(Temporarily!!!) Saying Goodbye to Bandit

I couldn't do it. I gave him away.

(Temporarily).

We got to the Christine Center and were both terribly happy to be there.  But when you live in community, you live in community.

Yesterday, when I left him in the cabin for supper, someone called to complain about his barking. I'd only been gone 5 minutes. Naturally he was sobbing. He hadn't adjusted to the new space yet. This was normal. But this time, Someone Had Complained. So a nun took me aside, and gave me special permission to eat in the office with him. He's not really supposed to be in the center, especially not when groups are visiting (i.e. on the weekends).

Unofficially, each nun has a slightly different view on how far doggie privileges should extend inside the center, but when you live in a community, you have to respect how even non dog-lovers feel about dogs. You have to realize that if Bandit gets special privileges, other people will expect them too. Because that is what a community is: people who share things. We share space, and we share the rules of that space.

So I was sitting in my cabin today -- where the wifi does not work. Where I cannot do work. Where even my phone doesn't get service. And I knew meditation was coming, and I started to cry, realizing that I wouldn't be able to go to meditation. Not even once. The whole time I was here. Because my dog would cry. And I wasn't supposed to leave him alone in my cabin like that -- he was disturbing people. But I couldn't bring him with either. None of the nuns think he should be in the meditation room. And of course, anyone I could ask to watch him, would also be in the meditation room.

This hit me. My vacation. My reprieve. I started to sob. I haven't actually cried alone in years. I don't know what it is about me, but for some reason when I'm alone I quietly distract myself from the actual business of crying before it happens.

I sat there, sobbing.

What did I come here for?

I realized I couldn't do both: there was no way to keep him in the condition he was in and participate in the community in any real way. I couldn't sit with people at meals. And I couldn't meditate. Aside from walking the gravel roads in his stroller, we were isolated together in the cabin.

And then I thought about how it wouldn't get better. When I get to North Carolina, I won't even have family around to help me. In Madison, there are probably close to 40 people I wouldn't hesitate to send a message to and say "I need help with something." Divide that by ten, and you have my Chapel Hill community. I sobbed harder then, realizing there was no break ahead. At least, not the kind I needed.

Then I really started sobbing.

I could picture that mom in Texas or wherever who put an ad on Craigslist asking if anyone wanted her baby, because she just couldn't do it. Suddenly, I could relate to her. Intimately. I love Bandit more than anything. But I could relate.

Have I created a monster? Have I used medicine to save the life of an animal who cannot take care of himself and who I cannot take care of? With a baby, parents know this phase ends. I cannot tell you how much I would give for that kind of knowing. 

Why is it so hard to care for him? Because of one simple conundrum. Either he gets his diaper changed every 2 hours (all night long) OR we sleep more and he gets diaper rash. Diaper rash takes several days of many hours of carefully supervised diaper-free time where Bandit isn't allowed to lick himself. And he can't sleep without a diaper, because cones were made for stupider and less determined dogs than mine. He bites his butt. Creates equivalent of diaper rash. Game over.

I have tried everything.

So it all comes down to either getting up throughout the night with him. Or: several hours for several days of 90% of my attention focused on him while he heals (and we might once again arrive at a night of full sleep). Because HAVE I MENTIONED: Head Cones don't work on him?

Neither option allows much reprieve. You can get sleep, but then your day is taken from you. Or you can not get sleep and theoretically have more freedom during the day, except, you haven't slept. Losing, meet losing.

The other Big Reason it is hard to care for him is that even when I'm not 90-100% focused on him, I am emotionally caring for him. It takes an hour of being away from him for me to stop thinking of him literally every single second. "Ah yes, Bandit isn't actually my arm or leg... I am a separate entity" I discover, surprised, each time. It is hard to remember that when you are never physically separated.

I am with someone all the time. And yet: I am doing this alone.

That is why I started crying.

Because I realized, finally, that I can't do this alone.

To every single-mother out there: you have my endless respect. I know we all do what we have to. But I don't know how you do it. Bandit is only a dog. And I don't know how you do it. To every woman who has done this for years... I think you are a Goddess-On-Earth. Your strength is beyond human. May you raise men who personally and politically help to ensure women do not have to do this.

Because I don't even have a child. I have a dog.

And already I see: some of us must face the heart-breaking reality that no matter how much we'd like to be, we are not in fact super heroes. Our love for another being is not actually a super power.

So I asked my mom to come get him. I filled up my tiny car with all of Bandit's new possessions, noting he takes up most of the space of my life in almost every sense now.

