Spirit in the House

February 12, 2010 | Laughing Knees | 7 Comments 

There re­ally are no words that can com­fort or ex­plain why when a loved one dies. The death comes as ex­pected or not, but in its wake we en­ter a room or a place that the de­parted called their own and find our­selves at a loss. A great, silent loss that no mat­ter how hard we try to re­build the blocks de­fies our com­pre­hen­sion. And so we turn to words to try to give it struc­ture and pro­vide a be­gin­ning and an end to what we shared. A story.

Geor­gio Casel­lato Lam­berti (or “Lan” for short) was a Shi Tzu dog, that my part­ner M. had be­friended 17 years ear­lier at a pet shop here in Tokyo. He had white, chest­nut brown, and black hair and a face that im­me­di­ately re­minded me of an Ewok, with great, liq­uid eyes and a black nose and lips that never smiled. I first met him nine years ago shortly af­ter M. and I be­came friends. He was a hu­mor­less dog, con­stantly snuf­fling and snort­ing and com­pletely with­out in­ter­est in other dogs dur­ing his walks. His in­ter­est in walks re­mained lim­ited, at least by the time I met him, to do­ing his bod­ily func­tions and that was it. As soon as the chore was done he yanked on the leash to go home. It was for this rea­son that, for a breed of dog that nor­mally weighs about 4 kg, Lan weighed about 7 kg and wad­dled more than walked. I only saw him run one time in all the time I knew him.

He never barked. Vi­o­lence and tem­per tantrums were alien to him. He was a lover and not a fighter, though even the al­lure of the fe­male per­sua­sion never seemed to cross his mind. One time when M. and I were shout­ing at one an­other he walked over to us, stood there look­ing up un­til we no­ticed him, and then reached out a paw to touch M.’s leg, silently plead­ing for us to make peace. M. and I broke down laugh­ing, partly out of love for him, partly out of sheer embarrassment.

As he grew older he took more and more to sleep­ing. He was plagued with ail­ments and pain, from a weak heart, bad skin al­ler­gies that left his skin con­stantly red and itch­ing (un­til I sug­gested us­ing baby sham­poo and the al­ler­gies went away), can­cer of the liver, ane­mia. Four years ago he started go­ing deaf and blind. When we moved here to this apart­ment last year his hind legs were giv­ing out and the new en­vi­ron­ment ter­ri­fied him. For three weeks he cried con­stantly while bump­ing around the un­fa­mil­iar cor­ners and walls. I’d never heard him wail be­fore and the worry about the land­lord find­ing out about hav­ing a dog in a place where no pets were al­lowed made that first month stress­ful and un­cer­tain. There were times when I got so fed up with his whin­ing and do­ing his mess all over the apart­ment floors that I wished he were dead.

Some­time around the mid­dle of July his legs got worse and he had a hard time stand­ing up. He was still alert and full of his doggy ap­petite, never get­ting enough to eat. With­out his eye­sight and hear­ing he took to scan­ning the room with his nose and every time we made din­ner the waft of cook­ing food would shake him from his stu­por and prompt him to find his way to his feet. When no food was forth­com­ing he’d let out a huge snort and plonk back down onto his pil­low and fall asleep. M. and I con­stantly teased him for his lack of con­tri­bu­tion to the house­hold upkeep.

When we re­turned from Canada at the end of Au­gust, af­ter leav­ing him at the vet for a week sud­denly Lan took a turn for the worse. His legs gave out com­pletely and he was no longer able to walk. He took to sleep­ing with his spine curled in to­ward the left and he’d strug­gle in pain or dizzi­ness when we turned him over onto his left side fac­ing right. The doc­tor didn’t know what it was. M. spent every spare mo­ment nurs­ing him, get­ting up at 4:00 in the morn­ing to qui­etly and pa­tiently hand feed him, wash him, talk to him. He lost weight, lots of it, so that the pudgy, wad­dling gen­tle­man of in­dif­fer­ence slowly wasted away to noth­ing but skin and bones. Even then he had the en­ergy to crawl across the liv­ing room floor and at­tempt to reach the potty spot at the end of the en­trance hall, even though he had long since been en­closed in his fenced-​​in pen. He’d hold in his bow­els un­til we got home late in the evening, un­will­ing to re­lin­quish that last source of dig­nity that had de­fined his world since he was a baby.

