holding on

Golden Gate Bridge

today is exactly one month, to the day, that we lost our boy. every second remains unbearable. the insomnia that continues to plague me, leaving me sick and exhausted through the day is indescribably horrific. and yet i know that the cause is somehow connected to the closeness that i feel to Murray in the isolated silence of the night. i want to sleep but i don’t want to let go of those moments that i have with the memory of him. when he was sick, as much as i detested those days, in the silence of the middle of the night it was always just us- him and me, fighting together for the chance for one more day together. i also have been extremely conflicted about continuing on with the blog. to do so is cathartic and it helps when people read the blog. it makes me feel that Murray is still important; still having an impact on the lives of others. Yet one more post and this first page of the blog will only contain posts added after Murray’s death. Right now, at least the very bottom post was written when he was still living.

I miss Murray every second of every day. There are so many things that I miss about him. I miss the way his ears flopped up and down whenever he ran.

floppy ears

I miss the way his bottom teeth were all crooked and how we always teased him that he was going to cost us a fortune when he was ‘old enough’ for braces

braces much?

I miss the way that the mere sight of a squirrel (or the imagined sight of one) turned him from the most calm, docile, gentle boy, into a fierce and mighty hunter. Even on the day he died, when he could not so much as stand on his own, he managed to pull himself into a near standing position when the squirrels ran across the wall in the backyard. I remember when we were at the grand canyon and M. wanted to take our picture with the canyon in the background- way off in the distance there was a road with a relatively steady stream of cars driving by. I remember how, as M. took the picture, I held onto Murray so tight that my knuckles turned white. He was watching those cars, itty-bitty in the distance, and thinking that they were squirrels running by. I was terrified that, if I didn’t hold on tight enough, he would break free and run after them, accidentally plunging into the unknown abyss.

holding on

I miss Murray every second of every day and often do not know how I can make it through another day without his love. I miss everything about him. But one of the things that I truly miss the most is the ability to keep him with me- to keep him safe, just by holding on.

two months ago today…

Two months ago today, we woke up in the morning, got ready for school, went through our normal ‘bye-bye routine’ and headed out for just another day. We thought we had things to be stressed about, but they were just ordinary stresses of life.

Two months ago today, we went through our day without more concern than usual about what might be going on at home or what we had waiting for us around the corner. After school, M. went to a class and I went to do my home-teaching job.

Two months ago today, as I left my home-teaching job, M. called me on the phone. She had arrived home to find Murray unable to get up, laying humiliated, ashamed, and alone in a puddle of his own urine.

Our lives would never be the same.

sleep

…Looking back at pictures of Murray, it occurs to me that we have so, so many pictures of him sleeping. This might lead one to believe that Murray was a dog who slept a lot. He wasn’t. I mean, he did get an average amount of sleep and, as he aged, his sleep increased accordingly. But he was a light sleeper, especially back when he had better hearing. He could be asleep in one room and hear a squirrel slipping over the wall into his yard and be at that door faster than a bolt of lightning. He really could. Way back in the day, he could be sound asleep and would recognize the sound of, even the slightest movement of the (dog) cookie jar. This always made it tricky when you were wiping down the counters.

When Murray slept, especially after he lost his hearing, he didn’t like it if you left the room without telling him. He didn’t always follow you when you left, though usually he did, but he just didn’t like falling asleep and then waking up to find you gone. Now, to be clear, we never, ever, left Murray without making sure that he knew that we were leaving. We had a whole ‘bye-bye’ routine so that he would always know, without a doubt, that we walking out the door and we would be away from him for a while. We never sneaked out without him knowing, never waited until he was asleep and then slipped out the door. Never-the-less, just to make sure we didn’t tip-toe out and abandon him, the last few years of his life, whenever he napped, he would sleep for a while, then lift his head, look around the room, and make sure everyone was where they should be. And then he would sleep some more.

