Health Care for Rainbows

*
Woody is hiding from me, and I can’t find him anywhere. I’ve looked in closets, even in shoeboxes and pocketbooks on shelves he couldn’t possibly reach, let alone curl up into.
Someone – Jen? David? A stranger? – leads me outside into the far corner of the backyard and points to a small mound of dirt.
“He died,” this person says.
I turn around and go back inside, calling him, telling him to stop playing now because really, really, this game has gone on long enough.
And then I wake up.
*
What am I doing? I don’t belong here. I don’t deserve to be here.
I am standing in the little chapel at Emmanuel Catholic Church here in Delray Beach, staring, dumb with sadness, at the patient eyes of a statue of Jesus with outstretched arms.
I am a twice a year Catholic, and that’s in a good year. I was raised Catholic, my parents paid a pretty penny to send me to Catholic school, and here I am, standing in a Church I don’t know my way around, doubting that there’s a Heaven. Thanks, Mom. Thanks, Dad. You should’ve saved your money.
I lower myself feebly to the kneeler in front of the Jesus statue. I feel like I’m ninety.
I should say a prayer – I’m in Church, after all. But I’m too tired. And mad.
I glare at Jesus and think, “I won’t lie to you. I… guess I can’t, anyway. You’re Jesus. You’ll know: I’m mad at you.
All the no-goodniks in the Bible were humans, not dogs. I don’t know one lying, doubting, cheating, stealing, adulterous dog. Do you, Jesus?”

*
At the end he was so bony that, in the moonlight, a deep indentation near his shoulder blade looked like a bloody ravine in his back. By then the rumble-churn of his congested heart was nearly silent. Was he peaceful or just so weak that he seemed not to care if there was any air at the end of the occasional labored breath?
I glance over at the crucifix over the altar. Streams of blood are painted from the nail holes in Jesus’ hands. All this suffering. Why?

Helpless. That’s all I am.
I tried to blow air gently up his nose but he flinched so I stopped. I stroked his belly gently and whispered, “This place you are going to? Oh, you’ll be able to breathe better than you have in years. And you can run, and eat Pupperonis whole, if you want, no choking. Don’t be afraid….”
Most of the men in my life have not been good communicators. Maybe a woman will answer my question.
I turn to the Blessed Mother, the face of the Pieta, the famous sculpture of Mary holding a dead Jesus, just off the cross. It’s just a dog. But her face is how I feel.

“I’m sorry, I’m sorry…” It was all I could say to him, over and over again, my sunglasses fogged over from tears and snot. Woody hated the vet. And now I’ve brought him here to die.

I read the inscription, and it went something like this:
‘Her face shows all the anguish, anxiety, and resignation she felt when she was handed the limp body of her only son.’
The vet wrapped up Woody’s little body in his favorite green blanket – wait! Don’t cover his face he can’t breathe! – and handed him to me. “I’m sorry,” he said.
‘But her faith in God sustained her.’
I whispered to him all night long. This was no time to get into my doubts about Heaven and so I told him, “ I’ll find you there, too, someday. There are a bunch of angels there waiting for you: Great Grandma from San Diego, remember her? And Josie, your buddy from Michigan? She’s wagging as she did at the sliding glass door for you every morning, waiting for you. Go ahead, Sweetie. Go to Josie….”
‘She knew God had bigger and better plans for him, that His life was not over because his eternal life had only just begun.’
I feel like Mary Magdalene gone wrong. Gee, God, I’d have a little more Faith – capital F - if only I could get this ICE PICK out of my chest ….
“Show me proof. Show me Heaven and M’boy happy there and then, then I’ll have Faith that indeed, he is in ‘a better place.’ ”
Even now I am hit with the irony of what I am saying. Because the more time you spend wondering about Heaven’s existence, the less likely you are to find it.

Perhaps it takes a week or two for a soul to get settled. Surely by then I’ll be more settled with the idea, that Woody held onto his sick body at the expense of his own comfort, loyal to the end. ‘Can’t leave’em like this,’ he may have thought but finally we just had to let him go. We had to help him go.
M’boy.
****

Rebecca was a little malnourished cat that adopted us back when we lived in North Carolina. She knows all about grief: when the two little boys – Mitch and Clint - in our neighborhood found her, she had a litter of kittens. They didn’t make it. We adopted her because neither of the boys’ parents wanted a cat and, in the beginning, neither did Woody. He ran her out of the house so she lived quite happily and healthily on our shady porch and in our gardens, tackling and pawing unwelcome pests that unwittingly came too close to our home.
For nearly three weeks Rebecca doesn’t make a sound. Every day she prowls the house, looking for Woody. I can’t help myself – sometimes I find myself doing the same thing.
She stops and searches my eyes in complete silence. I have no answers, and she seems to know that. She settles down next to my feet to lick a paw, pat my toes, or maybe, just to be with me. And you know what? It helps.


*
The next day I am sitting at the teak dining table on the lanai, half-writing and half-wondering where the hell you really go after you die. Death would be so much easier for the Living if the Living One had an ounce of faith. After all those years in Catholic school I, apparently, am quite the Doubting Thomas.
I look up at the sky and mutter, “Where did you go?” to Woody.
When I look back down at the table I find a tiny piece of Woody’s fine white hair, stuck and waving, in the wood.
*