, kneading cautiously into his muscles. He now let me work the muscles around his hips, and when I took him through range-of-motion exercises he was tranquil and trusting.
I joke with my friend Martha House, a Toronto artist, that between us we have three degrees.
“What are you talking about?” she said the first time. “I have three degrees!”
“I know, and I flunked out of three colleges when I was young and stupid. So between us we have three degrees.”
I may have flunked out, but I’d learned a thing or two. Seeds had been sprinkled that took a while to germinate. At the universities I attended, I majored in exercise physiology, and worked as a student athletic trainer with the sports teams. I studied massage, and finally, after thirty years, what I learned was being put to use. I had worked on seven-foot-tall basketball players and football linemen who weighed three hundred pounds. Now I was massaging twenty-five-pound Will. The technique was the same, except with Will, I didn’t press as deeply.
One of the other seeds that fell along the path of my youth was an English literature class I took. I was a lazy student and didn’t dedicate myself to my studies. But I remember a teacher talking about The Canterbury Tales. Something within me bubbled with excitement, but learning more meant reading, and I wasn’t a reader.
By the time I reached thirty I was embarrassed by my lack of knowledge, and I set out to read the classics. The goal was one a week. I started with Moby-Dick. I finished it more than two months later. Alas, I am sure I didn’t do Mr. Melville’s book justice. James Fenimore Cooper’s The Deerslayer came next, and the main character, Hawkeye, took my hand and led me into the wilderness of literature. Mark Twain’s A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court was the third book I read. After that, I was starved for beautiful words and swallowed whole anything I could find.
More than ten years after being introduced to Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales, I read them. Twice. His parade of personalities so impressed me that when a girlfriend picked up an abandoned puppy on the side of the road and brought him home and she struggled to come up with a name, I suggested Chaucer.
As late in life as my early thirties, I used to wake up in the middle of the night and wonder when I’d make something of myself. Mostly what I wanted was to be happy and at peace with who I was. But I had no career. Although I always had friends, I rarely fit in, wherever I was. I was still waiting to discover who I’d become.
But looking back on things, every turn in the road, every uphill, every crash contributed to make me who I’d become. When I looked at Atticus and Will and my monastic life, the words of Paulo Coelho came to mind.
“So, I love you because the entire universe conspired to help me find you.”
I could have said that to Atticus or Will. But mostly I believe I was saying it to myself. A long path had brought me home, to a world I had always dreamed of, but never knew existed. In spite of all my human frailties, I had come to love myself, and therefore was able to love others. Completely. Selflessly.
Although I was never obsessed with Will’s past, I’d sometimes think about how the universe conspired in Will’s life to bring him into our home. Readers all know that truth is stranger than fiction. A year and a half into my friendship with Will, I was still perplexed about how he’d found his way into the already set partnership between Atti and me.
But we’d left the past where it belonged and started anew. I urged Will to look at his life as a tabula rasa, a blank slate. Whatever had conspired against him didn’t matter to me in the least. What we did with what we had was everything.
It was Martha House who unwittingly revealed an insight into Will’s life. One day when we were on the phone she mentioned a painting that hadn’t come out the way she wanted it to. She e-mailed me a photo of it, and it was bleak and dark, reminiscent of some back-city alleyway during a power outage.
As we continued to speak, I heard Martha moving around her studio, just as I had been moving around my writing space. Before hanging up, she told me to check my e-mail. While we were talking she had repainted the disappointing canvas, adding zest and light, and two abstract characters in the middle of the scene who looked like they were dancing.
I was moved. She’d changed a piece that wasn’t working into one that came alive. It was a redo, just as Will had redone his life. Just as I had changed mine.
Will came to me a mess. He’d been run over by a Mack truck full of crazy, to borrow the line from Marijane. But with care and a second chance, he had made the dark, bleak canvas of his life into something hopeful and sparkling. At the center of Martha’s canvas there was dancing. Inside of dear Will, there was also a dancer, and he was emerging.
I could see how far Will had come when I massaged him. He had learned to love, but more important, he had learned to be loved, and he learned to trust. If my fingers came near his mouth when I was gently working my way around his body, he’d open wide, and sometimes he would grab hold, but he’d never bite hard. There were days he’d simply hold them between his teeth, and other times, as when Rachael examined him and he wasn’t comfortable, he’d bite slowly at the air.
