Having found her body around 5:30, I called the nearest city shelter, around 6. The shelter is part of the system in which I had adopted her and licensed her and been forced to give her yet another rabies vaccination against my better judgement, but in order to legally keep her. It was a number I had for some time. A neighbor had told me that I could take her there to the shelter but as it turned out, the place that offered 24 hour phone service had a recording that they were not open so it was after hours. Maybe this is still Covid crap.
One of the women in the back house told me I should to go to the corner store for a bag of ice and we would put my dog's body on this ice. She talked using a picnic cooler. All I could think of was my dog bleeding out into a borrowed picnic cooler and her body being frozen solid instead of going through rigor mortis.
I said I was sure there was a 24 hour number to call and got on the Internet. It turned out that body pick up is the Department of Sanitation. We scheduled a pick up but were told that there was a 24 hour window and I should put her body in a plastic bag and then in a box, and PUT HER ON THE CURB. i.e. like garbage. However, I recalled someone telling me long ago about their dog being taken away by a man who had shown compassion by this service.
If I had decided to give my beloved dog the death shot, her body to the crematorium would have been paid for and handled by the vet. Without a yard to bury her in - one more illegal thing in the county anyway - I had to have her body removed. It was too late for anything else and I had no choice.
There was a chance in hell I was going to put her on the curb like garbage, unattended. and contemplated being out there all night to keep away raccoons, wandering big dogs, maybe coyotes, and worse, insects who wanted to chomp.
Please God, let her body go unviolated.
So back to the bath tub.
The woman from the back house got on the phone and asked if reasonably it would be morning and they said yes.
After my dog had laid on her bed dead in the tub for about an hour or so, I took a picture of her, just for me. I looked at it later and apparently was shaking too bad to take a good picture. I know this may be morbid but I thought about humans who used to do this "last picture" as a last memory, which was private, and how awful it had been years ago when the National Enquirer violated Elvis's privacy in death by running a photo of him in his coffin.
I decided to go ahead and have some tea and make myself a quick dinner. It was luke warm black tea and not great tuna and macaroni and cheese, but I thought I would do next what I had to do, if I took care of myself by eating.
Although there had been dogs - other people's dogs - in my childhood, I had never dealt with a dead dog before. My first pet, a goldfish, found dead, got flushed down the toilet, and my hamster I put in a cigar box along with some flowers and gave a Hindu cremation in the lot behind my childhood home.
When I went back in to see my dog in the tub on her bed, I noticed that her tail, that had been curved along her backside when I found her, was now sticking strait out and back. I have since been a bit obsessed with figuring about when she died and if the notion that I should go home early and see her was psychic. I saw that a few tiny flees were decamping. I had bathed her in a new shampoo with aloe and chamomile the morning of the day before the day she died. So her fairly clean and groomed body was completing the process of rigor mortis and cooling on its own. Fleas abandon a body that is not warm. I brushed them away from her hair and have no idea where they went.
I had on hand this large empty white cardboard file box for some time, which I thought I was going to use when I went through smaller boxes of paperwork. I realized it had been sitting there to be used as a cardboard casket.
I walked to the closest store, where I told strangers in line my dog had just died, and bought what I thought was a five dollar bag of white plastic bags and later realized I had paid $8 for. Plastic; it has its uses. I chose the garbage compactor type, which turned out to be the best choice due to its blocky size. At least it was white and thick enough to not rip or tear and did not look like the black you throw yard refuse and leaves in. It was also thin enough to see that she was in there. I wondered if her spirit was around to see me come into the house, bend to find her, touch her, to carry her on her bed to the tub, and now -
Although she probably could have lain exposed longer, I became more concerned that flies might find her. There had been some in the house over the last few days. While bending over the tub, I was able to pull one plastic bag up and another down over her, not smothering or harshly tight on her body and bed, not that she needed air to breath, but her body did. With her tail adding a new dimension as it now seemed even more stiffly away from her body, this package all fit perfectly in the big white cardboard file box, which now rested on the bathroom floor.
I got out a green marker and I wrote her name in big letters on the top of the box and drew a heart. I wrote the number for pick up. I wrote her birth and death date, and "A loved and loving maltese-poodle."
I never opened the lid to look in after that. Closed casket. Privacy in death?
I tried to sleep but it was impossible. My heart raced. I worried more about insects crawling in from the floors. I told myself I dare not sleep in, or the pick up would pass us by. I wrote e-mails to some friends, full of anguish. At maybe 3 or 4 in the morning I 'slept' for an hour. At quarter to six as the dawn rose, I took a chair outside and then brought my little girl out. Two trees out there that have been suffering from drought, shaded over, lots of insects in the morning soil, at least there was a cement area to set her down on. I started crying to myself again.