M. was be­gin­ning to reach her lim­its around the mid­dle of De­cem­ber. She was ex­hausted and emo­tion­ally just hang­ing on. Some­times it seemed as if Lan would hang by a thread for the rest of eter­nity, breath­ing and shit­ting and eat­ing and sleep­ing. He was a tough lit­tle mon­ster, and wasn’t go­ing to go out with­out a fight. Then around the mid­dle of Jan­u­ary he be­gan to fade. He stopped eat­ing for days then would wake up with a vo­ra­cious ap­petite, then stop eat­ing again. His breath­ing grew la­bored, raspy. When we reached into his triple layer of blan­kets and hot wa­ter bot­tle his feet felt cold and of­ten he made no re­ac­tion, giv­ing us a fright. M. had to take him to the vet sev­eral times to change his food since he re­fused to eat his usual fare and more and more would only take the best choices in ca­nine din­ing. I guess he in­tended to die a gour­mand, none of that fiber-​​filled, grainy ce­real that he’d been eat­ing day in and day out for so many years!

At the end of Jan­u­ary he started wheez­ing ter­ri­bly. We knew then it was the end. One night, af­ter two days of re­fus­ing to drink any­thing we took him to the vet in an emer­gency in or­der to re­hy­drate him. The doc­tor gave him an in­tra­venous saline in­jec­tion, but sug­gested that it might be time to let him go. His gums were a deathly white from ane­mia and he was so thin the doc­tor had a dif­fi­cult time find­ing a suit­able spot to in­sert the nee­dle. Lan vom­ited up nearly every­thing that he at­tempted to eat, but af­ter the saline shot he qui­eted down and slept all night with­out mak­ing a sound.

The next morn­ing M. had to get up early to go to work. I had work, too, but re­mained home un­til the very last minute just to make sure Lan was alone as lit­tle as pos­si­ble. He be­gan to wheeze badly again and vom­ited bile and blood. I sat with my hand on his side un­til it was time to go and he had man­aged to fall asleep again. I hur­ried through every­thing at work so as to make it back home in time, just in case Lan was ready to let go. The silly and in­nocu­ous ques­tions of a lot of the lazier and more im­ma­ture stu­dents un­pre­pared for up­com­ing tests made the wait­ing in­ter­minable. Their tak­ing time and their lives for granted made me want to shout at them to start liv­ing and not waste the pre­cious gift they had. Mean­while Lan was strug­gling to breathe back home.

When my last class ended I rushed home as fast as I could. It was about 1:00. I reached to door at about 2:00 and un­lock­ing the door and kick­ing off the shoes and drop­ping my coat and bag on the floor I ran to Lan’s side and kneeled down be­side him. I held my breath and peered hard at him, hop­ing I’d see the slow rise and fall of his shoul­der as he slept. It seemed like time stopped. There was no move­ment. I knew he was gone. I squat­ted down be­side the pen and placed my hand on his head. Still warm. He had died only a lit­tle while ear­lier, but had died alone. That was the last thing that M. had wanted. That he would die alone.

I went numb for a long while, not know­ing what to do or what to feel. All I knew was that I needed to let M. know what hap­pened, but that I didn’t want her to break down in the mid­dle of the street or at work. I con­tem­plated what had to be done about the body, and thought about go­ing to see the vet, but even though I was much less at­tached to Lan than M. was, I found that I couldn’t move and that I still didn’t want to see Lan’s body moved. So I went about clean­ing his pen and neatly fold­ing the blan­kets and sheet so that Lan looked clean and com­fort­able. Then I searched on­line for pet cre­ma­to­ri­ums and in­for­ma­tion on what needed to be done with dead pets in Japan. I got no where not be­ing able to read the level of Japan­ese nec­es­sary, so I gave up and just sat be­side Lan, stroking him.

At around five M. sent me an email ask­ing how I was and then how Lan was. I wrote back briefly, in Japan­ese, “You should come home.”

She replied, “Is Lan okay?”

I an­swered, “Just come home.”

I went out to buy some din­ner for M. and me, then some flow­ers for Lan, and while I was wait­ing for the take out food to be fixed at the store I got an­other email from M. telling me she was near the sta­tion. I stopped by an­other store for some can­dles for Lan and met M. at the station.

We said noth­ing, just walked hand in hand back to­ward our apart­ment. While we walked M. silently be­gan to weep and I held her as close as I could.

