THE BOTTOMLAND
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‘I left this place
And head asea
Into the swells
Ne’er alee.
No land I seek
No shore no more.
For me the end of revelry.’
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It would be much later on when I learned that
immediately following the death of a loved one, a sense of relief is very
common. That comes from not only the
end of suffering but the release from the incredible mental and spiritual
strain from making constant medical decisions on behalf of those who cannot
speak for themselves, whether a child, debilitated relative, or a companion
animal.
Your sense of confidence is under continuous
and often daily assault from measuring treatment against quality of life and
your own self doubt. And to complicate
matters, decisions are routinely made with a paucity of data and a
preponderance of speculation so basically your best guess is no worse than that
of the opinion of the most trained specialist.
That weight can at times be unbearable so after
the passing of a loved one an unshouldering occurs. But the feeling is fleeting and often
followed by emptiness. A week after
Malcolm was cremated I held a small, private wake then quietly sank down into
the dark side of sadness. The tailspin was swift and absolute.
You have to understand up and until then I
had never lost anyone close to me. Both
my parents and all of my siblings were alive and I’d never experienced a
traumatic loss.
Hell, before Malcolm I never knew such a thing
possible with an animal and that a human could have parental instincts and
emotions with non-humans. And now it was
gone. He was gone. That sun which had shone new light into my
life had set and with it, my will to live.
Abraham Maslow constructed a theory of
motivation in the mid-twentieth century called ‘Maslow’s Hierarchy ofNeeds’. Often portrayed in triangular
form the highest level is self actualization – the penultimate goal of humans
he argued. The bottom represents the
most basic human functions like breathing and eating without which none of the higher
levels can be attained.
And I was barely even there. I was on the ocean floor where you would find strange and grotesque
looking creatures like blob fish, fang tooths, ghost sharks, and vampire squid.
In the absolute absence of sunlight and
air, their existence consists entirely of the basest of survival and when Malcolm died I
drowned myself to live amongst them.
I never knew humans could suffer so deeply and
for so long and for most of 2006, I remained at the deepest depths of despair desperately
holding onto Maslow’s bottom rung. I slept for days then couldn’t sleep at all.
It was a living hell, the haunting nightmare we all have of being a coma
patient but conscious and awake.
For months after he was euthanized, I kept
replaying Malcolm’s final moments, exhaling his last breath, and his limp
lifeless body falling into my arms. My mind became caught in an endless video
loop that played every night and I couldn’t
make it stop.
I didn’t know it at the
time I was going through what I now know as post-traumatic stress disorder. I
was incapable of recalling the memory of Malcolm’s death without experiencing
the extreme emotional trauma that came with it.
Even now years later, it's still painful
for me to reflect upon because I blamed myself for it. The way I was raised, depression is a symptom
of a weak mind and lack of will and character but I honestly couldn’t will
myself to move on.
Isolated, wrought with grief, and devoid of all
hope, I don’t know why I didn’t die that year. I felt like a big part of me had
and I drank enough to do the job. But
the absence of a will to live is not the same thing as a desire to die. I had made three promises to Malcolm before
he was given rest and that kept me holding on to that bottom rung.
And slowly over the ensuing six months since
Malcolm’s passing, I pulled myself up.
One motherfucking rung at a time.
But I did get a little help. And by little, I mean an 8 week old Pyrenees
named Hudson.
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YBD’s
Notes 1: Next week is the eve of our
launch of Chef Big Dog so instead of starting Chapter 9, I’ll compile all
chapters to date in a single blog for all of you kind and discerning
readers. The following week, I should be
in full stride and ready to publish the next chapter: Hudson & Murphy, the Fabulous Fuzzybutts
YBD’s
Notes 2: The title of this vignette was
loosely based on a duet between Lyle Lovett and, unsurprisingly the beautiful
Emmy Lou Harris, a constant source of inspiration through most of my life. Here’s the link to a youtube performance of
it with Lyle’s large band and even larger hair.
If you do have the courage to
walk through the bottomland, like they say in the song, there’s only one way to
do it: without no shoes.
YBD’s
Notes 3: One of the most invaluable
things I’ve learned from the thousands of people we’ve met and the stories they
have shared is that everyone grieves differently. That being said, I chose to suffer alone and
I strongly discourage anyone from doing the same. There are support groups at many of the
veterinarian hospitals throughout the country and there are online communities
as well. And I am available to anyone at
all hours of the day to anyone who needs an understanding ear.
