Hey there. You know I didn’t want to follow my last post, on the death of my father, with this one, but—as my best friend Audrey would have said—it is what it is. When the Nickel died, at home in Virginia in 2017, I was with Audrey at her hospice in DC. She died thirty-six hours later. When my father died a week and a half ago, I was with him in the hospital in Texas. The Penny died almost exactly thirty-six hours later, in Virginia. She was just over two months shy of sixteen, roughly the same age her brother had been when he died.
Now, as then, I am finding great solace in the poetry anthology The Art of Losing: Poems of Grief and Healing, edited by my friend Kevin Young.
The Penny was my princess, my lover girl, my diva dog. She did not suffer fools. She gave a mean side-eye. She was sass incarnate. She loved chicken and salmon and steak. The Nickel would have done almost anything for ice cream (I stocked the Purina Frosty Paws in peanut butter flavor for him) but the Penny would rather have had scrambled eggs or goldfish crackers. Or any kind of cheese. She was still devouring ice and baby carrots until the day she died. She wouldn’t eat her food or drink any water, but she ate every treat put in front of her.
I didn’t yet have her when I got married (I only had her brother then), but she was there when I was separated the first time (in 2007) and the second (in 2008) and then eventually divorced (in 2009). She accompanied me on my move across the country in 2012 and on several road trips since. She loved a good car ride, especially one that included a fast-food cheeseburger or chicken strips, as she knew that I would share with her.
The mid-2010s were challenging for me, and the Penny was my constant companion. She was with the Nickel when he died, and with me the next day when we lost Audrey. We both changed in the time after that fall of 2017.
Though she was three and a half years younger than the Nickel, she was his alpha from the start, more alert, more demanding, secure in the knowledge of her superiority. When I would take them to the office with me, she would bark every time someone passed by my open door. I thought this was intended to alert me to the presence of another human. But after the Nickel died, this practice ended. She still accompanied me to the office, but she would curl up in the dog bed I kept there and…sleep. It was no longer of concern to her whether or not anyone came near, because she no longer had anyone to protect. Her brother was gone.
She was trapped inside when our building caught on fire in 2018. She survived, a little worse for wear, and became anxious—understandably so—when I wasn’t around or she was home alone. I am a firm believer in better living through pharmaceuticals, so I followed the vet’s advice and she lived out her days on some doggy prozac. Just another treat, in her mind.
When I lost the Nickel, I had the Penny. This is the first time I’ve lived in a house without a dog and I’m a little at sea. I hear sounds that can only be attributed to her, like paws on the floor or the squeak of her favorite little toy chick. A phantom limb that’s been removed and will never grow back.
Recommendations!
Do you subscribe to Lyz Lenz’s newsletter, “Men Yell at Me”? Lyz is a journalist in Iowa and the author of the books God Land (which I recommended in a previous newsletter) and Belabored (which I also recommended in a previous newsletter). She fell and broke her wrist and I am guest posting for her (soon! I think Friday!) so you should subscribe. There will be stories about my clumsiness and about my political yard signs and also a cocktail recipe.
Charlie Warzel’s newsletter “Some Dogs” has been giving me life. It is about his and Anne Helen Petersen’s dogs, Peggy and Steve.
Reginald Dwayne Betts will be in conversation with Amy Woolard tomorrow, Thursday, Feb. 4, at noon Eastern as part of the Virginia Festival of the Book’s Shelf Life series. Both Betts and Woolard are poets and attorneys (whose work I have recommended previously—are you sensing a theme?). Join me for their virtual discussion. Register here.