3B: Baby boy bodhisattva

I'm breaking a promise to myself here. I had sworn that my next blog post wouldn't mention Barky. That I would move on, take a small step forward and get back to blogging about 3B and his baby sister and Mama and all of those still with us.

I can't separate the past from the present, however--a point that 3B made for me this morning. As we were getting out of the car for his last day at Mrs. K's, he again picked up Barky's foot long steel screw in tiedown from the floor of the back seat. It's been back there since we returned from Grammy's farm. I just never got around to taking it out, so Mama had already warned him that it was sharp and dangerous.

It's actually more of a hassle to get away from 3B than it is sharp or dangerous, but those words work when we want him to put something down, and it is marginally sharp and could be dangerous. As Ani sings, any tool is a weapon, if you hold it right.

So, I repeated the warning to 3B at Mrs. K's house. He replied to the effect that he was taking it out of the car for Barky or that Barky needed it. Gently, in a soft voice, I said, "Barky can't come back, sweetie, so let's just leave it in the car."

3B set down the tiedown and stepped down out of the car and said, "Barky has his own space ship."

"That's right. He has his own space ship up in the stars." I had never heard him say this or mentioned to him anything about a space ship, however. When I told him that Barky wasn't coming back, I just said that Barky had gone up to the stars and that we could go outside at night and look up to see him, to find a star where Barky was.

We kept walking across the lawn and 3B repeated to me a warning I'd given him a few weeks ago, "Watch out for that big hole over there." And then he went on about Barky, "I don't see any stars."

"That's right. It's day time now, so we can't see any stars. But tonight we can see the stars. Do you want to go out and look at the stars tonight and see the stars and look for Barky?"

"We can talk to him. Barky! Barky! I can't hear him."

"Yes, he's too far away for us to hear him right now, but he can hear you. Maybe tonight we can go outside and look for him and talk to him some more."

"And he will hear me."

"Yes. He will hear you."

And then we were at Mrs. K's door, mercifully. I wasn't sure how much longer I could carry on that conversation. My preferred form of mourning is conscious ignorance of the situation, so talking about it was breaking down my defenses.

All the while, however, I was wondering if Mama had talked to him about a space ship for Barky, because, if not, 3B had placed Barky in that space ship on his own, had built Barky his own little heaven up among the stars. A space ship that I'm sure has a couch, a lawn with a sunbeam, an ever-full food dish and a little boy who always drops food when he eats.

On the walls of that spaceship, there might even be a picture from an ultrasound of another baby who will soon need Barky's protection--but hopefully not too soon, since we still have to get her a car seat, a crib and a few other items.

But even before we get to meet her, we did get to see her again, and this time we took 3B along. It wasn't easy since it was a daycare day for him, so we had to shuffle all of our schedules to make it happen, but Mama was nice and humored me in my desire to have 3B there, even though it was a hassle for her. In the end, I'm not sure how much difference it made to him, although it made a difference to me, as is so often the case with activities at this age.

The good news is that baby sister's placenta has moved up out of the way for delivery, which is what we were checking on in this extra ultrasound. Baby sister is also developing well--on the day of the ultrasound, she was measuring one week ahead in size, taking after her big big brother.

After that was determined, the tech took some measurements and gave us as good a look at baby sister as she would allow. For most of the appointment, her umbilical cord was covering her lower face, but Mama did get to see her yawn--I was talking to 3B at the time--and we did get a glimpse not only of her lips, but also her open eye.

Unfortunately, it was black and white, so no idea what color her eyes are yet. Oh, and Quaatchi got a free ultrasound out of it too, after we returned home.



Although baby sister will never get to see who was making all of those barking, groaning and whining sounds she heard before she was born, her big brother will be able to tell her all about him and take her outside to show her where his spaceship is, up amongst the stars. He knows. He knows that as we walk into the future we carry the past with us, that death doesn't mean departure, and that the living create heaven for the dead.

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What happened: Cold comfort for a bad dad

Fortunately, I'm a bad dad and husband, so Barky was at least comfortable when he died. The first question everyone asks, including us, is What happened?

I've only had the energy to explain to a few people. I'll lay it all out here so I can point anyone over here who's curious. I don't mean to be rude, it's just not a fun story to tell. There are no real tears until the bitter end, but there are no punch lines at all, and recounting the anxiety makes me anxious all over again. Even telling it over ice cream to Steve and Larry tonight choked me up.

You know it's bad when ice cream doesn't help.

