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| Mama Pajama about 2 years earlier |
Mama P is, in the words
of my wife, a very old dog, about 6 months away from her 17th
birthday. Her hearing is
atrocious; her sight questionable, and her default mental state seems to be
confusion. But her spirit is
undaunted in spite of the restraints imposed by age and chronic disease, the
same spirit that made her the number one lure-coursing whippet in the country
in her younger days. As part of
our shared routine, I leave the studio every day about 3 o’clock and make my
way to our bedroom upstairs where Mama P will be sleeping in her crate. I clap my hands several times to wake
her up. If she is really into a
heavy sleep she opens her eyes to look at me, and goes back to sleep. When this happens I find something to
do for 10-15 minutes, return and clap again. This time she will wake up and accompany me down the stairs
and out the front door for her mid-afternoon duty. I have learned to wait
patiently for her ever so slow return to the house. I swear she travels about one foot/minute as she wanders
aimlessly toward the porch steps, constantly distracted by absolutely nothing.
Eventually we make it
back to her crate where she waits for me to lift her into it.
Now comes my reward for
taking part in this daily dance. I
get on my knees and lean into the crate, and as I gently stroke her head and
neck her legs slowly fold and she collapses into the pillow of blankets. I get my head down so we are face-to-face
and nose-to-nose, and she stares at me with her unseeing eyes and tells me she
enjoys this as much as I do. I
sense that she know so much, that she is old and feeble, and that is OK, because
that is the way it’s supposed to be; she has no complaints about this. And she
knows she is loved, which is also the way it should be.
Am I projecting all of
this onto our dog? I don’t think
so. But if I were, it is only
because Mama P has both inspired me and allowed me to do so. I feel she is teaching me so much about
growing old.
