Truth be told, I haven't blogged for a while, because the thing I want to write about, the thing I need to get off my chest, isn't some clever observation about 1950s design. It's Angus. More precisely, it's Angus getting older.
As I type, Angus paces around the loft, trying to find me. I call out to him. I whistle. I wear too much cologne in hopes that he will smell me. He keeps pacing. I get up and tap him. "Right here, buddy." I go back to sit down, and he walks in the wrong direction. He bumps into the dresser. He stumbles over my shoes. I pick him up and put him on the bed beside me. He quiets down, certain of my presence.
Lately, coming home from work or being out for more than a few minutes, I open the front door to find Angus right behind it, balled up in the shoe mat, sandals under his head. It used to be he'd be on my bed, or in a nest he made by crumpling up the bath mat. Now, though, he seems, urgently, to need to know right when I return. His urgency has become mine.
Every day he is a little more blind, a little more deaf. Each day, I notice a new lump on this tummy or behind his ear. Each day, I grieve in anticipation for a day I know eventually will arrive.
About a year ago, when Angus first lost his sight, an elderly woman who works at the Theater asked me when I was going to put him down. I hated her for that question. I looked at her feeble walk and her gnarled hands, and only my proper German upbringing kept me from saying, "I don't know, when are they putting you down?"
I am so glad that Angus remains basically healthy. He loves his food. He smiles when we go on walks (though sometimes he is too stubborn or too scared to move forward). He has achieved detente with Lucy, Paul's miniature Schnauzer, whom he tried to kill upon first meeting her. But curse that old woman, I watch him walk into walls or panic when he can't hear me, and the thought pops into my head. I see Lucy run and bound in the yard, and I am so jealous that she can see and sad and angry and devastated that Angus can't. And the thought recurs.
I confess this here, because I can't stand it. I love Angus beyond measure. I hold him close to me every night and massage him, lumps and all, as we fall asleep. And I ask God to forgive me for thinking those thoughts. Angus had been abandoned twice before I found him, my canine soul mate, at the shelter. I promised him I would be his forever home. I hate myself for losing patience with the little guy.
Tomorrow, I am taking him to St. John's for the blessing of the animals. People around me will see his glassy eyes and his tentative walk, and they'll nod silently, thinking they know why we are there. But it's not for Gus that we're going. It's for me, to find the strength to stand by him, and the wisdom to discern when it's time to stop.
