The Tao of Martha (26 page)

This is our last walk together.

This morning, Maisy doesn’t bound out of bed. She doesn’t nose after the cats or frolic with Libby. For the first time in ten years, she doesn’t roll around and scratch her back.

When she looks at me, I know it’s time.

And I love her enough to let her go.

F
unny thing about grief—you can’t run away from it. You can fill your days with activity and even leave town, but it follows you.

Grief is the ultimate debt collector.

After we say good-bye to Maisy, Fletch and I are at loose ends. We don’t know what to do now that our days aren’t filled with caretaking. I
make some halfhearted stabs at Martha-based projects, but I can’t seem to concentrate on anything. We don’t even really eat, subsisting mainly on snacks from the “big box of happy” gift basket that Stacey made sure was delivered the day we lost her.

A week later, Fletch and I fly to Las Vegas in the hopes that getting away will help. It does and it doesn’t. We’re able to forget while in Vegas, but the minute we arrive home and she’s not there, we experience the feelings of loss all over again.

Everywhere we look in the house, there are signs of Maisy, whether it’s the ottoman she chewed long ago or the E-Collar I used to help steady her while we gave her fluids. Each time I walk past her love seat and she’s not there, I break into tears.

The worst part of all this—outside of missing my girl every second of every day—is that I feel like I wasted three years of my life worrying about this moment. I mourned her long before she was gone. Despite all my anxiety, the worst happened anyway. I thought somehow I was bracing myself against the sadness by preemptively fretting, yet all I did was waste the time I could have had being happy.

That is, except for the past two months. I knew we were on borrowed time, so I made the most of every single moment, and when Maisy left this realm, there was no question in her mind as to how much we adored her.

The Tao of Maisy dictates that we need to be awesome, give awesome, and get awesome, but we’re doing none of those things right now. We’re just sad.

When Maisy was initially diagnosed three years ago, Fletch and I rescued the Thundercats, because I was determined that no other creature was going to die on my watch. But until we tear out all the floors and install bar grating so feline fluids can sluice through when they anger-whiz, we’re steering clear of more cats.

The way I see it, we can spend our time mourning, or we can honor Maisy’s memory by rescuing another pit bull.

Happiness really is a warm puppy.

“E
verything about this dog is a lie,” Fletch proclaims as the Red Menace bounds over the back of the couch in pursuit of Chuck Norris.

“No, it’s not! She just got over her shyness. Like, really quickly.”

Last week Elaine told us about a seven-month-old pit bull in need of a forever home. Although she’d not personally met the reddish-caramel-colored puppy called Whiskey, the foster parents assured her how sweet and mellow Whiskey was, so we wanted to meet her.

Elaine and the foster parents brought Whiskey over on Sunday and we spent a few hours introducing her to Libby and Loki to see if she might be a good fit. Libby loved her on sight—naturally—and Loki wasn’t aggressive toward her. He didn’t
like
her, but he didn’t try to annihilate her, which was key. He would be far more difficult to win over, largely because he’s an older dog. Think about it—most seventy-year-olds don’t want to be friends with toddlers. But once they get to know each other, they can enjoy each other’s company.

I counted on Fletch to be the voice of reason here, because three weeks after losing Maisy, you could lead Cerberus the three-headed hound from Hades into my house and I’d be all, “I LOVE DOGGIE SO MUCH!”

In terms of looks, Whiskey wasn’t exactly the kind of pup you’d put on an adoption poster, either. She was awkward and gangly, too big to really
be considered a puppy, but not yet grown into her frame. Also, her head was enormous and her weird yellow eyes were spaced really far apart, kind of like a horse or a hammerhead shark. Because her face was all one color, save for the eyes, she had absolutely no expression, save for a blank stare. Plus, she was shy and had such separation anxiety that the first family to adopt her sent her back to the fosters in three days.

So when Fletch looked at her and said, “I’d probably call her Hambone,” I knew we’d found our new family member.

But Fletch is a little bit right: Hambone’s not exactly as previously described.

Hambone, aka the Red Menace, is a
handful.