His instinct was to attack, but he was rem
inding himself not to.
Will wasn’t just aging, he was growing older. I liked that. Even in his elderly years, he was still learning and growing.
Along with the problems with Will’s skin, his legs were getting weaker. He was having difficulty standing on the wood floor and on linoleum. Slowly his legs would spread and he’d slide down into a spread-eagle position. He would sink until he lay flat. When he tried to get up again, he couldn’t. His front legs would reach out, but he couldn’t get traction and he’d slide an inch or two forward each time he fell. This frustrated him to no end, and it also became an issue when he urinated in the house, because he’d slide down into it and not be able to get up.
After watching him struggle like this for several days, I realized that even the bath towels I had been spreading around our apartment weren’t working. I had another idea.
I ordered half a dozen yoga mats and covered the bare floors. They were perfect. Will could stand on them and pull himself up while on them, and they were also machine washable.
Life was never easy with Will in it. There was always something to figure out, but that was part of our contract.
His next difficulty was sleeping through the night. His middle-of-the-night rambles around our home were happening so often that I was beginning to suffer from sleep deprivation. Rachael gave him the smallest dose of pill possible to help him sleep. While it worked some nights, on most he’d wake up, and after getting out of bed, he’d start banging into things as if he were a drunk. He’d fall and cry out, whimpering in his confusion.
Since neither one of us liked the effects of the sleeping pills, I stopped giving them to him. My next plan was to attach a small bell to the corner of my bed. Most nights after that, he’d get up and brush against the bell, waking me up. I’d stumble to my feet, hurry to find him, and run him outside, or at least get to him in time to hold him when he went to the bathroom.
When autumn had given way to winter, even as Will was getting weaker, Atticus was having many rough chemotherapy days, and I was wearing down, one afternoon a thought hit me. There, in the middle of our messy lives, with things not at their best, I thought, I am right where I am supposed to be.
It was a freeing thought.
I never found my religion in church.
I didn’t find it in my angry days playing judge, jury, and executioner in Newburyport.
I found it first in the mountains.
And later I realized it was also in the woods and by the streams and lakes.
When Will arrived and Atticus and I spent more time in the backyard, I found my religion there too, with the blue jays and chipmunks and woodpeckers. And the bears.
Slowly, while we fought cancer, pushed death away, and resisted exhaustion, I understood that religion was also in our home, in these friendships, in the bonds we shared and the most basic of pleasures.
Richard Rohr wrote, “Faith is not for overcoming obstacles; it is for experiencing them—all the way through!”
I discovered the faith I had always longed for in the last place I looked for it—within me.
Life wasn’t easy, but it was beautiful. It was filled with grace.
All three of us were indeed right where we were supposed to be.
8
Aragorn and Atticus
Wonder is the heaviest element on the periodic table. Even a tiny fleck of it stops time.
—DIANE ACKERMAN
When you have Will’s past, the challenges come and go. It’s only natural. I understood from the beginning that nothing was guaranteed. So we took each day as it came, the good with the bad, the healthy with the sick.
On some of those days, Will slept soundly. He’d be so still that I’d check to make sure he was breathing. With my hand on his chest, I could feel it rising up and down, the tiny heartbeat pulsed with my touch. Whenever I did this, he rarely stirred. In his relaxed state, I’d whisper to him about our original contract. It was a simple one. “I like having you here, and you’re welcome to stick around for as long as you wish, but please understand, it’s your life to live or leave.”
On one of the hottest summer nights, not even the air conditioners seemed to be helping Will. Atticus and I were on the couch in the living room when Will stumbled out of the bedroom. He was dizzy and swaying. I heard the wheezing right away, and when I walked over to him, he pushed himself against me, wanting me to pick him up. I held him and we looked into each other’s eyes. It was ironic—those cloudy, old, mostly blind eyes said so much when we came face-to-face and he was in my arms. People talked about how beautiful Will’s eyes were, but mostly they were talking about his long black lashes. But his eyes were gorgeous too. They used to be squinty, back when he didn’t know who to trust and the pain was difficult to handle. As he gradually shed the pain and confusion, what was left were pools of innocence, deep and sweet.
He rested his chin on my shoulder, and the rattling in his breathing frightened me.
I came close to texting Rachael to ask her to meet us at her office, but I held off for a few minutes. Instead, I took Will outside. The air was as thick as syrup. He coughed and he choked. We returned to get Atticus, I threw a few things in my backpack, and leading by my headlamp, we walked through the ferns and the undergrowth to the river.
