Counting Down Our Endless Numbered Days
Mourning my dog and the me who raised him
As I write this, I’m lying on my bed alongside my fourteen-year-old dog, Hazel-rah. He is asleep. He is not yet dead. Though, I now know pretty much exactly when he will be.
This isn’t an essay about him, per se. I don’t think. I think it’s about Time. You know that asshole.
We adopted Hazel from a fantastic Chicago shelter called PAWS when he was just four months old. My wife and I raised him from a baby. He was our baby. Our starter child. He had the entirety of our attention for several years before his adoptive sister, Lulu, arrived from Bogota (long story) to upend his life. And, man, did that alone time imprint upon him. This old man is so spoiled. We lament that, but not really. It was our great joy to spoil him these past fourteen years. Even when it didn’t feel particularly joyful in the moment.
When he was still just a puppy, I’d lie beside him like this and stare into his sharp, expressive eyes — I’ve never known a dog with more overt facial intelligence— and work myself into unnecessary fits of sadness at the thought that one day I’d lose him. It was so stupid. Especially since that day was so far away back then. I mean, it’s here now. But back then it was little more than a dark fantasy.
There’s a line from one of my favorite songs— Iron & Wine’s ‘Passing Afternoon’— that would haunt me in those moments…
There are things that drift away
Like our endless, numbered days
Endless, yet numbered. I hate how much sense that oxymoronic phrase makes. There’s a certain flavor of anguish associated with understanding that something that feels so pure and eternal is in fact in a slow state of decay. When you connect deeply with another being, you become entangled. You become appendages of one another. And it hurts on such a soul-moaning level to know that that appendage will eventually be ripped away.
It was way back in the first Obama administration that Hazel-rah and I became entangled. Feels like a lifetime ago. And I suppose it was. One dog’s lifetime. We adopted Hazel less than a month after I moved to Chicago to move in with my now-wife. Since then, we’ve created a life together. We swelled from three to five while moving across five houses in three cities. The days between then and now did in fact feel endless. Like we’d all always been together and that we all always would.
But they were, in fact, finite. I could probably figure out the exact number if I wanted to. I don’t. I already don’t like knowing how many days are left.
Next week, I’ll wake up and not have to worry about letting Hazel outside to pee. I won’t have to think about getting his pills ready. I won’t hear his hopeful walk-please? squeaks as he watches me pull on a jacket to run errands. Or endure his endless whining because he wants… something? I won’t have to put up with his feverish, shark-like pacing beneath the dinner table. Or clean the shit off his paws after he tracks it inside from the backyard. Again! I won’t have to put out my back carrying him up and down the stairs because he can no longer find the floor beneath his paws. I won’t have to hold him up with a harness so he feels safe taking a piss. Or anguish with my wife, wondering if he’s crying in pain or hunger or just simple existential fear.
Next week, I won’t be able to lay my head on his abdomen and feel his lungs fill and release beneath my ear while we drift off into depression sleep together. I won’t be able to smell his popcorn paws or blow on his nose to tease him. I won’t be able to give him leftovers that I actually wanted to finish or wrestle with him or tell him, for the hundred-thousandth time, that tonight’s the night we finally have Hazel roast for dinner. I hate it!
Don’t know if you’ve picked up on this or not, but I’m not particularly sad for Hazel. Hazel will be dead. He’ll have melted back into this weird universe from which we all somehow emerged. And to which we all will return. He’ll be fine.
I’m sad for me! I’m fucking mortified for me! I am a selfish motherfucker, and I don’t want this massive piece of me taken away. I put my arms around him and try to pull his warmth right into my rib cage. I inhale deeply to fill my lungs with his pheromones. I caress his muzzle and try to memorize every blemish that marks his aging, failing body as he sighs contentedly in a half- sleep. I want to hoard these sensory experiences and Gollum them away to greedily protect. I want to grab hold of some piece of him and never let go, but there’s nothing to grab. And, in a few days, all of these realities will have become memories.
Joseph Campbell contends that we misunderstand the concept of eternity. That it’s not a synonym for infinity or forever. That it’s not even a unit of time. Here’s how he described it to Bill Moyers in The Power of Myth…
“Eternity isn’t some later time. Eternity isn’t even a long time. Eternity has nothing to do with time. Eternity is that dimension of here and now that all thinking in temporal terms cuts off…. the experience of eternity right here and now, in all things, whether thought of as good or as evil, is the function of life.”