So, Friday night I don't recall what got into me, but I got into it first with 3B and then with Mama. Maybe work was stressing me out--when isn't it these days, what with layoffs, firings, reorgs and moves? Maybe I was tired from getting back to bike commuting. I was definitely stressed out by Barky, who was not doing well through the week.

After I had written that post, he had thrown up a full meal on the couch, but then he'd also been to the vet on Friday afternoon, where he showed some signs of improvement--propping his feet up on their counter as usual for treats, even if he didn't wing around as he typically did in the waiting room. He got some drugs for what we assumed was an ulcer and for the trots and came home and ate some of the bland diet food they gave him.

It's a cold comfort but some comfort nonetheless to know that at least his last meal was canned food.

By the time I got home, Barky was in his usual perch on the couch, curled up, observing and napping. We were all tired, and I originally planned to go to bed early with Mama, but instead managed to pick a fight with 3B at bedtime over who knows what. That put me in a sour mood so I ended up picking another fight with Mama over nothing as well. At that point, she retreated to the bedroom to read and fall asleep. I stayed out on the couch with Barky to surf the innernets and watch bad TV. I took him out to pee at 10 or so, and he moved slowly, but not exceptionally slowly, given that I thought he was recovering from a long week. He sniffed and peed as usual and we headed back in.

After awhile I made some popcorn, which was one of Barky's favorite meals. Whenever I salt the popcorn in the bowl, I toss it by flipping it in the bowl, inevitably dropping some on the floor, which Barky would hoover up. This time, however, Barky didn't even lift his head on the couch, which was a bad sign. About 15 minutes after I finished eating my popcorn, Barky got up off the couch, walked over toward the front door, lay down on the carpet and stretched out. My immediate first thought was, "He's lay down to die."

I went right to him and comforted him, petting him and talking to him. Then I grabbed some of his canned food, scooped it into his bowl and offered it to him. He didn't even look at me. And he's a beagle, so I knew it was bad. Then his stomach started convulsing every few seconds, contracting as if it was cramping.

By then, I was freaked out. I went into the bedroom, woke up Mama and told her that I was taking him to the emergency animal hospital. I had put Barky on a soft towel on the carpet, in which I scooped him up and carried him down the hall, into the elevator and out to the car, where I put him on the front seat. I called the ER and gave them the history as I drove down. Their reaction was mild on the phone, but when I arrived, they took urgent action, even though Barky had summoned the energy to walk into the office from the car.

The vet asked if she could do xrays to see what was going on, but they were inconclusive. She thought she could see a large shadow on one side of his abdomen, but she couldn't be sure what it was without doing an ultrasound. There was no ultrasonographer on duty, and there might not be one the next day, Saturday, so the vet offered to run one on her own, at no charge, because she thought Barky couldn't wait.

I didn't pick up on it then, but that was the first of many worrying signs from the vet.

I went outside to call Mama with an update--the waiting room is a cell-free zone. When the vet next came out, she told me that she had tapped a large amount of fluid from Barky's abdomen and now she looked visibly shaken and worried. She said they were testing it to see if it was septic or not. I asked what the prognosis was. She said, "If it's not septic, we'll have to find the cause. If it is septic..." Her voice trailed off and she shrugged her shoulders before walking off.

I got that worrying sign, loud and clear.

I went outside again to update Mama, who was openly sobbing as we discussed the prognosis and alternatives. I tried to focus on the positive, but I was thinking that if it's septic, he's likely dead already. I texted Brother #2 that very question, shooting burning arrows into the night sky. Again while I was outside, the vet came back into the waiting room with an update: not septic, but no idea what's causing the fluid to collect. She recommended exploratory emergency surgery to find out. There were three possible causes: his spleen flipped, his intestines had telescoped onto themselves, or he had "a mass." And no, we're not talking the kind the Pope presides over.

The first two were easy fixes, but the third was more complicated. If it's a mass they can extract, they take it out, sew him up, biopsy the mass and present us with options. If it's a mass that's entangled or spread, they call us during surgery and present us with options and, she said, "We have a discussion about quality of life. Whether you want to let him go from there or bring him up to say goodbye."

There was no mistaking her seriousness here. This was not a worrying sign, this was a clear message that the situation had rounded a corner that it wasn't coming back around.

