On a Clear Day
A Moment's Notice
A Falcon, a Warbler and a Passage
Madrean October
Fall’s first breath arrived as suddenly as a shooting star. The moon was full and her silver laminate coated the grassy pastures and mountains for miles on all sides. The pewter landscape sprang to life with the setting of the warm sun, as the moon rose behind the Huachucas and a friendlier night fell, close to perfection and without qualm.
A Merlin had been preying on our birds and there were bits of feather around marking its dismal meals with God’s blessing, for all life must eat.
In the chaos of the changing seasons, a faint, high pitched call came from a gusty bush. We knew it was a special bird. Careful study determined it was a very rare warbler, an eastern resident never found in our Madrean woodlands—the Hooded—with black hood and cut-out, revealing the yellow face beneath foraging for moths in the rose bed.
The early Fall days seemed to herald a realignment of some kind—glorious, yet with a hint of tragedy lurking in the dappled shadows of our golden oasis. In the southwest, death never seemed far and it had to be watched, for suddenly it could spread its wings and a shadow would fall over paradise.
The Announcement
She came to me at 7am with the news, holding her arms for warmth around her nakedness, her face distorted by the sudden grip of stinging pain. A grimace of discomfort and shock hung over her lovely countenance, prefacing the terrible words.
“She’s dead, Billie’s dead.” I woke with a start. How could it be that the reaper had returned so soon. Why us—again—I wondered what we’d do.
It hadn’t been long since I’d looked over my desk on the morning of the Summer Solstice and that same look had appeared on her smooth face, the face of a much younger woman—my wife—and her words, “my father died this morning,” seared into my memory immune to exorcism. A sad synchronicity had fallen—the sudden passing of two of our own.
At that instant I’d have given my own life to avoid those crushing statements, or followed them into where only the dead go after a good life. The future had revealed its inevitability in a spurt of time.
They were gone for good. Dad was gone. Billie was gone. We, the living, were left behind in that flash, the moment’s notice from after which we’re never the same, as life drags us into the future alone, a future ruled unopposed by change.
We dug a hole for her on the lawn beneath the mesquite we’d transplanted from the forest, where we could be close to her, under a series of boulders to be a garden memorial. We’d grow salvias and poppies and return Tommy and Frida’s ashes to the soil around Billie, her closest siblings, two years passed.
Last Goodbye
One could easily have thought she was only asleep she appeared so perfect in death. But she had moved away from us—the living—into her Happy Hunting Ground.
After a brief, mysterious illness, our beloved heeler had died in her sleep at fourteen. She lay in the hall in fresh stillness where her breathing sleep had begun and ended for the final time. There appeared no sign of pain or trauma. We were grateful. She’d passed in peace.
We sat on the wood floor stroking her gray, black and white fur. Her racoon face and blazing brown eyes were silent, the eyes we’d refused to believe would not see forever and ever, as the song promised on clear days. For a last time, we expressed our unbroken love to her quiet face, ears still erect, and eyes other only hours before had blazed with life and intelligence.
Tearfully it sank in. Never again the sound of lapping water or the gentle swish of happy footsteps through the house; or biscuits after fragrant evening walks—her quotidian treats—hard-wired into her circadian cravings. Our boundless love, the spirited games of fetch, and sitting like another person on the gray seat of the truck, watching the desert pass.
She seemed to be telling us, “I’m good for now, but tomorrow will be another day, and I’ll be up for anything dear keepers!”
“I live a fraction of you, but I’m a happy dog. I’ll wave my gray marbled tail with all the gladness my God has gifted, until I’m no more. I will live fully and without grievance until the day I die.”
“And while I live on in your brains here on Earth, know that my doggy-soul will be somewhere else far out in space, my energy intact in a different form, for energy never dies. We will meet again.”
Epilogue
In five-thousand, one hundred and ten days we’d almost never been separated. No kennels, no dog-sitters, it was not our style. We were a family and never allowed selfish human cravings to separate us. Billie was as sentient as we ourselves. She was our most loyal friend, as all dogs treated with love by loving masters are.
Billie-girl was the smartest, kindest, most well-behaved animal one would hope for. By intuition she never killed another living thing. She knew by instinct her human parents loved all life without exception, and she seemed to know intuitively that wildlife was not a threat to fuss over like other dogs did, slave to their instincts.
Ours was a comradeship. For better or worse we were compatriots on life’s bitter journey through the chancy years we’d shared. She would be our last, for the pain of our loss was so unbearable we wanted never to repeat it. We would choose to finish what remained of our lives with the indelible memories of six lost pets, and nothing more. Or so we said after October’s realignment.
We are alone now.
Tony Heath is an artist, jazz musician, activist and writer of fiction and essays in Arizona. He and his wife, Kate Scott, co-founded a wildlife advocacy on their ranch in Cochise and Santa Cruz Counties.
Photographs by the author ©
Beautiful and sad at the same time Tony. The ones we have lost will live on in our memory.
Stu