Remembering Woodstock

Last Saturday I made the call that I had prolonged for two years. On Monday we made the trip we always hoped would be derailed by the destined march of natural causes, but wasn’t because of the swell of pain and suffering that came faster and stayed longer than should ever be natural.

Woodstock was with us for 12 years — with us longer than we have been married, with us through countless moves, with us through every major trial and triumph in our adult life, with us during our wedding, with us when we brought our new baby home, and then another baby a few years later. He traveled with us, laid with us when we were sick, licked wounds, and carried tears. He was a crime-stopper — intercepting an attempted car robbery at our house once, fearless and unrelenting. It was the only time we’d hear a growl that had the threat of teeth behind it.

And odd as it is, he was a third parent. When I think about it, I am sure he wanted children, at least at first, maybe even more than we did. He adored them, in his quiet way. He was a playmate, a teacher, he helped them stand and walk as they grabbed his body for stability traversing through one room and another. He was a doll they dressed, a baby they blanketed. He slept next to them at nap time; and would rise from sleep, even in the final weeks, even in wincing pain, to run (or hobble) in their pack of frantic energy: chasing balls or cars or playing tag or hide-and-go-seek. He was always a part of it.

Woodstock was a world-class spokesman for dogs. He had a special knack for converting those among us who are, as they’d say, “not dog people.” If I had a bone for every time, we would hear someone claim that they don’t usually like dogs and then make Woodstock the exception, marveling how good he was, how un-doggish he was, how kind and gentle. They’d call to other “not dog people” to come look, see this miracle of a dog. And we’d smile proudly, and remember in those moments what they, too, were seeing. And he’d look up, probably from a resting position, and sigh with thanks. My mother once called him “a dog in a can,” and she was right. He never had an accident, never bit anyone, even when they were climbing on him, stepping on him, sleeping on him, poking him. He wasn’t a barker or a chewer or a drooler. Every vet tech, groomer, dog watcher, and babysitter had their own special relationship with Woodstock. A day before we put him to sleep, Jared brought him to visit his groomer one last time, who called twice before we went to the vet — thinking of him, remembering him.

If we had a funeral the line would be long. If we had a funeral we would play Happy Birthday (his favorite song), we would remember that he loved burying bones more than eating them, we would remember his audible burps that surprised everyone when they would first heard it, doubling back to check and make sure it was actually Woodstock they heard. It was. We would remember that he was a retriever who feared the water, almost drowning once in a high tide that took him by surprise on a Rhode Island beach. We’d laugh about how it took two of us to swim out and rescue him while a shore of dog lovers furrowed themselves in disbelief. “Is that a Golden Retriever?” they called out and then laughed when he finally got to shore. We would remember that he never did swim after that. We would remember his beanie baby, William, how he’d carry it around and around for weeks and then months until the urge to disembody was too strong. We’d remember finding William’s arm and then leg and then ear affectionately left in rooms and hallways. We would talk about how much he loved pets and attention, how much he disliked hugs, and how he’d tolerate them and forgive us for our own urges. We would say he was the greatest companion and parent and dog we have ever known, and that we will probably ever know.

Our house is less like home these days. When we open the door to another room without him in it I remember a seventh-grade science lesson. We learned how to measure more than matter: weighing paper, then burning it, then weighing it again, and finding that it somehow weighed a little less than it did before it was burned. I remember the question on the ditto sheet when I came to the end of the experiment: What was lost? This week we have felt the heaviness of the small fraction of his matter that was lost on Monday, the nearly unmeasurable and mysterious thing that is gone but will always be remembered with gratitude and affection and longing.

Farewell.