She is gone. Suki, our Samoyed-Golden Lab companion, yard monitor, foot warmer, pillow opportunist, and front door herald has exited this stage with lines still waiting to be delivered. At Grayslake Animal Emergency Treatment Center they call her their ‘miracle dog’, a testimony to her resilience as a stage 5B (there is no stage 5C) lymphoma survivor. For five months and 20 some chemo treatments she held off and beat down the renegade cells to the point where she could be recognized, however tentatively, hopefully, as in remission.
Remission is not cure. We knew it would be a matter of time, but not this soon, not this sudden. Cancer doesn’t serve notice with much regard to the commerce of daily life—whether it be a backyard barbecue, a roadtrip for reunion, or in the case last week, the Annual Convention of the Diocese of Chicago. She was clear of tumors in all the vital organs, but the cancer found an opening where blood tests won’t work, her central nervous system.
At Evening Prayer on Friday, perhaps during the Phos Hilaron or Psalm 107, as the voices sanctified the Westin Hotel’s Grand Ballroom, my wife and I were in our room, juggling the consequences of owning or evading the decision to administer the drugs that would take her life and the life of the cells that had betrayed her. There was no doubt what was the right choice—she was unresponsive, her central nervous system totally compromised, and no arsenal of drugs at hand that could fend off or forestall the inevitable. The steroid injection that morning had been the last volley, to little effect. So we said yes, for her and not as much for us.
By saying yes five months ago when she collapsed on our porch and we rushed her to the emergency treatment center, we had given her a fighting chance to beat back the cancer and live. Which she did, a reflection of her tenacity and devotion to life. We had said yes to her five and half years ago when on a whim we stopped at the humane shelter in Pontiac, Illinois and invited her into our life, our home, our hearts.
There is awesome power in that simple word, yes, whether it comes as a signature on an adoption form, or in a phone call authorizing the ultimate intervention. When we drove her home the first day of the New Year 2003 we had some inkling we were acting the part of angels, or angel helpers, and that was occasionally reinforced when she found a way to be snared in the rose bush brambles or caught up in the wire fencing. Last June though we realized with far more trepidation what it means to be the agent for sustaining life.
Any interaction with creation is by nature, at some base level, sacramental, and more so where develops a deep, abiding relationship. That is what we had with Suki. She entered our lives, and purchased a portion of our souls, and we the same. And she and we were changed.
There is a void in our house and about our yard, but not in our hearts. There she still prances to greet us, there she still barks at the neighbor dogs, there she still moans when dinner is late, and there she still nestles at our feet on our patio or on our bed. She did not ask to be saved five and a half years ago, or five days ago. All she said was, yes, let us be.
Standing on the patio now, the beds now filled with the brown and gray bones of a season ended, I find myself still anticipating the pop of the dog door flap and scrape of nails on paving stones. The silence of this season is all pervading. But it will change. Soon our other rescue Samoyed, Christopher, will come out to survey the space, do his business, and maybe even pick up the patrol that Suki would have traced the full perimeter of our yard. For now, I whisper the words and harvest some assurance from the commendation: All of us go down to the dust; yet even at the grave we make our song: Alleluia, alleluia, alleluia.
