Goodbye, Mr. Bones

I’ve recently become acquainted with a gentleman who valets during the busy season at a building across the street from where I work. Occasionally, he walks across 1st street and offers to buy me a coffee (always a doppio espresso) or asks me how I’ve been. An older man, I listen to his stories of careers gone by and of his children and grandchildren. He tells me his theories on people and kindness and mindfulness. We work in an affluent area in a generally affluent city, and so it isn’t uncommon to see people pushing their dogs around in strollers. 

“Humans have come to treat their dogs better than we treat one another,” he once said to me, and I knew there was some truth worth paying attention to there.

But you see, the thing about dogs is…they’re dogs, they’re not people.

Dogs are exempt from free will and are therefore the product of genes and biology and upbringing and environment, which, in my view of things, means they’re extremely innocent and impressionable. Resilient, to be sure. But irrefutably in our care—as our Animal Kingdom charges—because we are Human Beings…

And when someone you love calls you on the phone to tell you that your family dog has passed away, and they’ve shed the suit of armor that was holding them together and just cry into the receiver, and you listen, calmly, because you’re still in shock and gathering facts, it starts to become clear why we call them “fur babies” and make their food from scratch and give them only organic treats and, yes, even push them in strollers if that’s what you think is right, because they are perfect creatures…

I got one such phone call this evening.

The grief I feel from losing Indiana Bones really put things into perspective. I cried on the phone with my mother and just kept saying, “Fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck…” Then I cried on the phone with my sister. Cried on the voice text to my brother. Found strength in a call from my father. I texted a few close friends who would have heard me boasting and bragging about Indy, and often. And these are all the people that I love, who are infinitely precious to me. Writing this now, my eyes are all bloodshot from sobbing out my grief, but even in his passing, Indiana’s capacity for love never ceases to amaze me. For on the bleak occasion of his death I am squarely and suddenly made aware of the never-ending web of love that connects us at all times.

It’s funny because I’d often hug Indy when I’d run out of people to hug, especially after I read that the same hormones fire in the brain whether you hug a human or an animal. He never seemed to mind but put up with me, stoically.

And, damn it, I want to say something profound here. So sad do I feel right now that I, of course, contemplated throwing in the towel on today’s blog post, but I told myself, maybe there’s something in there—maybe I can find the silver thread that will lead us all out of the darkness and into the arms (or the paws) of the ones we love. But that’s a lot of pressure for someone whose tears are clouding her view of the keyboard.

Maybe I’ll feel better somehow in the morning—at least more clearheaded—when I come back to edit this, but what I like about this blog is the opportunity to be real with you, dear readers. I’m fucking pissed off that Indiana Bones is gone, but I’m equally and exquisitely grateful to that dog boy to have put me in the proverbial arms of the people in my life whom I love. 

I’m certain my espresso-bearing gentleman of a friend would take no qualms with that.