Eulogy
Penny didn’t make it to spring. That’s a shame, because she loved spring, with its freshness, smells, burgeoning new life and the noises and sensations of the waking desert. Dogs read the world through their ears and noses. For Penny, every walk was an olfactory library as she caught up on the neighborhood gossip, if walking nearby, or explored a larger world elsewhere.
A song of love is a sad song, Hi-Lili, Hi-Lili, Hi-Lo
Dogs love to “stomp on the terra,” as Lord Buckley once put it. Penny was like that, jumping excitedly when we reached for her harness and leash. Most of her walks were in the neighborhood until we retired a few years ago. Our retirement came as a blessing to Penny because we expanded the footprint – or paw print – of her walking territory. We added our favorite sections of the Chuck Huckelberry Loop, the “Smiling Dog Ranch” dog park on North Pontatoc Road, and Ft. Lowell Park.
A song of love is a song of woe, don’t ask me how I know
We adopted Penny on November 4, 2005, Kris’ birthday. We lost Spot and Augie earlier that year and I was still mourning them, especially Spot, who gave me 18 years of hiking, fetching, companionship and comfort. But Kris had been confronting a health issue and knew a dog would be therapeutic. I reminded myself that, despite the lingering pain, we were dog people and we had an opening. As our daughter Meg says, we don’t dishonor the dogs we lost by loving another one. No heart is fully closed off by grief. There is always an opening for love.
A song of love is a sad song
For I have loved and it’s so
Penny was a little more than two years old when she joined us. When we adopted Holden, a larger, older male dog two weeks later, Penny showed us how smart and responsible she was. I was sitting in my home office and the dogs were in the back yard, which has a fenced-in dog run. We didn’t realize there was a breach in the perimeter, a dog-sized gap between wooden steps and the lower deck. I suddenly heard a dog bark and looked out the window to see a dog walking by. I called out to Kris that one of the dogs had gotten out and ran to the front door. There was Penny. She had escaped, let me know, then waited to be let in.
I repaired loose fence fabric I thought she had pushed against to escape, then returned to my office. Penny went back outside. After a few minutes I checked on Penny and the dog run was empty. I ran out the front door and called Penny’s name. She had wandered a few yards down the street and ran home when I called her. Once both dogs were safely inside, I discovered and filled the hole in the perimeter. When I let Penny out, she went directly to the hole to inspect it. I then realized Penny had let me know about her escape so I would discover and eliminate the breach. She had obviously known about it for two weeks and could have left at any time. But she didn’t want to leave and didn’t want Holden to get out, either. Penny, on her own initiative, made sure the family – the pack – remained intact.
I sit at the window and watch the rain
Hi-Lili, Hi-Lili, Hi-Lo
I learned that Penny had less than a month to live on January 29th when I took her to the vet and barely made it home because of the tears. Kris and I vowed to make her last days as pleasant as possible. We bought her special food and treats, since her appetite was waning. We took her on one last walk in Ft. Lowell Park. Penny loved that park, with its pond, ducks, turtles, grassy fields, natural areas and proximity to The Loop. She would bound ahead, her ears flapping happily, as she sniffed and pranced her way through the two to three miles we always covered. The final walk was shorter and slower than the others.
The night before she died, Penny went outside at 3:00AM. When I checked on her, she was lying down on the lower deck. I helped her up, she took a step and lay back down. I helped her get up again, then gently guided her back inside. After a bit of a rest, I helped her onto the bed so she could spend her last night the way she had spent her life with us: curled up on my robe near the foot of the bed.
Epilogue
Penny died at home on the morning of Friday, February 21st. Meg and Clinton, our son-in-law, joined us for the last goodbye. After Penny died, we went to brunch at the Teaspoon Café, then, surprisingly, drove from there to the Pima Animal Care Center (PACC). I was in shock and didn’t feel ready, but Kris and Meg insisted and Meg reminded me that we would not dishonor Penny’s memory.
Tomorrow I’ll probably love again
We wandered around the majestic new PACC facility for a while until a dog we had overlooked made an effort to get Kris and Meg’s attention by standing up in her cage and visibly seeking it. We rendezvoused in the Meet and Greet area and met a 13-month-old shepherd mix with the PACC name “Red Jasper.” We adopted her and renamed her Zoey. After we brought her into her new home, I realized she had Penny’s eyes, iridescent almonds with natural eye liner. I knew she was the one and every moment since has confirmed it. One chapter ends, another begins, and the book remains unwritten.
Hi-Lili, Hi-Lili, Hi-Lo
© 2019 by Mike Tully
(Lyrics from “Hi-Lili, Hi-Lo” (Bronislau Kaper and Helen Deutsch, 1952).