---

M. be­ing M. she was up at the crack of dawn the fol­low­ing morn­ing. She spoke lit­tle, but was full of en­ergy and pur­pose. When we had eaten break­fast she dis­cussed with me what we ought to do about Lan, so we looked up in­for­ma­tion about nearby cre­ma­to­ri­ums and found a tem­ple where there was a long tra­di­tion of cre­mat­ing and keep­ing the graves of pets. M. made a num­ber of phone calls and then we gen­tly pre­pared Lan, wrap­ping him in his fa­vorite blan­kets and plac­ing his body in a big Boston bag so we could carry it in the taxi to the temple.

Look­ing back now I’m sur­prised by how beau­ti­ful and cheer­ful that day, two weeks ago, was. M. and I man­aged to joke about Lan’s bad hu­mor and con­stant royal de­mands. Be­tween laugh­ter and fits of sob­bing we brought Lan’s body to the tem­ple and were ush­ered into a small re­cep­tion room where Lan’s body was placed in a basket.

The fu­neral di­rec­tor was a woman about our age dressed in fash­ion­able black slacks and jacket and speak­ing with a def­er­ent and quiet voice. She ex­plained what would take place and what we should do. We were led to the back of the tem­ple were a build­ing with a smoke stack stood among some huge gingko trees and asked if it was all right to burn the body with the blan­kets. Then we were led back to a tra­di­tional, tatami mat wait­ing room where we sat talk­ing and drink­ing green tea. An hour later the fu­neral di­rec­tor re­turned. “The bones are ready to be viewed,” she said.

I re­ally can’t ex­press what it felt like when we were taken back to the cre­ma­tory and we stood wait­ing as the door to the re­tort was opened. What slid out was a black tray of bleached bones and the shock of the tran­si­tion from Lan to those bones al­most made my knees buckle un­der me. M. broke down cry­ing. The cre­ma­tor was ob­vi­ously fa­mil­iar with such re­ac­tions and stepped for­ward to show us the sec­ond ver­te­bra of Lan’s spine, which in Japan­ese is called the “Nodobotoke” bone ‘Throat Bod­dhisatva”), be­cause it re­sem­bles a Bud­dha with his hands out. M. man­aged a smile as she peered closely at the bone. “Ah, that’s why the bone is called, ‘Nodobotoke’,” she said. The cre­ma­tor gen­tly placed the bone on the tray and handed us each a pair of bam­boo chop­sticks. My hands were shak­ing as I joined in the Japan­ese tra­di­tion of “Kot­suage”, plac­ing, with chop­sticks, the bones into the urn that we would bring home.

We then made our way to the pet tem­ple proper, where rows and rows of pet graves lined the hall. Many of the graves were open with small of­fer­ings of the pets’ fa­vorite foods lin­ing the boxes. I stood at the end of the hall watch­ing M. make her lonely way to the al­ter and re­gret­ted the anger I had shown dur­ing the last few months over her hang­ing on to Lan. Maybe for the first time in our re­la­tion­ship I clearly un­der­stood how de­voted M. was to Lan and, strangely, in those cir­cum­stances, to me. She beck­oned me to kneel be­side her and to­gether we lit a stick of in­cense and prayed for Lan.

---

Two weeks later it snowed. I was sit­ting at my desk work­ing on test cor­rec­tion when I glanced out of the win­dow and saw snow drift­ing down in the dark. I called M. and to­gether we stood by the win­dow watch­ing it come down.

“Lan would hate this!” M. said.

“He def­i­nitely liked his com­forts,” I added.

“I’m sure right now he’s ly­ing some­where with his face pressed right up against an in­frared heater,” ob­served M.

“I al­ways won­dered how he did that with­out burn­ing his hair off or melt­ing his eye­balls,” I con­tin­ued. “Maybe he was made of asbestos.”

We took a walk in the snow and laughed at the stray snow bombs that the tele­phone wires dumped on us. The streets were empty and silent as most peo­ple slept, obliv­i­ous to the silent change the city was go­ing through. M. and I snapped pho­tos of one an­other, both of us smiling.

Each time we re­turn home Lan is wait­ing there in his cor­ner. M. lights a can­dle and a stick of in­cense and cheer­fully waves good morn­ing. Some­times it all hits home and she breaks down weep­ing, but she al­ways looks up and smiles. “Don’t worry,” she says. “I’m just happy that Lan lived a life in which he was loved.”