Edgar came into our lives over a decade ago. There he was, standing in an already busy intersection on 16th Street. We had just left the gym when my daughter spotted him, alerting me to that fact by screaming at me to stop the traffic, jumping out, and flailing wildly at a car which she successfully brought to a momentary standstill. Within seconds, she had scooped up the tiny Chihuahua trembling in the widening beam of the headlights before him, named him Edgar – an homage to Mr. Poe. Shortly thereafter she introduced him on Facebook as “50% tremble, 50% snuggle” and told the world that he would be moving in with us. While I had run several miles on a treadmill, I hadn’t yet had my first cup of coffee. I was neither alert nor ready for work let alone a Chihuahua. Somewhere way in the back of my mind, a plan was forming to post “Found Dog” signs around the neighborhood. I was confident that by the end of the day “Edgar” would be back where he belonged, answering to a name someone else had given him. Sophie almost convinced me to let her stay home from school to be with her new dog. Shaking, Edgar was submissive and starving, his little ribs as noticeable as the heart shaped markings on his coat. Without saying it out loud, I knew Sophie also knew that based on our experience with Molly the Greyhound, a dog was probably not in the cards.And it is exceedingly short, his galloping life. Dogs die so soon. I have my stories of that grief, no doubt many of you do also. It is almost a failure of will, a failure of love, to let them grow old—or so it feels. We would do anything to keep them with us, and to keep them young. The one gift we cannot give. ― Dog Songs: Poems
On the heels of a spectacular crisis in my professional life, we had only weeks earlier visited the Arizona Greyhound Rescue and brought home a beautiful brindle. Elegant and affectionate, Molly knew how to be retired. She lounged around the house all day eating Lays potato chips – but she did not want to do it without me. She needed a companion, preferably retired. She needed more space.
Within a week or two, we found out that another family was waiting for Molly—with another greyhound and someone at home all day long. It was a better place, a “forever home.”
It was also heartbreaking. Life with Molly, although brief, had sealed the deal as far as future pets were concerned. We would remain a one-cat family.
No dogs.
No fostering.
No rescuing.
No more dogs.
No way.
But there were tell-tale signs that Edgar was finding a way into my husband’s heart. “Surely someone is missing this little guy terribly,” he said, slipping out to Safeway for dog food and treats. He drove slowly around our neighborhood, posting “Found Dog” signs next to “Lost Dog” notices on lampposts, hoping he would make some family’s day by returning their dog. He scoured Craigslist to see if someone in central Phoenix had lost the cute little Chihuahua that liked belly rubs. The next day, he took Edgar to the Humane Society where they checked for a microchip.
No chip. No collar. No clue that he belonged to someone.
The vet estimated Edgar at about seven years old. Malnourished and dirty with ghastly breath and worse teeth, Edgar weighed three pounds—less than a bag of sugar.
It soon became clear that nobody was looking for him. In spite of having four perfectly good legs, he expected to be carried everywhere and dutifully, we obliged. All of us. He gained weight. He stopped trembling. He slept on Sophie’s chest every night, his heart beating against hers. He scampered towards us when we called “Edgar.” We were besotted, as poet Mary Oliver writes,
Because of the dog’s joyfulness, our own is increased. It is no small gift. It is not the least reason why we should honor as well as love the dog of our own life, and the dog down the street, and all the dogs not yet born. What would the world be like without music or rivers or the green and tender grass? What would this world be like without dogs?Edgar was ours.
On a gloomy Friday afternoon about a month later, my daughter and I were out walking with my parents in the village where they live in Northern Ireland. I was killing time, keeping my fingers crossed that an old friend would come through with concert tickets for Van Morrison who had been granted the Freedom of the City and was performing in Belfast. But I was distracted— repeatedly—by thoughts of foreboding and by the unexpected sound of my voice when my phone-calls to Arizona went straight to voice-mail. Worried, I did what I always do when I have “a bad feeling” and sent a text to my best friend. I asked if she would drive to my house—just to check. I know I have a flair for the dramatic and, conventional wisdom be damned, I tend to sweat the small stuff and almost always find the devil in the tiniest of details. I make mountains out of molehills which sometimes works. Sometimes I might produce a silk purse out of a sow’s ear. But this? This would be one of the most significant details of my adult life, wrapped up in a text that travelled across several time zones from a little village in Northern Ireland to Chandler, Arizona at 12:25PM Mountain Standard Time: “Trying to be calm, but afraid he is hurt or dead.” I stayed on the phone, listening as she got out of the car. In the background, I could hear the freeway, cars whizzing past on the other side of the wall at the end of our street. I could hear her breathing as she walked up to my front door. I held on as she knocked the door. I held on as she looked through the bay window to see little Edgar staring back at her, still and silent, his heart beating faster than ours. I held on as she discovered my keys under the doormat and as she came on in to our cheery living room with its sunny yellow walls. I held on as she called my husband’s name. Once, twice, three times before finding his lifeless body on the bed. I held on, hoping with her that he was just resting but knowing – knowing – he was gone. Still, I held on to something close to hope. I held on. What has stayed with me more than the anguish of those moments, was that as his fragile heart stopped working, my husband’s last interaction on this earth was most likely one of tenderness, three pounds of unconditional love curled up like a comma on his chest. For a long time afterwards, Sophie told me that every day without her dad began not with sorrow and dread, but with Edgar licking her face and making her smile. He was always ready to walk—or be carried — into the world with her. Ready for her, always.
Edgar, you were a sure thing, a metronome in a world rendered shapeless by the loss of the man who was my daughter’s first word – daddy. Because you were there—a gift beyond measure—her path was a little easier, a little less lonely. How she loved you!
She told me today that when you left this world, you left a little bandaid on her heart—and on the hearts of everyone who scooped you up when they visited our home.
I’m so grateful to know that your last moments were in the arms of the girl you watched over for almost a decade. If by chance, you pass this way again, I hope you’ll find a heart like hers – open, bounteous, and waiting for you.
I first heard
From the cheap seats, I listened to Springsteen tell the stories of an American life, stories that could have been plucked from my dead husband’s life. The one about not being drafted to Vietnam because he was the only surviving son of a man who died in military service; the one about how he cut his hippie hair when his buddies didn’t come back; and, the one about trading in his beloved motorcycle and the muscle car to settle down when he and his girl were just too young. He had settled. She had too. They continued to settle for too long, each of them making compromises and taking care of what became obligations until they didn’t even care much for each other.