I approved the surgery, then asked to see Barky before going home. It would take two hours to prep for surgery and another two hours in surgery, so I could at least try to sleep or just lay down for a bit. I went back to see him and a vet tech pulled off our collar and handed it to me, during which Barky was pretty unresponsive, so I asked if he was sedated. They told me he was on heavy pain meds for the stomach pain he seemed to be having. His head was at the back of his crate, so I stuffed my body in until my head was over his, lips to his ear. When I said hello, he tried to stand, but realized he couldn't and lay back down again.

I whispered into his ear that I loved him, that Mama loves him, that 3B loves him, using all of our names so he would remember who we were and know that each of us loved him. I told him that he was going to be OK, and that he just needed to hang in there, that the doctors would make him feel better. I told him that he was my perfect dog, the one I'd always wanted, then I kissed him, again told him that all three of us loved him and that I'd see him soon.

It took about 10 minutes to get home--at 1 a.m., all the lights were green--and as I stepped into the elevator, my phone rang. I was passing the second floor as I heard the vet tech say, "Barky went full code. The vet is giving him CPR now. I'll get the phone to her as soon as possible."

I told her not to bother, I was on my way back. She immediately hung up. I was off the elevator now, running up the stairs. I called our neighbor, apologized for the late hour, and asked her to come down and watch 3B's monitor. By the time I got to our floor, our neighbor was coming out of her place, down the hall to ours. I walked in, told Mama, and we hustled down the hall. It again took about 10 minutes to get back to the ER, but it seemed like a week.

As we walked in, the vet came out and greeted us. All she said is, "I'm sorry." We went into an exam room where she explained that she had defibrillated him to the maximum possible, but they hadn't gotten any response. No heartbeat. No rhythm. Nothing.

The vet seemed shaken by the whole sequence of events and offered to us that she could perform an autopsy, for which there was typically a fee, but which she would do for us for free.

We went back to the mourning room to see him just as they were laying him out under a blanket and we held each other and cried. We stroked his soft ears and his still warm back and belly and cried. We took one last picture of the bone-shaped mark on his back that gave him his middle name--Bones--and that we would never see again. We cried some more. We marvelled at how beautiful he was, even in complete stillness, remembering how people would stop us on the street to comment on how handsome he was--even stopping their cars in the road in traffic to roll down their windows and tell us how beautiful he was. And I kept thinking that maybe in just another second I would see his chest raise with a breath or hear him let loose one of his infamous tired old man groans.

We stayed with him until we were ready to say goodbye, by which time his feet had started to grow cold, and then we drove home, thanked our neighbor and crawled into bed, where we curled around each other and cried some more.

The vet called about an hour later and said that she had no more idea what caused him to die than she did before she did the autopsy. The lining of his stomach wasn't ulcerated, it was "perfect." His spleen wasn't flipped and his intestines weren't telescoped, although she observed that they sometimes flip back and untelescope spontaneously. Barky's spleen did have several masses on it, but they were all rounded and, in her experience, if one was to be malignant or causing a fluid buildup, it would have ruptured.

His end was just as much a mystery to us as the beginning of his life, what came before we rescued him, was. But as I drifted off to sleep, I realized that had I not picked those fights with 3B and Mama, if I was a good father, I would not have stayed up with Barky. He would have died alone and in pain--for although his stomach was convulsing, he never once cried out--in our living room. Instead, he had at least the small comforts of pain medication and the knowledge that his entire pack loved him, which was all he ever really wanted.

There it is, then. What happened is something that we do not know, and yet is visciously simple and brutal to understand.

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One for the road

It's been a long weekend, but not in a good way. I feel like I've been gone from work and the world for weeks and that I haven't slept for at least that long. This, despite the fact that without Barky to walk, I can now sleep in and even, as I'm about to do, go from the couch to bed without a detour down the hall, down the elevator, out the back doors, around the parking lot, inside the building, up the elevator and back down the hall.

As much as I begrudged these walks, I only did so before we went on them. Once I was in motion down the hall, I was having as much fun as Barky. It's good to go outside. I'm a better version of myself when I'm outside, and on any day during which I spend any time outside, which is what Barky forced me to do.

I would see the mood of the moon, stars and sky. I would feel the wind, smell the water if the wind was blowing up from the river, hear the trees whispering amongst themselves, and feel the cool kiss of snowflakes on my cheeks. If there was fresh soft snow on the ground, Barky would romp through it, snuffling into it and digging after what seemed like fresh scents on the same patches of weeds and grass he sauntered past every day. If it was an icy night, he would still sniff the air and ground, but move right along. If it was too hot and muggy out, as it almost always was late in the summer, Barky would do his business and turn right back for the cooler confines of our air-conditioned abode. The tropical heat overwhelmed his British genetics. But on a night like tonight--warm and clear, perhaps even a bit cool if a breeze stirred, Barky would linger.

