Broken Bones

 

I don’t know what it’s going to take to get my writer’s bone fixed. A writer’s bone cast? Surgery? Lobotomy? Oh wait, that’s for a different problem.

It’s not like I don’t have subject matter to write about. Grief? Check. Major life events? Check. Bad decisions? Check.

 Roughly five times a day, I regret my decision to bring another dog into the mix. Don’t get me wrong, I adore Cooper the Boxer dog and the transition has been easier than I ever thought possible. He minds extremely well and once he knows the rules, rarely breaks them. He and my five-year-old pittie mix DD have moved into step like they have been together for years. There hasn’t been a snarl, fight, or tussle since I brought him home. But I had moved into a period of contentment with DD and Molly the Cat. DD has always been the perfect dog within the confines of the house. She minds well, has never been destructive and has no separation anxiety. Take her on a walk or have visitors, and it’s a different story. Her playful and kind heart make her want to jump on every person or dog she meets and lick them until they wilt. She and the cat are best friends and coexist beautifully. I was enjoying our quiet routine. At a time when I needed peace, and fewer animals or people to take care of, I decided to adopt a Boxer.

 I blame my grief brain for making poor decisions. But I grew up hearing, “You’ve made your bed, lie in it.” So Cooper is here to stay. I’m focusing energy on teaching him basic obedience, and mostly, how to play. He came to me play-challenged. Not knowing his background, I don’t know if it’s from lack of socialization, neglect, isolation, or a combination. He’s finally learning how to play with DD. But with me, he’s an idiot. The only way he knows to play with me is to throw all 60 pounds of himself against me and try to bite me. I have to admit I was a bit scared for a minute the first time he did it. DD wasn’t having it and intervened Dog Whisperer style when he wasn’t listening to me. She corrected him and he understood and backed down. Now he’ll stop at my command, so I play with him in short bursts, until he gets too aggressive and I have to shut it down. I keep reminding myself I’ve only had him six weeks and it takes time. There’s a part of me that melts when I see the Boxer in him come out and he twirls and bends himself in half, wiggles, and his nubby tail wags out of control. I don’t want to shut it down.

 As I walk through the many stages of grief, I’ve seen something else in Cooper. He gets my emotions. DD never has. Molly gets it better than DD ever has. The first time I cried in front of Cooper, he was front and center, on my lap. Of course, he’s such a Velcro dog he’s never more than five feet from me anyway. But I could tell he sensed something different and instead of walking away, he let me hug him and douse his coat with salty tears. That has been my experience with Boxers. They. Just. Get. It.

 I’ve had to say things to dogs I never thought I’d say. “DD, quit licking his pecker.”  “Cooper, quit being a man whore.” (When I realized he rather liked DD licking his pecker and would position himself over her.) “Cooper, get your nose out of her butt,” when he and the cat were on my lap and he buried his nose under her tail. In his defense, the house WAS cold and maybe he just wanted to warm up.

 I hate cats. I love mine, but in general, I’m not a cat person. They do things on their schedule, and I swear, if they had a middle finger, they’d flip it every chance they had. She has NOT adjusted well to the addition of Cooper. I thought, being the dog savvy cat she is, she’d do better. Six weeks in and she still barely spends any time in the house. With the weather getting colder and the rain setting in, she’s learning to face her fears and spend more time in the house. I have to admit I’ve missed her curling up in the crook of my elbow and purring when I’m in bed surfing on my tablet.

 So, in addition to my writer’s bone being broken, my decisions-making bone is cracked as well.

 The one bone that isn’t broken is my grief bone. It’s as strong and thick as an athlete’s femur. Eleven months into widowhood and I feel like I’m just starting to process the whole damn thing. My beautiful aunt sent me a book about grief and anxiety. I’d never put the two together before, and apparently the author realized almost nobody had, thus the book. In the book’s introduction, she had me hooked. She lost her mom to colon cancer (John) and her dad to prostate cancer (Dad, although he’s beating it for now). In the first chapter, I understood most of the shit I’m feeling is normal. Who would have guessed? I felt so alone in my anger and random rage. I felt I was losing my mind with catastrophizing at every turn. Inability to remember a conversation I had yesterday? Yep, not the onset of dementia, just grief.  Unchecked social anxiety? Yep, turns out, pretty normal reaction to grief. I had seven years to prepare for losing John. I dealt with literally years of anticipatory grief. I thought the actual grief of losing him would be easy in comparison. Fuck me, wrong again. But what the book has done has helped me realize I’m not crazy. I’m not losing my mind. I’m just grieving, And that sucks.

 John was a presence. He was my protector. He was my safe place. All that went away on November 30, 2023 at 2:30 pm. But the kicker is I still feel his presence. I’ve questioned it, of course. But I remind myself he was a huge presence in life, why wouldn’t he be in whatever lies after? Not to freak out, you the reader, but I’ve had more than a few confirmations he’s looking out for me from wherever he is. The first was my house. House shopping in Roseburg was not going well when I finally found the house I’m in now. There were too many signs he had found it for me and sent me to it. And I had one specific thing we had joked about as a sign he could send to me. I don’t often speak out loud to John, even when I feel him around me. But a couple of weeks ago I did. I was in the middle of a grief storm from hell, and I said something very specific to him out loud, asking for his help. The very next day, I saw a clear sign he had intervened. During that week-long grief storm, I also generally asked him for something, and I’m seeing the results of it start to manifest.

 Okay, maybe my sanity bone has a hairline fracture, too. I don’t know. I’m new at the grief game and navigating my way through the sludge.

 One night I was in bed, in the midst of yet another grief storm and I told John I couldn’t take it anymore. Cooper, who I’ve taught to sleep in his dog bed on the floor (DD is the matriarch and she gets the bed with me) woke up and came to the side of the bed and stared at me. I got up, hugged him and sat with him on his bed for a minute, when a feeling of peace came over me and I was able to get to sleep easily for the first time in months.

 Maybe the decision to bring Cooper home wasn’t that bad after all.