These Days

December 2. 2020

Two men in the car next to me, struck me as grumpy, not-smiling people when I rolled my window down (wearing my mask) to ask if I needed to call the front desk to let them know I was in the parking lot with my dog. I think the man in the driver's seat nodded, but I thought, what a gloom-ster. 

John-the-hippy-tech-vet with his long pony tail, smiling eyes behind his glasses and mask, came to my window with a clip board and asked for a bit of patience as they had a tough case that morning. He looked towards the car next to me and said a dog needs to be put to sleep. It's been sick for quite a while. I asked, Oh no, how old is the dog and is it the people next to me here? 

John said, Seventeen and yes. 

He explained that due to Covid, they had to bring the dog out to the family, give her a sedation shot, and give them time to say goodbye before taking her in, without the family. 

 In a little strip mall off of Fallbrook Avenue, Chewy and I (who was there for a painful limp but thought we were going for a car ride) 

watched as a small roly-poly dog wrapped in a blanket was carried out, given a shot curb-side by the vet, and handed to the man in the driver's seat. I concluded the two men were father and son, heads pressed into the dog's fur, mouths moving, both of them wet-faced, crying.

This moment brought back another when Claire and I were driving somewhere in Los Angeles and saw a woman sobbing in the car next to us at a red light. Through the glass and street activity, it was a freeze-frame moment of pain. We were silenced and deeply shook when the light turned green and we drove on to a plant nursery for one of our "field trips" out of the house.

Finally, a young woman came out of the vet's office, mask on, to gather up the little dog. She waited patiently by the door as father and son leaned into the dog, holding her close, stalling the moment. The door opened, the son handed the dog off, and she walked very slowly, a kind of funeral march to the office door. The little dog relaxed in her arms, looking over her shoulder. I was watching the dog, then the men in their car, and silently praying for everyone. Father and son sat for a beat, then started the car and were gone.

These days we are witnessing waves of loss as a country, and global community. It is understandable to want to shut it off, let me live my life, this is all too much. Like the woman crying at the light, I was deeply shook by the goodbye and loss happening in the parking lot on a sunny Thursday morning. Yet I also felt oddly honored to be witnessing this, sitting quietly in my car with my dog, sending love to the men in the jeep, who I had thought of as gloomy upon first sight. 

They were grieving.

🍂

Send peace, to your cashier at the market, the mask-less asshole at the gas pump next to you, the homeless person with a shopping cart, the dog walker, the woman with her baby in a stroller, the doctors and nurses and people who clean the hospitals, people who pack the boxes in the Amazon warehouses, your mail carrier, people in nursing homes you've never met, birds, dogs, fat squirrels, the full moon, the person in the car next to you, your neighbors, your family, friends, yourself ~ and on and on and on.

So many stories unraveling before us, our own and others. 

Love them all. 

                                                                             xo  b