The Last Day
Tags: Buddhism, Retreats, True Story, Life Lessons, Pets

It was in early January of 2004 that I embarked upon an eight-day retreat, sitting and walking meditation from 5:30 AM to 9:30 PM each day. Thoughtful and introspective, I find that my life is always enhanced by the experience, an opportunity to clear out the mental cobwebs and reprioritize what is important in my life and my life path. While this particular session was not the most enlightening of my retreat experiences, nevertheless I always find something valuable in my time spent in focused meditation. I come home feeling very, very present and happy, content in my life no matter what the circumstances, grateful for the opportunity to breathe and share the planet with others of my ilk, envisioning the larger community to be like the small, very conscious group I had just shared the previous week with. Lofty and impractical, it is more an emotional exercise rather than a life goal or position but a lovely vision to hold for a spell.

The drive home from the retreat center is always a sad but exciting highlight. Bittersweet. While on retreat there are certainly moments where we wish we weren’t there. After all, a week off from work could also be spent laying in warm sand, eating exotic foods and reading trashy novels yet, there is something so nourishing about using concentration to develop focused consciousness, something that makes us feel so utterly alive which is ineffable and incomparable.

At the end of the retreat we walk down the hill from the meditation hall, spilling over with inspiring words, teary faces warmed by the sun and cooled by the breeze recalling the dedication of merit where the gurus honor the yogis for their practice. We carry our bags, the perfect reverse of our entry into silence, chatting lightly, wondering what has happened in our lives, or what has transpired in the world. I am getting a ride home from a friend, a ten-minute jaunt, as I am a neighbor to the retreat site. The world appears extra bright as if my pupils were slightly dilated, or like I have just returned from a very long journey or perhaps I am a tourist coming home after learning about a new culture. Slightly foreign would be a good way to describe how the usually familiar appears to my recently isolated and highly honed senses.

They say that for every day of retreat, it takes an equal amount of time to re-integrate back into the world. This time, I would not have that luxury. We come home inclined to silence and introspection (but not moody), relying on the tools that had served us so well during the week. I enjoyed the drive through the local world, seen through fresh eyes that seemed so different from the world I drove past to arrive at Spirit Rock the week before. While things may have changed in the world, it was what has changed in me that I was most aware of. Everything seemed so promising and positive as I projected the good feelings of love and compassion onto my environment.

At home, my 13 year old stepson was downstairs in my designated area of the house, my inner sanctum. He was lying on my couch watching television and kicking back and while I was curious why he wasn’t at his usual perch upstairs in his comfy chair in the living room surrounded by fruit remains and empty boxes of cereal and crackers, I thought no more of it at the time. After a hello and a hug, he returned to his television program. This was typical and I paid no mind as I attended to some personal re-integration tasks, unpacking, laundry and the like.

My partner came home an hour later and after tender greetings, she reported that she had bad news. It seems that our old yellow lab Cody had declined beyond his usual level of insanity. He had been getting nutty for a while, barking at nothing, peering intently at doors for long periods of time and whimpering at doors but never wanting to go out. We would open the doors he stared at and happily, he would just look at us wagging his tail furiously, slamming it into whatever happened to be in his way. She reported that in the past week on a few occasions, he stood and barked at nothing several times and would not stop even when she commanded him. In addition, he was having trouble walking, was whimpering constantly, and most relevantly, had attacked her the night before.

Cody had always been hard-wired around food, which is why he was rejected from ‘Guide Dogs for the Blind’. If you went near his dish while he was eating, he would growl, fur would rise on his back, his eyes would dilate and his tail would point straight back, clear indications that staying away was prudent. When he was done eating, he would revert back to his old self as if nothing had ever happened. Yes, he was hard-wired but I taught him to hold a biscuit on his nose and hold it there until I told him to take it. He just loved food and his programming to eat was stronger than most dogs. It seems that after being fed the night before, he didn’t revert back right away and with eyes still dilated he went after her, as if he still had food in his bowl that needed to be protected. Being a professional dog trainer, my partner knew how to take care of herself and came away unscathed. She locked Cody in my stepsons’ room and that is why he slept on the couch downstairs that night.

After getting the background story, I put up a baby gate outside my stepsons’ door and opened up the door behind the gate to have a look at Cody. I spoke cheerfully, announcing my presence and uttered every endearment I could think of to try and rouse him but he never even recognized me. He kept his head low, tail straight back and looked at me with eyes that were soon completely dilated. He was on the defensive and did not know me and even more, I was pretty sure he didn’t know himself. We talked it over and decided that it must be a stroke or a brain tumor that had grown too far for him to stay cognizant. He whimpered constantly and while I am grateful that she waited for me before any decision was made, we decided that Cody's’ time had come and that it was unfair to make him suffer any further.

