Never too old for a walk on the beach

I've loved the beach since the time I was small.  Beaches have always been a part of my life, and to this day remain my favourite place to be.  Not the hot and crowded beaches that require an airplane trip to a fancy resort, nor even the popular beaches in cities in this southwestern corner of BC.  I like the empty beaches, the interesting beaches, the rocky and squishy and barnacled beaches with tidal pools and sudden stretches of sand and washed up logs and sea life.

Beaches were as much a part of my childhood as digital technology is for kids today.  First there were the beach holidays with my grandparents, parents and siblings in England when I was a wee one:

Mom and me, many years ago

Me, about age four

Then, the move to Canada to a small seaside town brought beaches into my daily life - the beach became my adventure playground.  Riding bikes to the beach, walking through woods to the beach, stopping to spend allowance on a rainbow popsicle at the corner store, or splurging on a portion of fresh fish and chips, eaten to the accompaniment of a throng of seagulls while sitting on a log or a sand-covered towel on the beach. Picnics on the beach with my mom, siblings, and sometimes my dad, or sharing secrets and laughter with friends, first kisses, silly games.  Beaches were, and remain, my favourite place to be.

For a few years of my adulthood I lived in Alberta and then the Northwest Territories, but always the ocean called me home. 

Beaches are to me what comfort food is to many - they bring back the best of memories, of family and friends, of love and peace and tranquility.  If I have one wish for my senior years, it is that I never grow too old for a walk on the beach, preferably with a dog by my side and a camera in my hand.

Maggie and me, Crofton Beach

One month today, I move from this small beachside village to a somewhat bigger beachside city.  But before I get serious about packing, Maggie and I (and Pat and the poms) are taking a little vacation - to a beach, of course - the one Maggie fell in love with last spring.  See you in a few days!

Beach time! 

In God's Waiting Room

The other day, as a friend and I discussed our old dogs, she mentioned that someone had once described the final stage of a dog's life as the dog being "in God's waiting room."  The image made me smile -- as an adopter of old dogs,  I know that stage only too well.

It is a time when each morning you put your hand on your still-sleeping dog to be sure she is breathing. It is a time when every sickness or stumble or refusal to eat has you questioning "Is this it?"  And sometimes it is a time,  after they stop eating and drinking and show no interest in their favourite things - maybe not even in you -  when you place that dreaded call to the vet.

And just as you hang up the phone, they bounce down the hallway and look at you as if to say "ARE YOU CRAZY?  I'm fine, feed me, play with me, let's go for a walk!"

Mama Jean, play wiv me!

When Charley was going through this final stage, back in 2011,  I called it her 'Dance with Death" - two steps forward, one step back.  Charley kept up that dance for a long time - three times I called the vet, three times I cancelled.  And then one day, she told me it was time.  She was tired of dancing. The music in God's waiting room went silent, and we said our last goodbye.

Ha ha, I really kept ya guessing! 

Some of my old dogs have barreled through the waiting room door, charged across to the inner chamber, jumped at that door with both front paws, and demanded to be let in NOW.  Others have patiently sat, neither doing the dance nor charging the door, just biding their time until they were ready - to either pass on their own or to ask me to help them.

I'm not a 'heaven or hell' sorta person, but love the imagery of God's waiting room. Even more, I love the imagery of the Rainbow Bridge beyond, a bridge where our dogs wait for us and our loved ones guide us on to the other side.  And I do believe in some sort of spiritual afterlife. So, for me, I think perhaps an image of a long rustic fence with an old gate that leads to fields of flowers, rolling hills, blue skies,  happy playing dogs, and in the distance the Rainbow Bridge, is more the image I see for my dogs.  Waiting by the gate, sometimes running back to me, sometimes pawing at the latch. But knowing their time is near as surely as I know it too.  Mitzi is now waiting by that gate.

What's on de other side?

We went through a tough time the last couple of weeks,  Mitzi and I -- a time when I thought the gate was about to open for her to prance through.  She went for days without food.  Then she stopped drinking water. She staggered, she had small seizures, she lost her sense of direction, and she developed bleeding into the anterior chamber of her eye.  So I emailed my mobile vet for an appointment.  And within fifteen minutes of  receiving a response from my vet, Ms. Mitzi got up, went to her dish, had a big drink of water, went outside to do her business, ate some food, and looked at me as if to say:

I kept the appointment time as Mitzi was due for her next check up anyway, and she was again refusing food, so we ran all the usual blood work and urine tests and other stuff that we do for very old dogs.  The results were much as I expected - her kidney failure, first diagnosed two years ago, has shown significant change since last year.  Her creatinine, urea (BUN) and SDMA are all very, very high, she has lost two of her nine pounds, and other symptoms have appeared as well, putting her into the start of the final stage of kidney failure, a stage at which her kidneys are operating at only about 10% of normal capacity.  However, she still has some good days and is not in pain - yesterday, for example, she went for a reasonably long walk (for her), ate several servings of smelly green tripe and then some other dog food, followed me around the house and came up on my lap for a cuddle (something she never used to do - one recent behavioural change among several others).  We made some changes to her medications, and we are taking it one day at a time. Most of the time she sleeps, often she doesn't eat.  It could be days, weeks, or even a few months, but it likely won't be more.