So it gave me pause for thought, wondering why we have so many millions of pictures of Murray sleeping. And as I looked at them all, I realized that the reason we took so many pictures of him asleep was not because he slept a lot, but because he was so ridiculously adorable when he slept. The pictures don’t do him justice, but holy-cow that boy was delicious!

Last night, I slept a little bit for the first time in days. While I slept, I had a collection of odd dreams and nightmarish adventures. But in the middle of these strange, surreal experiences, I had a dream that I was walking Murray. I was just walking him at first, like a normal dream of walking your pup. But suddenly, within the dream, I seemed to realize that it was, in fact a dream. I understood the dream and was aware of the reality. I grabbed Murray and started crying and kissing him and hugging him and all the while, I kept saying “Thank you baby. Thank you for coming to visit me in my dream. I miss you. I love you so much!”

And then I woke up…. I wish I could just sleep and sleep and dream forever!

My boy could sleep!

ashes

Before I get on with the post, I have been asked to re-present the link to Murray’s slide show. It is still at the bottom of the page but I don’t mind adding the link again. If people are watching it, then they are keeping his memory alive and, for some reason, that helps (?) So here it is: We got Murray’s ashes today. They said it would take three weeks and it only took 10 days. I thought it would be such a relief to get them, and in many ways, it is. I’m am not exaggerating when i say that, all Murray ever, ever wanted in this world was to be with me, to be with us. He didn’t want toys, didn’t want fancy food, didn’t want luxurious beds or fancy, flashy accessories. All he wanted was to just be with me and for me to be with him. And now, his ashes will be. I will never spread them, never let them loose in the wind, never climb a mountain and leave them at the peak to watch the sunrise, never set them free in a squirrel infested park. Not ever.  None of these are things that he would have wanted. All he wanted was to be with me. Whenever it is finally my turn to go, if I am buried, I want him to be buried with me. If I am cremated, I will want his ashes burned with mine. But the great rush of relief that I had hoped for did not arrive home with the little pine box that carried my little boy. Instead, it ripped at my insides and twisted my stomach to know that his big, beautiful body was contained inside this little box with its tiny gold lock and itty-bitty keys. I had thought that I would miss most, the ability to touch Murray’s, angel-wing ears. And believe me, I do deeply miss this. It is excruciating. But as I look at pictures of him, I am surprised at how intensely I long to run my hand down his back and give a little scratch to the thicker, slightly curly hair towards the end of his spine and on the outer sides of his legs. i just don’t know if i can survive this

it matters

Murray Day 2005

Murray was not an ordinary dog. He was very calm, very sweet, and oh so brilliant. He mattered. He mattered to a lot of people, not just me. He mattered most to me, but he touched a lot of lives.

At my school, 1/3 of the student population of the entire school has had contact with my baby. Every single school year, for the past 10 years probably, has ended with Murray Day. Murray Day is a day when Murray came to school and spent the whole day just being in the classroom with all of the kids. It was an important day. Kids even dressed up for it. I’m not kidding. Some kids wore their nicest church clothes while other kids wore anything and everything that they owned that had a graphic or picture of a dog on it. They brought gifts and they counted down to Murray Day as eagerly as they counted down to the winter break. Really, it was one of the greatest tools to hold over the student’s heads for discipline: Boys and girls, if this is how you are going to behave today, I don’t see how I could possibly allow Murray to come for Murray Day! You will frighten the pants right off of him!

But it wasn’t just Murray Day that mattered to the students. An image of my baby is on the cover of every single homework assignment. He is on the front of the homework folder. And pictures of him, on Murray Day and otherwise, are posted all throughout the classroom When I work in the classroom on weekends and over the summer, it is NOT unusual for the door to open and a random family to appear in the doorway, the parents always explaining: We saw your car and the kids demanded we stop in to see Murray! And I don’t think that a week goes by without someone, either a current or a past student, stopping in to bring Murray a treat, a note that they have written to him, a picture that they have drawn, just for him etc… In fact, on the day that Murray’s stomach flipped, I suspect that the sheer number of people who had brought treats with them to school when they went to find out who their new teachers would be, had at least a little to do with the incident. They just all knew that Murray would be there. They expected him to be and he was.