I’m still trying to wrap my head around all that. But I have a feeling it’s what Iron & Wine’s Sam Beam was nodding toward when he sang of “our endless numbered days.”
Hazel is still with me today. For now, we’re both together in this shared eternity. Soon enough, he’ll be gone. And, honestly, it won’t be too long before I go, too. I’m fifty. That’s not exactly old, but it’s definitely not young. Not like thirty-five. Like the thrilled and terrified (and slightly less bald) guy who—alongside his brand-new, live-in girlfriend — walked hopefully through the doors of a north side Chicago shelter one dog’s lifetime ago.
That guy looked a lot like me, but he wasn’t me. He wasn’t the me who is me now. How could he be? That guy had spent most of his life single and lonely. He was the guy who left parties way too late, drank way too much, and fell asleep on the train ride home. He had friends and family and people he loved, but when he went home it was to an empty full-sized bed and a podcaster’s voice. He smoked at least a pack of cigarettes every day. He didn’t have anyone to care for, and that included himself. I can’t relate to that guy at all.
Many mornings these days I wake up nearly falling out of bed. It’s astounding how fast a king size bed can fill up. If I want any morning time to myself, I have to slip out while everyone else is still asleep in it. If I’m lucky, I can make coffee and meditate briefly before my responsibilities begin. The dogs have to be let out. My son has to be berated into getting dressed for school. My wife needs me to pick up a prescription after dropping him off. And I haven’t given the dogs a walk in a few days. But I also need to figure out what I’ll be feeding everyone that night. And twenty five other things. I have all these mammals that rely on me for all sorts of things. I get to care for them all. And love them all. Protect them. As best I can.
Getting to this point, from where I was, was a process. Not gonna lie. I’m a much happier person today. Not just happy to have my family, but happy to be here at all. For the first time in my life, I can honestly say that I love myself. I think I’m a pretty okay guy. And I would never be here without Hazel. He was the glue that held my wife and I together in our early years. He set the tone for unconditional love in our house. He helped foster the kind of home that could heal a shell shocked stray from Colombia and nourish the spirit of a hilarious, empathic little boy. And he taught me how much I can matter. If I’ll let myself.
You know, it’s not that I want to be that young man again. I don’t. I really, really don’t. I’m happy with my gray beard and crow’s feet. This feels a lot more like whom I’m supposed to be. But I do sort of mourn him. He was well-intentioned. And he dreamed big. So, so much bigger than me. That guy lived in a world of immense possibilities. There are brilliant aspects of him that I’ll never get back. When I die, it’ll be a much smaller death than the one he envisioned. I am sorry for all the ways that I let him down. I wish I could go back to him and explain, but he’d never understand. Not in a million years. There’s a difference between understanding and understanding. You only get the latter through direct experience.
My time with Hazel—as with the rest of my family—has been transformative beyond comprehension. I can’t begin to imagine what parts of me come directly from him. Like I said, we’re entangled. We’re part of one another. So, there is some comfort in knowing that I can never lose him completely. He’s in the wiring.
That I got to be a father to this dog, that I got to give him the sort of full and comfortable life of unrelenting love that most people can’t even imagine for themselves, that I got to cradle him as a baby, that I got to comfort him when he was sick, and that I’ll get to hold him in his very last moments and send him off as one of the luckiest creatures ever born, is among the most gratifying aspects of my life. There are a lot of things that I don’t need anymore because I had this.
When we brought Hazel back home to our first shared apartment, he came with the promise of so many memories and adventures. That promise is all spent now. The memories were made. The adventures were had. And we all gave up fourteen years in the process. I’m crying right now for all those memories and adventures and years.
There are more dogs in my future, almost certainly. I don’t know how I’m going to manage this all again for Lulu (who’s only one year younger), but she and I are still in our shared eternity. After her, there will be puppies and old rescues and hopefully some cats. And they’ll all come with that same promise. But that promise, too, will get spent in time. I’ll be changed in ways I can’t guess at now.
And when I am in Hazel’s position one day (before my wife, fingers crossed), he’ll still be with me. How could he not be?
And then I’ll melt back into the same weird universe that Hazel melted into. We’ll be together again for real. Along with everyone and everything else. All entangled up together like we’re all just one thing.
But it’ll be for a real eternity this time.
Epilogue: Hazel-rah passed away very happily on December 8, 2023 at 5:44 pm. He was ready to go. He didn’t even want any pizza.
He was surrounded by his pack and drifted off happily in the arms of his mom and dad. It was a beautiful death, befitting the prince that he was.
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