Some dog walkers were going by. I tried to warn them that I had a dead dog in a box.
All a couple people wanted to know was "What time are they coming to pick her up?" I said, "Probably sometime this morning but they have till 6 tonight. It's OK, I've waited longer for car repairs."
"I can't just leave her out here."
"No you can't."
I tried to read. I ran in for some instant hot coffee and got a warmer jacket. I felt a little drizzle or wet dew coming down off the tree leaves and put plastic over the top of the box. Don't rain just yet.
Sitting with a body in death is what people used to do, before funeral homes had come and go visitation hours. I hate funerals and the whole funeral home scene. I've read "An American Way of Death." I think the funeral business is a greedy one, the cost of funerals and burials out of reason.
I remembered this news. When Mick Jagger's long term companion, L'Wren Scott, commit suicide, a woman who was six-foot-three barefoot, 'hung' from a doorknob with a scarf, her friend the actress Ellen Barkin came and sat with her body, and though of course I never met or knew either person, and had not known anything about her or that she was Jagger's long term companion, I felt profound respect for Ellen Barkin. She had not avoided that scene. What a friend she had been to L'Wren.
Not that my dog's death had anything in common with L'Wren's.
My neighbor with his dog, my dog's buddy, walked by and his dog, from a few feet away, looked towards the box, and took a deep obvious inhale. Did she smell only death or know my particular dog was dead in there? What had happened overnight under that plastic? One article I read on the net suggested that within hours a dog waiting for pick up could stink up an entire house. I smelled nothing lingering in the air of the bathroom, nor outside. It had been fairly cool and was that morning.
At nine thirty I finally saw a man in a green truck, an old man who I imagine had a part time gig doing this, and when I saw him I burst out in tears. "I found her dead when I got home," I sobbed. I knew this old guy was small but tough. He's the one who gets calls about dogs who got killed by cars, some who have no ID, and has to look at that mess. "I'm sorry," I said, "You must have the worst job in the world, having to pick up dead dogs."
"It can be difficult at times," he said. Then he looked at my box, and all I had written, and I saw it, he knew my dog was a loved one. He stopped for a moment, a seconds long affirmation, and then he picked her up and took her to the truck. What I had written on her cardboard casket had humanized her, I think. And then as this was my last good-by, I thanked him. Then a new thought came to me, that on the other end, maybe someone else with gloves would have to take her out. And maybe then the respect for my beloved animal friend would be over.
I started thinking about cremation of humans, how the cheapest services picked a dead person up quickly and they were on fire within hours. You had to pay more to have a dead human lay somewhere for three days, which many a tradition believes is how long the human soul lurks around, sometimes not knowing they are dead. Soon my dog would be a puff of smoke over in Long Beach maybe and probably on a pile of dead animals.
I knew I should sleep but I couldn't.
I did dishes. I thought about returning unused dog food to the store and giving the rest away.
I took the numbered tag she had worn for a decade, put it on a string, and put it around my neck.
I did the dishes.
Without changing clothes or washing my hair, I headed out on foot, aware I was bedraggled. Maybe I could walk some of the angst off. Oh no, I would never be pulling her down the bumpy street in her carrier or have her leash in my hand with her on the other end. I would never have reason to sit in the grass at a park to be beside her sleeping. I thought I wanted to go get drunk. I rarely drink but in this case maybe drunk would be better.
A friend had given me a gift certificate at Christmas for a certain restaurant that features a micro brewery. I had used part of it months ago but the fact is, I hate beer. The beef burger slider I had was real good and I'd had a glass of wine but it was dull wine, not the type that leaps with life and makes one giddy.
I had met a lot of people with my dog. You could say we were known. I walked along wondering who I might see, who I might tell. It turned out quite a few. Many had a dog death in their own history, most knew to say they were sorry, some actually looked sad or distressed for me.
I got to the restaurant thinking their happy hour started at one, but it turned out to be at two. So I walked around and into some stores, knowing I wasn't going to buy anything, basically loitering. I picked up free magazines and papers and skimmed them. When I saw someone coming with their dog, I told them mine had died the day before. I judged their old dogs as more lively than mine had been at the same age.
When I got back to the restaurant at two the waitress came up to me and handed me a $20 bill. She said, "Someone who was dining here overheard you, and said to order whatever you want."
