I started to write a different piece this week, my first after taking the summer off from writing, but there was something in the way.
The story begins with dogs and kids. You see, when our daughter, Abby, was about three, we had two dogs, Marlee and Neo, both standard size labradoodles. For little Abby, they had simply always been there. I think they occurred to her more like older siblings than pets.
Enter Ruby
Then one day, visiting friends, she met Ruby, their mini-labradoodle, and she was enamored. Less than half the size of Marlee and Neo, Ruby was a thing Abby could get her arms around, literally and figuratively. She was cute, and the cuteness was eye level.
Abby liked Ruby—a lot—but the idea of getting a Ruby-sized dog was out of the question, because three dogs and a pre-schooler is also a lot.
Fast forward some smallish increment of time, the details now lost to me. Ruby’s owners called. They were moving to Europe on a work assignment, and Ruby would not be able to go with them. They asked if we would like to take her.
It felt as if Abby’s adoration of this little brown doodle manifested her into our lives. Of course we would take her. It was thus that Ruby, not quite three, became dog number three in our definitely-less-than-three-dog-sized house in Louisville.
She was part of our family for eleven years, until we said goodbye to her last month.
The Thing in the Way
It was not until the following weekend that I discovered what had been in the way of that other piece I had planned to write: my uncried tears.
They were stuck, like a cleansing rain you sense bound up in the muggy discomfort of a summer afternoon, the very air around you not quite ready to release its burden.
They were tears for Ruby, whose routine of climbing onto our pillows at bedtime each night is now conspicuously absent, but they were stuck because they were also tears for something larger. Something too big, apparently, to traverse the narrow emotional path I was carefully, but unconsciously guarding.
The death of a loved one—including the four-legged kind—barges through the door as a lone visitor while smuggling in another close behind.
The first to enter is the grief, the immediate, aching missingness of the one who has died. The second, hidden in plain sight, is the forced confrontation with what is perhaps the most important thing I know about life.
It is finite.
Gravity
It’s a heavy reality we avoid thinking about or discussing openly. Here I would typically ask, rhetorically, if you feel the weight of this at home or at work, if you notice it's presence in the living room or the boardroom.
But there's no need. I already know that you do, because to pretend that this one fact is not exerting its influence on you and everyone around you is to ignore gravity.
Try as we might to steel ourselves, losing a pet, attending a funeral, or simply learning of the passing of a long-lost friend can trigger an existential extrapolation, except in this case, it’s more than extrapolation. It is a certainty. Our reluctance to say it out loud does not alter its inevitability: Like Ruby, you, and everyone you know and care about will eventually die.
That’s a big thing. Perhaps the biggest thing of all. No wonder it tends to get lodged sideways like a fallen boulder blocking our human-sized emotional path.
Inconveniently Placed Obstacles
Let’s pause there for a moment, because caught here, as I am, in the dark shadow of that inconveniently placed boulder, I realize I almost forgot:
- I need to mow the lawn...
- And do a couple loads of laundry...
- And send an email or two in preparation for the work week ahead.
Talk about inconvenient. When faced with the truth of just how limited and precious our time really is, it seems callous, almost immoral to spend any of it worrying about such things. Yet we must. There's work to do. There's life to live.
Finding Our Way
So here we are again, looking for the middle way between two impossibly distant poles, this time mortality and the mundane.
Every day we step into this uncharted wilderness. Reliable landmarks are few and far between, and it is tempting to hew to the outer edges, the extremes. Inhospitable as they are, at least we know where we stand. But their apparent certainty is a false promise, because most of life happens elsewhere.
It seems I have no choice but to set out and find my way, so off we go. This is my imperfect plan:
Today I will mow the lawn, and I will also appreciate the sun on my face. I will get hot and sweaty and sneezy and irritable, and maybe if I’m lucky I will remember to be grateful that I’m physically up to the task, that I'm a person who has a lawn to mow.
I will do the laundry, and I will notice the soft freshness of clean towels. I will get frustrated when I find a still-damp one stuffed between the couch cushions. On my better days I might laugh at the randomness of teenagers, and then cry when I remember that she’ll be off to college in twenty-two short months. An occasional damp towel seems a small price to pay.
I will send the emails and do my best to solve whatever problem my boss or customer or coworker wants solved. I’ll get angry that they aren’t more competent or helpful or kind, and if I’m lucky I’ll remind myself that they are mortals who love pets and mow lawns and do laundry, just like me. I might even take notice of a boulder life just dropped in their path and help them find their way around it.
I will get lost in the unimaginable scale of time and space. I will feel sorrow when our fragile mortality sneaks in the door with an already sorrowful loss. And I hope I will let myself get equally lost in the tiny moments of joy, like a little brown dog who greeted me with glittering eyes, wagged her tail, and curled up on my pillow.
The Better Way
This is the harder way, but it is the better way.
If you're confused or frustrated or stuck, odds are you're not really lost. You're not getting this wrong. You're just blazing your own unique trail through the winding and unexplored middle, the place where boulders occasionally block the path, the place where real life happens.
Until next time,
Greg
P.S.
If you found this helpful, please pass it along to someone else who might benefit from the reminder that feeling lost is just part of finding their way.
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