So, merely an hour after I returned from my retreat, we loaded Cody (all ninety pounds) into the station wagon and drove him up to the humane society to be euthanized. Before we embarked, I stopped at the fridge and cut up some big pieces of cheese and tossed them back at him along the drive, letting him devour the tasty chunks to pay homage to what he liked to do best, to eat.

My stepson was extremely angry and disagreed with our decision. He was 13 and couldn’t understand how we could be so sure about Cody’s diagnosis and our subsequent plan. He wanted empirical proof and we were unable to comply. We tried to explain that Cody was simply suffering too much and perhaps he would have moments where he was himself again, but his rear legs were out of commission and he was never again to be trusted either with children or other dogs. Reluctantly, he agreed to come to the shelter with us but inwardly he was furious.

At the front counter of the shelter, we paid our money, filled out forms and drove around back. We parked the car, opened up the rear gate and helped Cody out of the car. By supporting his rear legs, we slowly led him into the room where the euthanasia took place. Since we were not allowed to be with Cody when he received his injection, we were encouraged to say our goodbyes. It was then that we began to sob, as we honored our good companion for the last twelve years. He was the most loyal dog I ever knew. He was always off leash on hikes because of an absolutely perfect recall. What that means is that he was perfectly controlled by voice command. He would flush animals and give chase but one whistle and he was back at our side. Technically, this merely states that his prey drive was much lower than his food drive but I would rather think of it as loyalty. He had a wonderful array of tricks and was a constant source of amusement for all of us. Every night of his life, he slept under my stepsons’ bed. They had a special relationship that children and dogs can show us, and we can report it but never fully comprehend.

As we were saying our goodbyes, I noticed that he kept looking up at me, watching me sob. I was not one to hold back, not believing in stifling my feelings and we all stood there stroking Cody and crying when the most wonderful thing happened. At that moment, he seemed to shake his head, look up and see us, an in that instant, he recognized us. In a very familiar way, he leaned against my legs and his tail began wagging furiously. We noticed immediately that Cody had pushed through his dementia and had come back to say goodbye. This was indeed a blessing and not a source of consternation or conflict in the least. It was a temporary event albeit well timed and when he began to space out again, we finally let go and left the room.

Afterward, we went back in the room and held his lifeless body and stroked his infamously soft furry ears, always like folds of new velvet. We said our final goodbyes with more sobbing and tears as we realized that truly, he was gone. It was hard to leave his body lying there and I feel deep sadness welling up in me as I recall what he looked like, without lifeforce, the empty shell that so many fail to describe. With intermittent crying, I somehow managed to get us all home driving the car one handed, through the fish bowl lenses that were my eyes seeing the road through the tears.

The first gift I received was the knowledge that my stepson had the opportunity to see me cry. I recall a cold winter in Massachusetts in 1979 when my grandmother died at the age of 93. We all stood graveside in single digit weather listening to the service and I recall vividly, rows ahead of me, my own father’s shoulders shaking as he shuddered and grieved. For some reason, that image has never left me and now, it is a moment that I was able to pass on. For most of the early afternoon, Trevor was pretty angry at us, lashing out and telling us we didn’t know what we were talking about. What I realized is that he felt alone in his feelings. We were making decisions, getting things done and were not focused on our feelings but rather, we were planning how to manage Cody in the most compassionate way possible. This could not be seen by him and we appeared to be cold and calculating even after explaining several times that we loved Cody as well and wanted what was best for him. I recall him, in his grief, looking up and seeing me in mine and we all held each other as if we knew we were giving ourselves permission to release our painful feelings. I think he knew then and there that we all felt exactly the same way and we were all able to openly express our grief together. For the image of a man in pain, openly heartedly expressing himself with total vulnerability, I am grateful to my father for expanding my definitive view of how to be a man in the world and equally grateful for the opportunity to show the enhanced version, where we all held each other.

From a Buddhist perspective, I had some serious questions about how Cody’s death transpired. Certainly, it was not a natural death, and I wondered about karma and the implications to each of us. I had a part in choosing euthanasia for Cody and wondered about the implications for my own path. Could it have been that it was Cody’s karma to suffer a long painful illness, lapsing in and out of consciousness as he suffered and struggled to hobble around on legs that no longer responded to commands from his brain? Have I hindered his spiritual growth by removing a lesson from this lifetime? Have I hindered my own path by actively participating in the death of a living creature?

Thankfully, from a number of sources, I have learned that as a Bodhisattva, the vow goes something like this: “Although suffering is endless, I vow to end suffering on all realms and dedicate my life to this end.” In other words, by being compassionate and relieving Cody of his suffering, I have fulfilled the vow and assisted him in his development toward perfect spirituality. This is so great because, if you ever met Cody, you would be pretty sure that perfect spirituality was not on his short list of life issues, mostly because he was busy, always looking for things to eat.