I betcha I last longer than this snow on mah nose!

Perhaps the gate will open by an unseen hand on the other side.  Perhaps, with the help of my vet, we shall open it for her.  I won't let her suffer -  the very end of kidney disease is often marked with vomiting, diarrhea, and pain, and the emergence of any of these symptoms beyond a short-term gastric upset will tell me it is time.   I have always said I would rather help my old dogs to pass a week too soon than an hour too late.  I do not want her to end her life in crisis. And I know my cousin, her former mama, would not want that for her either.

And so we take it one day, one hour, one moment at a time, celebrating the little things - a meal eaten, a healthy poop, a walk to the end of the block and back.  And I let her sleep, and sleep, and sleep. I reinstated baby gates and carpet runners to keep her from falling on laminate floors, I use her xpen to keep her safe when I go out.  And when she is awake, but not wanting to eat or poop or walk, I hold her.  I hold her whenever she wants to be held  - my dinner can wait, my sleep can wait, this blog can wait.  I hold her and rock her and sing to her and talk softly to her. And I tell her how much I love her.

I think she can see those meadows through the fence, and she'll tell me when she's ready.  She is standing in God's waiting room, and it has rustic fences for walls, and a wooden gate through which she looks towards fields full of flowers and a beautiful Rainbow Bridge.

PERHAPS

The cycle of life is all around us – birth, growth, death, birth, growth, death. It marches across my heart, sometimes tiptoeing, gently caressing my soul with love, other times stomping on it with hobnail boots. Unpredictable and spontaneous, yet predictable and certain; we know that death will come, but we don’t know just when. And we know there will be new life, but its magic always takes us by surprise.

I stand on my back deck early this summer’s morning, inhaling life around me, my heart so very full. In a tall tree near the ferry dock an eagle cries, and from the telephone post nearest the house a flicker calls to its mate. Over the fence I see apples and pears ripening on the neighbour’s trees, and in my yard my scarlet runners wind their way up the lattice at the back of my vegetable bed.

 The baby sparrows in the birdhouse under the eaves chirp noisily as their father, one eye on me, cautiously flies to them with grubs in his beak. The babies are nearly ready to fly, each to begin its solo adventure into the world.

 By my feet, my dog Charley breathes in the scent of grass and flowers and birds and fruit, on what may be her last full day on earth. It is three days since she was taken ill – a neurological event that left her unable to walk on tangled legs, unable to see through clouded eyes, unable to eat without assistance. In the past two days, she showed little improvement. And so last night I made the appointment for our vet to come to her one final time.

 But this morning Charley suddenly arose, and softly padded after me as I made my way outside. Now, she lies quietly beside me as I sip my cup of coffee and watch the morning awaken. Perhaps she will rally enough to welcome many more mornings with me; or perhaps this is her swan song.

 I realize, as I survey the world around me, that life is not linear or cyclical as my initial thoughts suggest. Yes, our time on earth begins with birth and ends with death, but it is not a straight progression. Towards the end, especially, it is often one step forward, two steps back, two steps forward, one step back. The cliché ‘dancing with death’ comes to mind. My Charley is doing a passionate tango with death. As the conductor of her music, I have the power to halt her dance at any time, or the power to let it continue, albeit under watchful eye, until the cosmic force that governs all births and deaths decides that it is truly time for her to move along.

 Perhaps the baby birds will fly tomorrow. Perhaps my Charley will not die tomorrow. Perhaps.

(c) JFB 2011

On growing old

Today is my mother’s 90th birthday. It is hard for me to envision the passage of time, the passing of her life from child to youth to young woman to mother to grandmother to great-grandmother. To me, she has always been just “mom”. Until recently, she was ageless in my eyes – the same age when we immigrated to Canada in 1956 as she was when I graduated from high school in 1968 as she was when she started travelling the world after my dad’s death in 1977. The same age as she was when she was still hiking the BC mountains with her friends in the 1980s and early 90s. I remember a newspaper article about this group of five women, all in their 70s, still hiking Mt Frosty and Garibaldi and Baker - my mom and her four friends who all met through their volunteer work with the Girl Guides decades before – still together, still hiking, still laughing and singing in their senior years.

And suddenly it all started to come unraveled as first one friend died, then another; as arthritis and broken hips and polymyalgia and countless other ailments took their toll. Now Mom’s sight is almost gone due to macular degeneration, her hearing is weak, her mobility very severely limited, and her zest for life, that incredible energy and love of the outdoors and passion to be out and about and enjoying the world and all its inhabitants, has waned.

Loving senior dogs is, in many ways, so much easier than loving senior humans. My dogs don’t lament their fate, missing what they once had and no longer do; they live in the “now” and enjoy each day to the fullest. And when their suffering becomes too much, and they are ready to go, I can help them to gently leave this earth.

I wish, for her birthday, I could give my mom just one moment of the life that she so enjoyed, one ounce of that vitality, one day of restored vision and mobility. But these gifts are not mine to give.

And so instead, my family will do what little we are able. On Saturday, we will get together for one of her favourite activities – a picnic in a beautiful park – and we will gather her into our embrace, and we will love her.

Happy 90th Birthday, Mom. I love you.