What Remains
“Hey, I’m calling from Austin Veterinary. Fergie is ready to be picked up. No hurry. Please take your time.” Her inflection is a blend of funeral director and bereavement counselor. Not one to trust the pageantry of sappy, I’m inclined to wince at the hushed undertones of sympathy, but I don’t do that, I thank her, grateful for the benevolence.
The crematorium prepared a gift bag embossed with a dove. Inside there’s a card with a poem and a sprig of rosemary – the official herb of remembrance. The card is fill in the blank style, signed by William who assures us that great care and respect was given to our pet Fergie during the cremation process. There’s a casting of her paw print in a white clay plaster that reminds me of a dental mold and an urn with her ashes – the remains of Fergie. The gift bag and I sit in the car, and I cry for a spell.
Just two months earlier, on February 13, I was waxing philosophical about the life expectancy of dogs, pontificating with some blahbedy about how life with a senior pet offered perspective, making every day a bonus blessing. I remember this date and the nonsense I was spewing because the very next day, (Valentine’s Day,) Fergie had a seizure.
She was asleep on the bed – our king-sized bed, on which her thirty-two-pound, full-figured frame stretched with carefree leisure on the diagonal, leaving SHLB and me in fetal position, cliff hanging on opposing edges. On the bed, she started coughing. I gently put her on the floor thinking she needed some water or to go out and she fell to one side, stiff and unmoving. It looked like a video of one of those fainting goats, which might have been comical except that for a few seconds I couldn’t tell if she was breathing. I scooped her up and said, “Fergie, you are not going to leave me. Stop it.”
And she did. She stopped it. We went downstairs and I snuggled her on the sofa waiting for John to return from exercise. Then I cooked us all some bacon – pork, the official meat of denial.
We pretended everything was going to be okay. But it wasn’t.
I resigned from my perch as a pet prophet. I no longer spoke in canine philosophy, as things with Fergie were getting real and the reality of the quotient of time passed versus time remaining loomed dark and cloudy.
I willed her to be okay, willed her to last a while longer. But like life, will power has an expiration date. We began the descent acknowledging that our days were numbered, knowing that it was going to be hard as hell to lose her.
With the body of a Cavalier Spaniel and the height of Shih Tzu, Fergie was squatty in stature, leaving her physical presence as the large and in-charge boss lady. A relentless little nugget of a pooch, she liked most people, disliked most dogs, and was an endurance barker. She was known to communicate people into a corner and command them to do her bidding. I have never seen anything like it. If she had been a bigger dog, this bully type of behavior might have been unnerving, but on her it was funny in a rowdy and unruly way. Mostly, our family and friends competed for her attention and love, as she traded affection for undivided devotion and the abundant distribution of treats. She was spirit animal to many, an icon for the uncompromising pursuit of happiness.
Known as Miss Fergie, The Ferg, Fergie Ferg, Ferg Ferg, Fergalicious, The Princess, Queenie, and sometimes, Asshole, Tammy Ferguson Carter made us smile and laugh with her crooked underbite and wide wag span. She was with us longer than any other pet, through our courtship and marriage, through illness, recovery, children graduating, moves, good and bad times, Fergie was our constant North Star.
Over the last year, with dementia in the mix, Fergie was not fully functioning with the fierceness of her capacity. Her joints slowed her speed and she often got confused. She had a pharmacy of meds in the kitchen that we administered morning and night in an effort to reduce her discomfort and keep her anxiousness at bay. We moved her food to the floor and filled her bowl with cool, fresh water before she drank it. I’m not sure if we did these things because of her eyesight or because she liked to control us, but I AM sure that we were projecting toward how we want to be cared for as we age.
The last few days of her time on earth were sunny and warm. We drove her around in the car, stopping for grilled Chick-Fil-A nuggets and strolls in the grass. We went to the point on Harker’s Island and let her sit by the water, the salty wind in her mane, her eyes bright with contentment – the official long goodbye of the heartbroken.
Dr. Austin said Fergie didn’t want to leave us, but she was telling us it was time. We held her until she was completely gone. And just as I suspected two months earlier, it hurt like hell.
SHLB and I leaned on each other and later when the time came to walk Fergie, (as we had every late afternoon for the past fifteen years,) we took a memorial stroll along the waterfront. The sky separated, displaying a compact sized square rainbow – the official nod from Fergie that she made it safely to the other side.
The outpouring of notes, texts, calls, flowers, cards, poems, plants, even a little paw print necklace show us how much Fergie was adored, and how much others care for SHLB and me. We are grateful for these acts of kindness – the official reminder that no one is an island – oh, we get by with a little help from our friends.
What remains (with the remains) is love.
