Ben had a bad spell back in May. He stopped eating for a few days, couldn’t get up without help, and only walked with assistance.
By the time I got him in to see the vet, he was starting to eat again. Making a vet appointment seems to have that effect on all my dogs. Still, it took a few weeks before he was back to getting up on his own and he still walks with a little wobble in his back end. We were afraid he might fall down while out for a walk and so we stopped walking him on the road for a couple months.
I started walking Ben on the road again a few weeks ago, but only if both of us could go. That way if he fell, one of us could stay with Ben while the other ran back to get the car. Despite the precautions, or maybe because of them, when one of us finally fell on a walk, I was the one who took a nose-dive on the road, not Ben!
One minute I was walking along talking to Bruce and the next I was face down in the gravel on the side of the road. The only thing missing was a lumberjack to yell timber before I hit the ground. My first thought was, “I hope there wasn’t anyone driving by to see that.” My second thought was lost in a flurry of tears and swear words.
Fortunately, I didn’t break any bones, but I had a fat lip, a gouged hand, and quite a few black-and-blues. My dignity and skin were the things that got bruised and scrapped up. I hobbled home, while Bruce took Ben on for the walk. Now when we walk, I get a running commentary from the peanut gallery about watching where I’m walking and being careful. You’d think I was a doddering old woman.
Ben reminds me that there is still a lot to enjoy in old age — food, naps, belly rubs. He can overlook the aches and pains of his joints, the extra grunts and groans involved with getting up, the back leg that occasionally seems to give out. Arriving home from the walk, he lapped up a drink of water, curled up on the cool floor, and tried to pretend the cats did not exist. Ben is apparently one of the joyful ones — those who believe in growing old with grace.
“There’s nothing good about getting old,” I complained to Ben the other day.
“Sure, there is,” he told me, wagging his tail and lifting his face to the sun. “Now you can take all the naps you want.”
I decided to take his advice and curl up, too. The three cats chose that moment to have the zoomies. With Ben on the floor and me on the sofa, they chased each other around the house, galloped around the kitchen table, leaped from the recliner, over Ben, onto the arm of the sofa. I became a springboard to the back of the sofa, then they were across the room to the exposed timber post in the corner, which they dashed up, leaped onto the bookcase, and plunged back to the floor and off into the kitchen.
I could hear their catcalls as they hollered back at us, “Na-na, na-na, na-na… Look at us, you old fogies. We’re still young.”
Leaving the cats inside, Ben and I headed out into the yard. He offered me his butt to scratch, then flopped his head down onto the ground. Slowly he slid down onto his side, rolled onto his back and rubbed himself in the grass. I scratched his belly, while he kept telling me how wonderful it was that the grass was green, the sun was shining, and the cats were all inside.
After he fell asleep though, he started to whine and churn his legs though the air. I suspected his nightmares featured the cats.
“You may believe there is joy in aging,” I imagined them telling Ben in his dream, “but she doesn’t. She’s growing more like us with age. Crotchedy. Querulous. She’s coming to the dark side.”
Priscilla Berggren-Thomas is a writer who lives in Homer.
