White

 

I hadn’t seen the dog at first.  The summer thunderstorm was putting on a spectacular show. Raindrops fat as jelly beans were pelting the ground as though it hated it for stopping its lightspeed journey from the clouds. A bone clattering crash and then a streak of lightning lit up the tree line in my backyard. It was then that I saw it. A white dog was standing at the edge of the forest.

 

It was late, ten or so on a Friday night.  I was usually sound asleep by this time, but I was out of Ambien and insomnia and had come raging back since I’d taken the last pill two nights ago. It seems you can wait until Monday for an Ambien refill. I wasn’t familiar with those kinds of meds that could wait. The kind we used to need? Those couldn’t wait.

 

This night though the storm had come on fast, and sleep was far away. I had decided on a cup of chamomile and my back porch to help wash away the images I couldn’t seem to get the fuck out of my head. Now, there, with another streak of lightning, I saw the dog again. The whole of its body now, not just the head. It seemed as though it were waiting for an invitation into the warmth of my worn-in porch.

 

I didn’t want anything to do with this problem that was staring at me. Dogs, especially very wet, very stray ones, present a whole world of problems. The only rescue dog we had lasted four hours before heading for the hills and never being seen from again. No, I did not want a fucking dog. Especially now. Especially when it was all so raw, what was it? A month since that day?

 

The wind pushed the swings on the swing set. Christopher had only been able to swing on it a few times before it all happened. Before cancer. “Say it,” I told myself. “Coward.” Say the word. I did. Out loud. Over and over until it wasn’t the word I was saying any longer. I turned into the right word.

 

“Cancer, cancer, cancer, suicide, suicide, suicide!!!”  I was crying now, on my knees, my head in my hands, praying to a God I hated as I made myself remember the security footage. Remember watching Christopher crawl to the deep end of their pool and just let himself slide into the deep-end. A ten-year-old kid choosing his end was only beautiful to his mother.

 

I repeated it, “Suicide,” only now it was a whisper, and I was no longer telling it to myself. I was daring God to bring the elements of Mother Nature down on me and wash me away. Wash me away to the place that death took my husband and my son on the same day. The death that stole away my husband as he dragged our long, dead son out of the deep end, the death that burst his heart wide open and left nothing for anyone to do but send food and flowers, then go quickly.

 

The thunder cracked, and the lightning sizzled across the sky. A sudden shattering sound of a tree not far away from where I was kneeling took the bolt of electricity and crashed to the ground. I opened the wooden screen door, and the big dog I’d come to call White leaped onto the couch in a single bound. She seemed as unphased by the lightning as I was. That was when I first noticed it. I wasn’t afraid. I wasn’t scared of a damn thing. The worst had happened, and there I was, still standing, still breathing, whether I wanted to or not.

 

I saw the ball under the couch and grabbed it, bounced it to see what White might do. She immediately ran to the door, pacing to go out and play. We played there in the downpour and thunder and I let the rain wash away the last vestiges of fear, a mikvah cleansing away the hopelessness away to make room for something else.

 

My loss that was so great I hadn’t begun to consider its fullness, and it’s all-encompassing darkness. Tonight though, I was playing ball with a new friend who had no idea what cancer was, or suicide or any of it. I watched White throw herself into the air to catch a ball for no other reason than it was there, and it was fun.

 

 The end.