"Really? How sweet! Are they here now?"
"No they left. They also asked me if you were a regular here, are you?"
"No, I have a friend who gave me a gift certificate at Christmas and I've only been here once before. She is real picky about food and prides herself on knowing restaurants." (I blabbed my friend's name.)
"So you follow her lead?"
"Yes."
"I told them you were just real stressed out because your dog had just died."
(Maybe they had overheard me ask her an hour earlier if they still had happy hour and that I wanted a drink?")
I ordered chili, a hot dog, fries, and though there were tempting alcohol creations on the menu, a glass of that dead house wine, which, with my lack of sleep, probably served as to push me closer to it. It was all good, but the stranger's unexpected generosity did not prevent me from being in shock at the total bill with tip. $7 for a plain hot dog? Noone had asked me if I might like some onions or relish? How could I spend like this? What was left was about $6, I guess that paid for the plastic bags I bought. OK. Alright. Play it forward.
I sat far from groups of diners and was mostly ignored by the waitress and her helpers. No napkins either. But that was OK, because I was thinking of my dog, still shedding tears, and talking to myself or her as well. People reminded me she had been on death row and I had given her a decade more of life.
I once heard talking to oneself is a writerly trait.
I heard my old friend Wes in my head, joking around.
Me: "I've been talking to myself."
Wes: "Must be a good conversation." Eyes twinkle.
There was one thing that made me smile and feel calmer as I sat out there in the morning cool with the tiny droplets of rain and the dismal sky and my dog in her white cardboard casket, sheeted with white plastic. And that was thinking of my friend, M. who had died years ago, during the first strange and scary rage of AIDS.
This was in the early stages of the epidemic when the disease was a mystery and before there were drug cocktails. The LA Weekly had a front page article at some point that was extensive about the latest theories which included transmission from monkeys to men.
M. had come to Los Angeles as a teenager, alone in this world. Things happened.
I had not terribly mourned his passing, nor was I without feeling. As it turned out, he hadn't complained enough for me to understand that he had been homeless and sick for a while. I find it somehow easier when a death is expected and I had been along on that ride with him, though there were some others too who stood by him. He had been unaware, until he was diagnosed, and had not been diagnosed until he experienced a drastic weight loss. When he died, science had gotten to the point where they knew he had a very early, very slow moving version of HIV, that had taken a decade at least to show up, while at that point some mutations could kill in six months.
Recently, I dined with the very same friend who had gifted me the Christmas gift certificate for the micro-brewery. She is not vaccinated for Covid and we had not seen each other in at least three years.
We met outdoors at the best Mexican restaurant in our vicinity, in her opinion, also expensive. Lately I suspect she got an inheritance.
I found myself telling her about M and not in the most eloquent way. I stopped and started and wound around the point, loosing my thoughts between eating a little this and a little that. I'd told her the story that basically ended with M. having proven to be the very model of forgiveness, though he was not at all religious.
She said, "Well good for him!"
I said, "I could not have."
She said that M.'s story, of his mother and a sister taking a charity up on two tickets to LA to see him as he lay dying, and then using their time here to sight-see and even go disco dancing, and then absconding to leave him there to die without them at Christmas, was something that was in a film she had seen.
He had not wanted me to visit because I was taking classes and people were coughing in my classes. After a bout in intensive care and isolation room hospitalization in which I, as a visitor, had to mask-up so as to not infect him, he was down to 12 T cells and anyone with a cold could have hastened his death.
However, after hearing his mom and sister had gone, I insisted that I would come for Christmas, and had made the lasagna that he said he wanted to eat to take with me. Instead I got a call early in the morning that he had died in the middle of the night.
But suddenly as I sat with my dog's coffin waiting for the body pick up man. I was thinking of M., him smiling, looking healthy and in a light tweedy summer suit. I said to whomever was listening, "M, would you take care of my dog on the other side? I think you would do a good job of it." And I had an image of my dog smiling too. I only worried that when I got there he might not want to give her back. The idea of M taking care of my dog cheered me immensely. I thought it could be a good win-win situation.
I'm having difficulty adjusting. I'm on a computer and I think "She must be sleeping, she's so quiet." And then I think, "No, she's dead." Or I find myself thinking "I better go home and feed her," and I realize no need to. I realize that for a decade she was always on my mind and that I did live my life around her, and she lived her life around me.
And that buddy dog who sniffed towards her as she lay there in that box waiting for the body pick up has been coming around, looking for treats, sitting in the space where they would both sit, waiting a while.
C 2022 Christine Trzyna