Even the kids from this year’s class, the class that I made clear from the start would NOT be having a Murray Day (I knew it was getting too taxing for him so last year I declared it the last) are head-over-heals in love with my little boy. The last week of school, they asked me every day if he was at school. At recess, they gave up their play time to stand by the fence and catch a glimpse of him when I took him out of The Daz for a potty. I snapped a picture of this and, as it is a cell phone shot, i expect it is distorted enough to include here and that the individual student’s faces cannot be made-out.

watching from the fence

and these are the kids who never really even MET Murray!

The point that I am trying to make is that, I keep trying to analyze why I care so much that some people do not treat this loss as valid as the loss of a human child. I mean the people who know us and love us understand the depth of our loss so what should it matter that the rest of the world doesn’t get it?

But here it is: If Murray, who has touched the lives of so, so, so many children, had been a human child, his loss would demand a certain care upon the return to school. There are so many, many children who see Murray as, in some small part, their very own. They care deeply about him. This is proven to me on a regular basis. Just the other day, Murray got an email from a former student who knew that he had been sick and just wanted to send an email to say that she hoped he was all better now. What other dog on earth receives mail and emails from children?

And former students, whose parents are in my email address book, will hopefully be told by their parents. I will include a message to the parents of current students in the newsletter that I will send before we return to school. But none of these are the children that I worry about. The ones to which Murray had a special importance are the children who are sometimes known or described as the ‘lost’ children, or the ‘at risk’ kids. Kids with little to no guidance from home. These are children who felt especially special and important from Murray’s love. And make no mistake, Murray could single out a ‘lost’ child in the blink of an eye and make them feel like the most important kid in the world. I didn’t train him to do that. He just had a gift. He would spend Murray Day following the loneliest, saddest, most academically challenged kid in the room and wagging his tail at them and rubbing his perpetually itchy chin against them in a way that was so obviously affectionate.

These are the kids who will find out that Murray is gone by hearing it on the playground. They will be the ones not to know for weeks until they show up in the classroom with some mangy dog-biscuit that they discovered and immediately thought to bring to him, or with a picture that they drew just for him. They will hear it from friends or they might not ever find out- which may be lucky.

If Murray, who has impacted the lives of so many children… has inspired so many lost children, has been loved by so so many… if  he were a human child, this would call for the need… would demand the necessity of a humane means of notification regarding his loss.

But he was not a human child and therefor, his loss will not be seen as ‘important’ enough to be compassionately expressed to those who loved him. And because this matters, to me, I feel that I am failing in my ability to honor my baby’s memory!

crocodiles

Big Bear 2007

Two years ago I had a dream, a nightmare really, that is as vivid to me today, as it was the second it caused me to awaken and sit bolt-upright, in a cold sweat. It was a dream about crocodiles. It was actually a relatively lengthy dream and was not difficult to analyze, given my circumstance at the time. But most of those details are not relevant.

In the dream, I had taken Murray to a picnic in a park alongside an aqueduct. Murray was running alongside the aqueduct and there was a place where it had a sandy shore, rather than a concrete wall. I was looking into the aqueduct from the concrete wall point, and, with a start, I suddenly noticed that the water below was teaming with crocodiles. Instantly, I recognized the importance of getting Murray back on his leash and keeping him safe… keeping him with me.

I turned around to call Murray and saw that he was running on the sandy shore at the water’s edge. He turned towards me when I called and, in that instant, a crocodile shot out of the water and grabbed my boy into its mouth and began to drag him back into the icy waters of the aqueduct. I ran towards my baby, screaming his name. Our eyes were locked and, in those infinitely deep eyes, I could see the pain, and the fear, and the confusion that had overtaken him.