I lit tea candles and placed them on the rocks. I turned on music on my phone and plugged it into a small wooden speaker. Vivaldi flowed, just as the Ellis River did down from the mountains, over my ankles, and beyond us on its way to the Atlantic Ocean.
Atticus sat on his flat rock and watched as fireflies flashed and glowed around him and all over the river. They were like stars dancing and swirling among us, daring to be closer to us than to the rest of the firmament high overhead.
Even in the darkness I could see Will’s eyes looking into mine. I could hear the wheezing in his chest. The struggle to breathe. The dry rasping. The helplessness.
Nothing is guaranteed, nothing but this moment. I told myself this again and again.
That doesn’t just go for elderly dogs and people. It goes for all of us, for all of life. It is forever fleeting. The Appalachian Mountain Club has eight huts located along the Appalachian Trail as it winds across the White Mountains. In one of them hangs an old carved sign: REMEMBER, YOU ARE DYING.
Under a sliver of moon through a gap in the shadowy trees, I carried Will to the middle, where the land rises and the water is shallow. It’s the same place he’d sat the day before in the high heat of late morning. I lowered him. He trusted me with his body.
I placed him in the refreshing current and I sat behind him, my legs on either side to give him balance. He lowered the rest of his body. I could hear his tongue lapping at the mountain waters, drinking them in, cooling his throat.
Will’s body pushed up against my right leg and he laid his head atop my shin.
Shallow breaths grew deeper. The tension left him. He could inhale again. The rattle disappeared.
There was the flow of the water over the smooth river stones, the hoot of a barn owl, and Vivaldi. Other than that, we were as still as the night.
Upstream, the owl hooted again.
We stayed like that for several minutes, until Will started to shiver. When we stood, I wrapped him a thick towel, draped him over my shoulder, like a happy sack of sand, and went around blowing out the candles. He was comfortable riding this way, his body high, molding to mine, his head hugging my neck.
Atticus led us up the embankment, through the ferns and the fallen trees, over a small tumble of rocks, along the same path Aragorn and the other bears took.
When I looked behind us, there was a parade of fireflies spread out along the route we’d taken from the water. They looked to me like fairy dust trailing in our wake.
We climbed the stairs. Right outside our door, a large spider hovered overhead. I reminded her that she could stay, but to give us space. I did this by blowing softly on her. She retreated to an alcove in the little roof above our deck. This had been our
little game for more than a week. After the first few days, her web never seemed to get in our way. All it seemed to take was a gentle reminder for her to respect our space and we’d respect hers.
Inside, I dried Will and sat on the floor with him. My back was against the couch. Atticus laid his head on my shoulder from his regular perch to watch me. I reached over and picked up the water bowl for Will to take another drink. I passed it up to Atticus. By and by we all drifted off. Atticus above us, Will in my arms, and me on the floor.
I woke a couple of hours later, Will still in my arms, Atticus’s chin still on my shoulder. There was a wild rumbling outside, brassy and powerful and relentless. A deluge of raindrops on the metal roof. I placed Will in his bed, covered him up, and asked Atticus to make room for me on the couch. He slipped behind my knees as I curled on my side. My one hand hung over the edge and rested on top of Will.
I woke up with the sunrise and the call of the crows. The air was clean, the humidity gone. Crystal skies and green trees glowed before six in the morning. We went outside and Will drank as much of the fresh mountain air as his tired lungs could hold.
The grass was damp and dew shimmered like diamonds.
Back inside, I threw open the windows, turned off the air conditioners, and turned on a fan in my writing room to suck everything through.
Will retreated to the bedroom for a few more hours’ sleep. Atticus and I left for the woods. The forest was magnificent—teeming with vitality. We saw a deer gliding ahead of us, and then an enormous spider web across the trail. We walked out of our way to keep it safe.
The early hour and newly scrubbed air made for an easy hike to Table Mountain.
We returned home long before Will woke up. When he did, I moved one of his beds onto the deck and put up a child’s gate I picked up so that Will could enjoy the air without tumbling down the stairs if he decided to walk around. I was inside at the kitchen table, processing the photographs from that morning’s climb. Through the open door I could feel the gentle draft and hear Will’s snores. They were rhythmic and easygoing. He was perfectly relaxed.