He might convince me to as well--to stretch our walk past the circuit of the parking lot down to the entrance of the neighboring townhouse community, the end of the cul-de-sac where 3B races his bike in circles, across over to our building's pool, down the sidewalk under the juniper trees and farther down until we had completed a larger circumnavigation of our building than the parking lot allows and we returned in through the back doors again--energized but not awakened.

We would both somehow be in a better mood, be better balanced, be more securely grounded for those few moments outdoors. No matter that in a few short hours, before most people awoke, we would stumble out into the dawn light, or predawn darkness in winter, and again perambulate and peruse through our neighborhood--we still needed that one last stroll before bed, that one for the road, if you will.

I needed him to take me there, just as he needed me to unlock our door and push the buttons in the elevator to get him there, as evidenced by the fact that I'm about to roll off of this couch and slouch down the hall to slump into slumber without so much as a look out the window. Perhaps I can't bring myself to face myself in reflection as I look out over what Barky considered his domain. Perhaps I am currently temporarily blind to the beauty of the commonplace that I so recently reveled in and simultaneously took for granted.

And, perhaps I will step out onto the balcony before I drift down through the dark doorway of our bedroom where I will carefully step around the brown lump of a rumpled bed that still lays on the floor along my side of the bed. In the morning, after lying in my bed with ears pricked for the sound of a sigh, groan or contented stretch from that bed, I will again step around it on my way out of the room.

And perhaps, before I light the stove for breakfast, I will again step outside and survey the day in the only way Barky knew how--directly, intimately, curious and happy. I will, however, skip the pissing on the neighbor's shrubs part.

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Because laughter is the best medicine

Because we all need at least a distraction if not a good laugh these days, we've been looking at a recent little movie. The short version of the story is that 3B was visiting his friend MLTU. Mama and MLTU's Mama were talking on the porch while the two kids had the run of the house for about an hour. Hijinks ensued and the Mamas returned to film the aftermath.

No refrigerator was harmed in the making of this film. You'll even notice that the 3B and MLTU were thinking about safety and cleanliness, putting bibs on themselves.

You can read the whole story and see the movie over here.

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We lost our best friend today

This morning at 1:30 a.m., Barky passed away unexpectedly from unknown causes. From the moment we met him at a beagle rescue league adoption day in Baltimore until we said goodbye to him today, we loved him with all of our hearts--a love that was returned in full.

There is too much to write and the attempt to do so pains me too greatly to complete now. I will admit to one lie I have told about him over the years, however. We had gone to the adoption day to see what this rescue league was like and how they operated, if we liked them, perhaps fill out the paperwork there for a future adoption. We were arriving late, so we fully expected all the dogs to be adopted out by the time we arrived.

We walked in with our good friend, D, who had driven all the way up to Baltimore with us to entertain our folly. Mama and D split off from me on our way into the store and were looking at other dogs, but all I remember is seeing Barky standing at the end of an aisle, bandana still around his neck, indicating that he was not yet adopted. He was perfect. He was the dog I've wanted since I was a boy.

Our dog.

And somehow, although the beagles with thyroid conditions, the ones so overweight their bellies dragged on the floor, the ones who were so lethargic they never once woke up in the middle of a tumultuous pet store--although all of them were adopted, this one perfect dog was not. I immediately asked if it was true that he was available and when the volunteer said that he was, I kneeled at the table and began filling out the paperwork.

Mama always teases me--especially after Barky did something like bury a package of cookies in our couch or drink our coffee in the car while we went to the bathroom at a rest area--that, "We walked in to look around; I turn around and there you were, filling out the paperwork." I always demur and say that it was her who picked him out, but we both know that's a lie, although we have both loved him with all of our hearts.

I loved him from the moment I saw him, and I always will. And Mama loved him from the moment she and D walked him around the store and he peed on several displays.

A few weeks later, when we could finally bring him home, we were all three as happy as could be.

Coming home for the first time.

Back before we had kids, when we could nap on the couch whenever we wanted.

Before global warming, when we used to be able to walk in the snow, a favorite activity for Barky.


Barky on Grammy's farm a few weeks ago, where he loved to be--outside, off leash.

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