But it is not the pain, nor the fear, nor the confusion in his eyes that haunts me to this day. No, as horrific as that was, the thing that haunts me, the thing that drives me mad, is the absolute, undoubting, never wavering, complete and total look of confidence that emanated from those  eyes of his. As horrendous as his situation was, being dragged into the water, a swarm of hungry crocodiles circling about, ready to fight for any piece of him they could get, he had absolutely no doubt that I was going to save him. He never blinked, never questioned- just kept staring at me with the complete and total belief that I was on my way. I would somehow rescue him, take him home, and make his physical pain go away. And we would be together, always.

And, so, as I ran screaming towards my boy, I knew what I had to do. I knew that there was no saving him, knew that he would likely not even live long enough to see me hit the water. And I knew that I would not survive, once I landed in the middle of that crocodile swarm. But I did not hesitate, could not falter, even for a second. Because I knew that, the very last thing that my boy was going to see was me, coming for him…. Me, coming to be with him, on that day and forever.

I woke up as my feet left the ground and my body hurtled itself towards the attacking crocodile

missing

i have been increasingly disturbed by my inability to find things that are important to me the past few days. For starters, I suddenly remembered that, last Christmas, when we took that spontaneous drive up to the Redwoods, we had taken our brand-new video recorder with us. We had created not one, but several short recordings on that trip: Murray and M. sleeping in the back of The Daz, Murray and Jazzmine exploring ethereal pathways through the redwoods, Murray and Jazzmine running on the beach, Murray and Jazzmine exhausted in the motel room, Murray and Jazzmine examining those icy ponds at the Drive Through Tree. All of these adventures captured on high quality video, just waiting to be transferred to the laptop. But when I went to find the disk, it was gone. All of it.

I spent a good part of the day today searching for a specific photo album. I knew it would not be in the forefront of the albums because it was not an album that featured Murray predominantly. In fact, there was only one picture of my baby in that album. The album was called ‘Toby’s Baby Book‘ and it was a collection of all of the pictures of the retriever that I once shared with my then husband. But the one picture of Murray was, and is, an important one. It is the very, very, first picture that I ever took of my little boy. It was taken the day that we were moving into our new house… the house that we had chosen based on my insistence that the smelly little nose, peeking through a knot-hole in the fence was a sign… a sign that this was where we were supposed to be. On that day, Toby, the gangly retriever pup who had outgrown our small apartment, ran gleefully out into the yard and instantly became bewitched by that curious little nose. as luck would have it, the camera was not packed away, but in easy reach and I snapped a shot of their first meeting.

and after searching all day, in a box on the very top shelf, in the far corner of the garage, I finally found it… the forgotten baby book of the dog that was NOT destined to be mine, with the very first picture of the boy who was.

my baby's little nose

Murray was sick in this picture. He was so matted that, if you wanted to touch his skin, anywhere on his body, you had to literally dig beneath the mats to do so. He smelled. But even in this picture, you can see the stunning beauty that is born in those eyes and radiates all the way around him. He was hungry and mistreated. But he was breathtaking. I don’t know if other people could see this about him. I always just assumed that the whole world saw this beautiful creature the way I did. But looking back, I don’t know if that is the case.

And a bit over a year later, this filthy, smelly, mangy, hungry, beautiful boy was brought to my doorstep. And on that day, we spent $500.00 in vet and grooming bills. But when we brought him home, we took this picture:

And this picture opens that abyss in my chest and brings instant tears to my eyes. When I look at this picture, I see a boy, so so proud to be so clean and beautiful. I don’t know if he had ever been that clean in his life, up until then. But from that day on, he was almost obsessive about his grooming. Even in the end, when we were carrying him out to the yard to go potty, if he accidentally got any pee on his little feet, and if we didn’t realize it and wash them immediately upon our return to the house, he would maneuver himself about on his little bed so that he could lick himself clean. He had known life as a dirty dog, and from this day on, he was indescribably proud to be clean and beautiful.