I talked to him about it. In between sobs. I told him I needed his help now. Because that's the other thing... it's not just that I don't get sleep and my dog can't do things for himself. It's that Bandit used to be the most stable, reliable, happiest thing in my life. He fills different shoes now. But I don't think he knows that. In his head, Bandit is still taking care of me. His separation anxiety has always partially been about his need to take care of me. He is a companion dog. He is lost without his companion. I told him I needed his help so I could take a break. And he'd get to spend time with Grandma... his second favorite person on the planet. He looked away. Sullen. Angry. He wouldn't look back at me.

But I knew... if I didn't take a break now, when I had family around who were willing to help... I wouldn't get one. Other dogs are running around as of weeks ago... and mine still cannot stand. It would be foolish to expect him to recover by tomorrow or next week. So I might not get a break. Yes, some things will be easier when we get home. We will have a routine, and have things in set places and not be nomads living out of a car. He does get stronger. He will get stronger. Some things will get easier.

But so far, for everything that gets easier (look, he can drink out of a bowl, not a syringe!), something new else gets harder (look, he can take his diaper off now, even when I put the tabs on his back!). I still love the changes. They are progress. But, it doesn't get simpler. It simply changes.

So I drove an hour to meet my mom and dad at the nearest McDonald's parking lot. The closest outpost of civilization, I suppose. And I unloaded a backseat and half-a-trunk full of his belongings which didn't even exist a month ago. I went over the medications, the feeding schedule, the diapers, the wipes, the rash, the ointment, the physical therapy, the restrictions, the progress. My mom explained what hours she'd be able to take off of work, and when my aunt would sub in. None of it sounded adequate to me, but I said thank you.

She went in to order food. I sat in their car, talking to Bandit, sitting next to my dad.

"He's mad at me," I said.

"Yes. I gathered that," he said.

I didn't know my dad spoke Bandit.

Then again, it's not like there was much subtlety involved.

He knew. He knew I was abandoning him. I told him it was just for three nights. But for all of the other things he's good at, I don't think Bandit can count.

I don't even think he's mad at me for not taking care of him for three days. He's mad at me for not letting him be with me. That is his life's work. Being with me. I have stripped him of his vocation. Even time with grandma cannot replace that.

But it wasn't even a choice anymore. I couldn't do it alone. I needed help. And one of the beautiful things about my family is that any time I have asked for help, my parents have just about always dropped whatever they were doing to show up for me. My mom knew that if I was asking her to take Bandit, This was no Light Request.

I needed the help. But I remain torn. 

Despite the Center rules, he is beloved here. Even weekend visitors had taken to requesting morning updates on his progress. People whose-names-I-don't-know would introduce him to other-people-whose-names-I-don't-know. They have all heard His Story. The Sweetest Dog Ever Who Was HitByACar. He is beloved equally by his old companions and the people who simply pass through.



The idea of taking him away from all that? And the frogs and the deer and the turtles and the trees and the breeze and the creatures in the grass?

His Last Moments before we drove off.

It was two hours before we met my parents. Bandit refused to look at me the entire time.

Most of me doesn't feel guilty because I'm not really capable of it in the state I'm in. It's more a sense of heartbreak that I couldn't give him everything he needed. It's more a fear about what lies ahead for us, and how Sustainable all of this will be. How many more days or weeks (or months?) of this do I have in me? Where are the corners we can cut? I am so much more efficient at caring for him than when he first got out... but he remains a full time job with a daily double-shift. Friends can help. But that is no panacea. That is like pretending friends can raise a child for you. Yes, they can watch your child after school, perhaps, but they cannot provide a college fund, make dinner every night and stay up with the flu. This is not about my pride. This is about the reality that other people do in fact have real lives that they lead. There are limits. As there should be.

How sustainable is this? Given that I am human and will eventually need some amount of reliable sleep? Given that I do in fact have a full time job? Given that there are actual financial limits to how much help I can buy to compensate for what I myself cannot do?

How sustainable is my ownership of this dog going forward?

If that is not the most heartbreaking question yet of my life...

So my sadness isn't just about 3 nights away from him in a place I think would otherwise be healing to him. My sadness is the knowing that I'll still wake up every few hours to check on him, and each time, worry all over again about how we will do this. How we will take care of each other. In a world of dead brothers and car accidents and the-things-we-don't-speak-of from in between which feel even worse...

How, my dear Bandit, will we take care of each other now?

I realize, we will have to wait and see.

But I still wish I could go back to a time when this wasn't a question I ever had to ask.

Because I think it is a question I will ask myself often, now.

And maybe one he is asking himself tonight too...


Namaste.