troubles come in threes

and so do the summer months

August is always stricken with melancholy—as if the ghosts of all past summers came rushing to haunt my heart // It is mid-August, which is continually strange: it’s still summer; how can so much have happened and it’s not even autumn? // It is August, the month that tears itself apart // It is August of another summer, and once again I am drinking the sun // There’s August, and its sadness. Though there’s Sunday for that too.

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I’ve never really associated high summer with low-spirited and final things like death. I expected the languid heat to somehow turn everything within its grasp into a drowsy honey. As if life during this period of time would magically be playing back in 0.25x speed. At most, I expected slow but not stagnant. Death is for the winter, I thought. Let the melancholic seasons handle death instead.

But it turns out that what all those writers said about August was right. August and its sadness. August and its melancholy. August and feeling like its the end of all ends. Like the end of the end of the end.

Summer is for listening to the rushing sound of cicadas (cicadas who give us no sign that presently it will die). Summer is for going to the park for walks. Summer is for rolling around in the cool and itchy grass. Summer is for throwing out old toys and chewing up new ones. Summer is for aliveness, no matter how slow it is, and not for being surprised at how much grief you feel over a dog not being able to do any of these summer things anymore. Not for realizing you won’t feel that same ‘joy in the soft butt of a dog disappearing into its daily necessities.’

I always knew I’d feel sadness for his inevitable death, but I thought it would be different, lighter than this. This doesn’t come from a place of brusqueness or anything, but when I saw others in the past mourn over their pets I had always thought they were making an overly-American and overly-exaggerated show of it. What’s more American than the saying “man’s best friend”? Or Fido and Toto? Lassie and Scooby-doo?

The regard given to animals, pets, in my culture is different than American culture. I thought that any love you have for an animal is different than the one you have for your fellow human.

But what’s more human than our habit of personifying every little thing we encounter? And besides, isn’t grief simply found in the absence of another? Isn’t grief simply the struggle to put that same, habitual love and care you gave freely to one thing into anything else? Because you realize that nothing else will respond in the same way to you—that love does not illicit the same tactile response all across the board. So isn’t grief the acknowledgement of the loss of that agreement between two things? The loss of that unique language which only exists between you and them?

And so now you have all this love and you don’t know where to put it.

Now you have this bank of knowledge—of knowing what brand of kibble he likes, and whether or not he likes wet food; knowing which aisle to go to, and what shelf his favorite treats lie; knowing how you have to cut up his food into small pieces, or he won’t eat it; knowing how he sticks his nose out from under the fence because he can hear your car coming up to the driveway; knowing which places he liked scratched, and how he would tilt his chin up at you, eyes squinted, to show how much he liked it; knowing how he reacts to the sound of the dog leash being held in your hands, and how he stopped showing excitement over it when he got old. So now you have all this knowledge and you don’t know where to put it.

Analicia Sotelo, Grace Among the Ferns

But maybe I was right in my initial thoughts about summer slowing things down. Because why else would he have waited and chosen that Sunday to die when there are so many other days out of the week? Why else would his death have slowed enough for the evening to come? It’s like he knew my uncle’s work schedule, knew he’d be home around that time, knew he doesn’t work Sundays. Knew he wouldn’t have to lie there, alone, in the high heat of summer. Knew that my uncle would be there with him. Dogs are funny like that.

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Louise Glück, "Vita Nova"

Writing about it in retrospect, I think the most devastating thing to come out of this was seeing how my relatives reacted to death. Seeing people who I’ve never seen nor heard cry, sobbing their hearts out. Seeing how I sobbed my heart out once I was out of view from everyone else. Witnessing these people feel the heavy tension of death once more, how it hangs about the house for a while. This heavy air is inescapable, regardless of where you are. It’s impossible to get away from. (And I dread the day when this air would inevitably come to linger again.)

I’m not writing about the death of a dog, but I’m also writing about the death of a dog. I mean, how do I even tackle something as immense and unchanging and existential as death? How do I talk about being left, or being the one that’s leaving? Knowing that living one more day is perhaps becoming one more day closer to death, that I am perhaps becoming closer to the day where I part with my love for you and your love for me. How do I deal with the knowledge that I will now have to remember you longer than I have known you? What do I write about when I am reaching the end of the end of the end?

Mattilda Bernstein Sycamore, “On Writing On Your Own Terms”

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:postscript:

diary entry from 14 aug 2022. sunday 8:52pm

i’ve never seen my stoic uncle touch anything so gently as he did when he buried the dog. never seen him hold anything so tenderly with both hands—lowered him gently and slowly into the ground, as if he were afraid of waking him up. smoothed his hands over his small quiet body one last time, fixing his fur that would soon become indistinguishable from the soil surrounding him.

seeing tenderness from a guy who hardly shows it feels more melancholic than this whole thing put together.

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