Another thing that brings tears to my eyes is how thin Murray was in this picture. Most people never really saw Murray as a thin dog. They always thought he was such a big dog. But the truth was, shaved down, he was always a trim, healthy boy. And, in this picture, I imagine most people would not see an emaciated dog, much like I don’t know if that is what people see when they look at the pictures taken in the final days of his life. But he was nearly emaciated here, as he was in the end. When you felt his sides, his ribs protruded dangerously. You can see it in his cheeks and how they are sunken. He had lived a miserable life, up until then, and frankly, so had I.

but on this day, Murray became my boy. He saved me and I saved him. We have not ever, ever been apart since, with the exception of times that I was in the hospital, and the two nights that he spent in the hospital when his stomach flipped.

…and now

letting go

i received an email that stated a hope that I would continue on with this blog. it resonated with me because i have had a difficult time letting go of it and i feel like there is so much more to say about Murray. but this is Murray’s blog and that is all i ever want it to be. so i don’t want it to go on, changing and becoming a blog about everything else in life. but as long as it remains Murray’s blog, i will find catharsis in continuing on here.

for today, however, i am not ready for catharsis. as it is M.s birthday, i am doing my best to get out of bed; a feat i have not even attempted since returning home on Monday night. at some point, however, i will be ready to say more. in the meantime, i would just like to express deep gratitude to those who are reaching out. i will respond when i am capable. and also, in clarification, please do not feel a need to apologize for reaching out. my request for no-empathy expressions was intended mostly for if you see me in person or, most specifically, upon returning to school. those will be times when i am trying to ‘function’ and in order to do so, i will need to go to a different place in my head. expressions of kindness and empathy will bring me back to myself and, in that place, i will feel and that will be unbearable. and, especially at school, i need to function.

for now, however, my goal is not to function. for now, my goal is simply to survive one breath at a time.

all the world just stopped now

Last Photo ever taken of Murray ~ December 28, 2009

Today the sun shines a little less; the night is a little more dark.  Any beauty that this life has to offer is tarnished and dull. But Murray is out of pain and he is in peace and he has taken his place amongst the most beautiful of all angels in heaven.  He is in a better place and it is now only we, who must somehow find a way to navigate through this life without him.

Murray was euthanized at 6PM tonight, December 28, 2009. I know, dogs are always supposed to miraculously live in the end, when it is Christmastime. That is not how things work in my world lately. The vet felt that Murray was in unimaginable pain but that he was loyal, to the end, and would continue to fight not to let us down. He could tell that Murray was hiding the pain and trying to hide it, even from him, but with his experience he knew, and pointed out the signs to us.

Do to the severity of Murray’s dehydration (he had lost another 3 lbs) it took many, many tries to get the catheter in, shaving all four of Murray’s legs before they were finally successful, using the catheters generally reserved for the very smallest of dogs. I held his head and he stared directly into my eyes the entire time. Even after he was gone, and M. kept trying to close them, they would pop open, staring directly into my soul. Stubborn, my boy, even in death.

And, should you happen to run into us or upon our return to school, while M. would surely appreciate kindness and hugs, I will not be able to handle empathy of any kind. It will be all I can do to survive from moment to moment, every ounce of energy in surviving the day, all of my strength to learn how to live and exist in a world that does not have my baby boy.

Thank you for your love, support, understanding and kindness.

tw and m.

Murray W. "June 22, 1993" - December 28, 2009 Photo taken December 27, 2009

quick update

… we have noticed a lot of traffic on the blog today and take this only to mean that many kind people who love Murray are checking in, needing or wanting to know how things stand…

we have booked the latest possible appointment in the day (5:30) and are spending the day quietly trying to be positive in Murray’s presence and leaving the room when this is just not possible. I have spent the past 2 or more hours giving him a sponge bath and brushing, brushing, brushing him. It is my hope that the vet will see him tonight and recognize how healthy and shiny his coat still is and how bright the light still shines in his eyes.

…and then, of course… there is always still time for those angels…