More dog days of August

I think I nearly killed my friend’s dog today. I got used to walking Bibi twice a day for roughly 50 minutes each time (I know, therapist’s hours), so I thought I’d take Sienna out for some good walks while I’m dog sitting. She, ahem, looks like she could use it. Plus she’s so much more eager to go than Bibi – maybe just because she’s a Lab, always interminably eager beavers. So last night I took Sienna out for 45 minutes after dinner, walking at quite a clip because she was so excited – oh this is cool, this is cool, hey Leslee this is so cool, wag wag wag pant pant. It was dark by the time we got back – it gets dark so much earlier now! We went inside and she sprawled on the floor and panted for about an hour.

This morning I took her out again around 10:30. But being mid-day, it was much warmer as well as more humid. On the way back, she really looked like she wasn’t going to make it. When we got in the house, thankfully air-conditioned, she was panting so hard and fast I was afraid she was going to have a heart attack or hyperventilate (is it even possible for a dog to hyperventilate?). But she seems to have recovered. I’d better not overdo it – Amy didn’t sign me up to put her dog through boot camp.

Besides having a 226-year-old house, Amy has a fabulous yard, with several small gardens, surrounded by trees and stone walls. When the first of my two dogs died in mid-November of 2000, Amy was kind enough to let me bury her in a nice spot in Amy’s back yard, since I have a condo and thus no yard of my own. Her husband was even kinder to put his muscle into digging a good-size hole out of the hardening ground. And when my last dog went a year ago May, we buried her here also, next to her “sister.” It’s a lovely yard for dogs, no doubt in the fine company of 226 years’ worth of family pets. Just not Sienna quite yet!

5:51:37 PM      trackback [] 

Coupling

Kurt posted a photo of the lovely, fresh face of his daughter book-ended by an old couple sitting behind her in the restaurant, lost in their own thoughts or maybe just lost. He writes that he never saw them say one word to each other, prompting an interesting meditation on closeness and distance in relationships.

Having just spent a couple of days visiting my parents, always the anti-model of a successful relationship, this struck home with me. I went up on Monday afternoon for my mother’s 74th birthday. (Since I’d forgotten to remind them I was coming, I had to wait several hours for them to come home, but that’s another story.) Tuesday morning we went for breakfast and I sat across from them while my mother complained about how lonely she is, how my father doesn’t talk to her, how they don’t have any friends and haven’t seen anyone in ages, which is not true but her Alzheimer’s makes recent visits quickly recede into ancient history. She was depressed and occasionally confused in her stories about where friends had moved and which children belonged to whom, which my father felt necessary to admonish her about. And she repeated herself frequently, eliciting more disgust from my father: “You just said that! You say that every… single… day!” No wonder she’s depressed.

My friend Carol’s mother, who has Alzheimer’s, has been in a nursing home for several years. Before that she was cared for at home by her husband, who now visits her every day, completely devoted and gentle with his wife. I look at my folks and I wonder how my dad will cope when my mom can’t dress, feed, or clean herself. I guess the essence of each of these relationships continues to play out through to the culmination, one relationship caring and the other a perpetual thorn in each person’s hide.

I was going to leave after breakfast yesterday, but decided I’d better take my mother off my father’s hands for a few hours. He went to his health club and I drove her up to Portsmouth. It was sunny, dry and breezy, a glorious day. We got ice creams and sat in the park by the fountain, then walked through the flower garden and along the walk by the bay. She was so happy.

I grew up feeling responsible for my parents, trying to make peace and assuage my mother’s unhappiness, and now I feel myself being pulled back into that vortex. Where do you draw the lines of responsibility? When you have children, you reach some point where you have to let them go and make their own mistakes and hopefully learn from them. But my parents – their mistakes were made in the past and they’re living the consequences with no time left to overcome them. I guess I can learn from them and not make their mistakes. Today’s society allows me the option to live alone rather than chain myself to someone who’s a bad match. But how much better to have a good, companionate, caring relationship all the way through.

5:44:51 PM      trackback []