We had our first inkling of this on Sunday night, when we tried to put her in her crate when we went to bed. Elaine said that whatever we did, we had to make sure she bunked in her crate, and that she wasn’t allowed to sleep with us until she found her place in the pack. She said that even if Hambone cried, we were to Ferberize her.

Which would have worked fine, had Hambone not disassembled her cage around her. We’d heard she’d done the same thing at the first owners’ house, but we figured they were stupid and didn’t have their crate properly assembled.

Sorry I misjudged you, strangers.

As Hambone clambered into bed with me, curling up in Maisy’s old spot, all I said was, “Don’t tell Elaine.”

Then, the next morning, Fletch went upstairs to work in his office while I showered. Hambone didn’t like us both being out of her line of vision, so she climbed up on the bathroom counter and barked until I rinsed all the shampoo out of my hair.

A week into her tenure here and she’s proven herself to be stubborn, bossy, and mischievous. She’s profoundly annoying to the cats, as every time they hiss at one another, she bounds over to break up the fight. She’s making Loki crazy with her constant sucking up, and she’s emulating
all of the bad habits Libby learned from Maisy. We’ve started to train her, and as yet, she cycles through every command she knows, desperate to be rewarded with a treat.

I think she’ll fit in here just fine.

B
ANANA
G
RABBER

M
y job now is to figure out what life looks like post-Maisy. I figure the quicker we get back to living our normal lives, the better off we’ll be, so I dive back into my happiness project.

Immediately, I realize that in living like Martha for so many months, I’ve not made her macaroni and cheese once.

Did we lose a war or something?

Martharoni and cheese (not what she calls it, but she totally should) is absolutely one of my all-time favorite dishes, as it’s a steamin’ bowl of melted comfort. However, Martha’s recipe is not so moist that it turns into a big soupy mess, oozing across the plate and sullying the green beans. The crunchy crust gives the macaroni much-needed gravitas, and the chili powder lends the perfect amount of zing. If I ever find myself on death row, this is
so
on my final menu. (I say this more to emphasize the tastiness of the dish and less as an ad hoc admission of a desire to commit a capital crime.)

I’ve intended to rectify my mac-free situation for a while now. Through proper planning, I’ve had my blocks of cheddar and Gruyère at the ready for whenever the weather finally cooled and the urge struck. But when I was cleaning out the fridge today I noticed that the cheeses are on the verge of breaking bad. I realize it’s still warm out, but if I don’t use these now they won’t last, and I’ll be so mad at myself if I end up wasting these ingredients.

Now I’m determined not to let my sadness (and possibly a bit of the fall TV season) get in the way of meal preparation. I hate when I wind up throwing away all kinds of formerly beautiful produce and previously delicious dairy when I
meant
to make dinner but I wasn’t in the mood. I particularly feel guilty when I don’t cook the hamburger or pork chops I’ve defrosted in time. Knowing that some noble beast gave his life for my dinner and then I couldn’t even do him the honor of eating him before he spoiled because I was busy having All the Feels and ordering Thai and watching Teresa Giudice plot against her younger, firmer sister-in-law gives me existential angst.

(Also? Melissa was not a stripper,
capisce
?)

At one point over the summer, we realized we’d been wasting so much that Fletch insisted I make a list of all the foodstuffs I had to toss and promise that I’d stop buying them. (RIP, farmers’ market beets, barrels of marinated olives, and an ocean of premade tuna salad.) Granted, I was able to salvage a few items by freezing them, and now the fridge is stockpiled with no fewer than eight thousand overripe bananas.

What is it with me and banana hoarding, by the way? I like bananas well enough, yet I’m not exactly ape over them. (My apologies for that truly despicable pun, but I’m in a weakened emotional state and I couldn’t help myself. Do you want me to cry? Do you? No? Then the pun stands.)

I mean, seed-specked dragon fruit, impossible-to-navigate pomegranate, and boring old apricots would have to become extinct before
bananas even cracked my Top Twenty Favorite Fruits list. But the second they begin to grow spotty and lose their solid constitution, they morph into something more precious than rubies, and I squirrel them away in the chilly confines of the freezer as fast as I can.