Writing through tears is every bit the cliché, but there you
go: the truth will out, bard-like, whether clichéd or no.
We humans are sense-making creatures, lovers of pattern. Coincidental
occurrences once easily ignored seem suddenly connected when propelled by just
one overwhelmingly impactful event. For me, just this last week, that event was
the loss of a dear pet, Kayda, a sometimes-stubborn yet always-loving standard
poodle raised from a pup and who, in many ways, remained pup-like for all of
her twelve-plus years, right up until Canine Degenerative Myelopathy (the Lou Gehrig’s Disease of her world)
caught up with her.
Kayda was a wonderful dog, unique in many ways. I know that
every pet owner says the same thing, but in her case it was true. This was a
dog that taught herself how to retrieve, singly. She would grab her Kong (a hard-rubber
toy that resembles a small, headless Michelin Man), walk over to the edge of
our deck, drop it at her feet, and then knock it through the five-inch space
between the bottom railing and the deck’s surface, propelling it over the side.
Then she would run down the stairs, hunt out the toy, and bring it back up only
to launch it over the edge again. And again. For a dog owner this was wonderful.
I didn’t have to stand outside and throw it for her if I didn’t feel like it,
something I rarely wanted to do when, say, the mosquitoes had grown duskly
thick.
Her game stopped, sadly, a couple of months ago, at about
the point where one of her back legs began to drag a bit and her breathing
became more labored. That’s what happens with this particular disease: the
nerves and muscles fail to converse effectively, and both autonomic and somatic
functions quickly degrade. On what was to be her last day she had already gone some
time without food, having first decided she no longer wanted her own food, and
then progressively losing interest in rice, pasta, chicken, hamburger, and
tomatoes—all previous favorites. No coaxing would get her to eat anything but
some cheese, bits of hot dog, and her own favorite dog treats. When even these,
too, failed to stir her, we knew what she was telling us. A mere walk across
the room left her panting and she could no longer stand with surety. Her naps
grew deeper and longer. It was time.
I was with her at the end.
Grief is a drunkard’s walk, pretending direction yet guiding
you toward one inevitable fall after another until, slowly, the effects wear
off and you’re left with, first, mild sorrow and then, later (sometimes much
later), ripe memory. Despite such predictability it surprises us every time, a
last call when you need just a few moments more. There’s always something left
to say or do, yet those things remain unsaid, undone, headlight-caught in the
sudden helplessness of an unwanted ending. Diversion is sought, and soon. A meal
out (for who wants to be home with memories?), or a movie (though not a
comedy). A book.
And what Pulitzer-Prize winning book would require reading
at just this time, if only to provide one of those narrative coincidences that
so often strike us as clichéd?
The Yearling.
Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings’ coming-of-age story lives in two
worlds, both literally and metaphorically. Coming in at over 400 pages yet
often shelved in a library’s Juvenile section (where I found my copy), it is a
challenging read thus categorized. Still, with various versions peppered with
illustrations (N.C. Wyeth’s being the most famous), and with language and story
firmly centered on a young boy just coming into his own, the tale’s pendulum
swings undoubtedly to the small.
The book, until this project, had been one of those
long-avoided; the story of a backwoods Florida family and a young fawn echoed
too strongly of the horse stories that girls of my generation grew up adoring.
I knew, as a child, that if caught out with such a book I would suffer endless
taunting. Better, I knew, to stick with The
Hardy Boys and The Hobbit.
I had as an adult seen the movie, largely because of the
common guilt many feel when they know a story only as cultural gravitas but have
never actually experienced it in any real form. One lazy solitary evening I
noticed its pending appearance on TCM and, feeling somewhat Gregory Peckish,
settled in to watch. I already knew, of course, how it all ended, how the fawn,
grown, becomes an unintending burden and that the boy, also grown, becomes an
intending man. Still, at the end, tears fell.
So, too, upon finishing the book, an admittedly uneven
affair told moralistically, though with a fair balance of grey tucked between
the black and white. Some characters remain flat, either kindly settled or
aggressively tempered; others grow and change, learning or giving lessons as required
by the narrative. In the end the book satisfies what early Pulitzer committees
were looking for: not necessarily the best book, but a book with moral value,
with an American catechism deeply etched.
I wonder, though only slightly given a long-standing agnosticism,
what brought The Yearling before me
at just this time. Was it a story I needed just now? A comfortable companion,
something on which to project emotion? Perhaps. More likely, though, it was
just a pattern I found in coincidence, a call heard because listened for. In
either case (and with a heavy sigh) I admit it’s impact on me, one no doubt
greater for my own experiences and, therefore, one more likely remembered, a
focus, perhaps, as I stumble through grief, as I write through tears.
Read since last post:
- The Yearling, Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings (1939)
- The Town, Conrad Richter (1951)
Currently Reading:
COUNT: 20 read, 67 to go
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