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The Week That Went: February 23-28, 2020
How was your week? If you haven’t died or gone broke, congratulations. It’s been quite a week on our small dysfunctional planet and I decided to put down my Sharpie and write about it. I was using the Sharpie to draw fangs on my respiratory mask to use when the plague finds its way to Southern Arizona and I want to cut in line. The mask makes me look like a surgeon channeling a piranha. They’ll scatter like flies at Walmart.
The week began with the tenth debate in the race for the Democratic Party’s presidential nomination. The panel was expanded to include Tom Steyer because white billionaires were underrepresented. The chief moderators were Gayle King and Norah O’Donnell of CBS News and it went something like this:
“GK: Good evening and welcome to the tenth Democratic presidential debate. I’m Gayle King.
NO: And I’m Nora O’Donnell. This evening’s debate also features questions submitted over the Internet. If you have a question you would like us to ask one of the candidates, just go to Twitter and use the hashtag #clusterfuck2020.
GK: Our first question is for former New York Mayor Mike Bloomberg. Mayor Bloomberg, why do you believe it would be a mistake to nominate Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders?
MB: Because he’s a godless Communist who likes Fidel Castro and honeymooned in Russia and Vladimir Putin wants him to get the nomination because Donald Trump will beat him like a rug.
GK: Senator Sanders, do you have a response?
BS: Yes. Get off my lawn, you mealy-mouthed homunculus!
GK: Senator Warren.
EW: I have a plan for that. Clean green lawns all across America. We’ll pay for it by taxing rich people’s gardeners.
GK: Vice-President Biden, do you have a comment?
JB: Listen, here’s the deal. (Pause)
GK: Uh, what’s the deal?
JB: I forgot.
GK: Senator Klobuchar?
AK: If we spend the next four months arguing over lawn care Vladimir Putin will spend the next four years defoliating it.
GK: Mr. Steyer, how do you react to what Senator Sanders had to say?
TS: What’s a homunculus?”
Those are pretty much the highlights. The eleventh and final debate is scheduled for March 15th in Phoenix. It will be boisterous, unless the coronavirus hits Arizona by then and health authorities lock out the audience. That would be a drag, although I admit watching the candidates argue while wearing respiratory masks would be a new level of entertainment.
Speaking of coronavirus, the other big story not only went viral, it is viral. Americans are worried about coronavirus, but fortunately our Commander in Chief is on top of things. “(W)e’ve had tremendous success,” Donald Trump declared at a news conference on Wednesday, “tremendous success beyond what people would have thought.” He celebrated the tremendous success by designating Vice-President Mike Pence with the unenviable task of leading the nation’s response to the pandemic. Pence declared that he will defeat the virus with conversion therapy and prayer. “The coronavirus is not acting as God intended,” intoned the man who resembles a walking Q-tip. “We will pray it back to China, or wherever it came from.”
The stock market had dropped faster than Trump’s pants in a teen pageant dressing room, but Trump assured the media it was not because of coronavirus. The actual culprit, he insisted, was the Democratic presidential debate. “I think the financial markets are very upset when they look at the Democratic candidates standing on that stage,” he opined. The market was so spooked by the Democratic debate that it recoiled the day before it happened. But Trump is optimistic. “I think the stock market will recover,” he said. “The economy is very strong.” The next day the stock market validated Trump’s optimism by falling another 1,200 points.
During Trump’s news conference the first instance of “community spread” occurred in California. A seriously ill woman was diagnosed with coronavirus. She had not traveled out of the country and had no known contact with any person believed to be infected, but contracted it anyway. Then a whistle-blower reported that infected patients had been flown into Travis Air Force base, not far from where the woman lives, and that health workers without proper training or protective gear were exposed to them. Since the virus is an airborne pathogen that spreads easily, it’s not hard to imagine an infected health worker taking a lunch break, or shopping at a mall, all the while unknowingly contaminating the surrounding air. The Trump administration apparently invited coronavirus into the country and set off a chain of infection that is untraceable and unpredictable.
It’s time to pray for a miracle and, lo and behold, the President promised one. “It’s like a miracle,” he declared to a White House gathering Thursday evening, “it will disappear.” Economic Advisor Larry Kudlow downplayed the stock market’s death spiral. He characterized the plummet as “a short-run correction” and added, “we’ve been through this many, many times before.” Acting Chief of Staff Mick Mulvaney told a CPAC audience how to calm the markets. “I’m like, ‘Really what I might do today,’” he told the throng, “’is tell people turn their televisions off for 24 hours.’” I’m like, bummed that the White House Chief of Staff talks like a Valley Girl, but he might be right about the TV thing.
So that’s where things stand as I write this on Friday afternoon. The Democratic race mimics The Hunger Games and the stock market remains in free-fall while a dangerous virus makes its way to America and the Trump administration addresses it by telling us to turn off our television sets and wait for a miracle.
Damn. My Sharpie went dry.
© 2020 by Mike Tully
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