Listen to the moan of a dog for its master.
That whining is the connection.
There are love dogs no one knows the names of.
Give your life to be one of them.

-Rumi

The grief needed movement, so I walked down to the water with my daughter. When she cried, I suggested we pick dandelions, and after she set the cadmium bursts on the water, we watched them drift into the sea. Some flowers washed back on the rocks in crumpled piles next to sheets of shiny seaweed. We made sculptures of stacked smooth stones, sun-bleached driftwood, crispy leaves. We left them on the beach although we knew the high tides and winds would eventually take them.

I don’t know what to do with this heaviness in the center of my chest. I recall that image from one of my therapy trainings about human bodies experiencing different emotions; sadness, a heavy black blob with blue, deactivated limbs. From my numbed feet, I looked out at the gray water of the Salish Sea and imagined my despair aboard a vessel on the sea—like an old Viking ship for the deceased. Engulfed by flames, the pyre carries the physical bodies away forever. The higher the smoke, the closer to Valhalla. Later, after my daughter and I trudged up the large hill to return home and I had some time alone, I pictured that slow-moving ship and let myself cry. I howled at the starry sky like some nameless wolf.

*** 

The last time I spoke with my grandfather was the last time I worked in my office. Shortly after that day I abruptly transitioned to an all-telehealth practice, like almost all therapists did in 2020. While talking to Boppy, I paced the floor and looked out of the window at the ferry crossing the sea from the peninsula to Seattle—the same boat I rode to work each day. It seemed like he couldn’t hear me very well on his phone; perhaps he didn’t turn on his hearing aids. He was all the way in Minnesota while I was home in Washington.

“This news about the new virus is scary, isn’t it?” I asked him.

“What?” Boppy said, his voice shaky and small; such a shock to hear from this man, a sailor well into his 80s, a meticulous craftsman, an eye surgeon for many years. The man who taught me about classical music and told me about the trips they took, including one when he and my Nana sat on a wall in Greece and listened to their tour guide read Homer.

“I LOVE YOU!” I said into the phone, almost yelling.

“Oh, you too, dear,” he said quietly. The phone crackled when he handed it back to my mom.

Within a few weeks, we were locked down in a full-blown pandemic and my grandparents were both dead. Because there were no funerals, I continued to pretend I could set them out to sea on those mythical pyres, saying goodbye to them as the ship sailed away, all the way to that space where the sky meets the sea.

***

During those initial weeks of lockdown, my husband, daughter, and I fell into a nightly routine of watching TV— a comforting end to each long and monotonous day. The dogs circled the couch expectantly, eager for closeness and cuddles, and we noticed how much they loved having us home all the time. The old dog, Sasha, could no longer clear the small leap from floor to couch with her stiff, one hundred pound body. She stared at us, big ears perked, pleading with watery eyes until we helped her up onto the cushions. The blind dog, Radar, curled up at the end of the couch, his small body a coil of quiet warmth.

We all watched The Dog Whisperer, where trainer Cesar Milan—confident and calm—proclaimed that all dogs can be helped. He rollerbladed with the dogs, fed them slices of banana, and did whatever he could to help their owners be better. By the end of each episode, the dogs were calmer, the owners reassured. Cesar always smiled.

When talking about death, Cesar said in an interview, “Birth, life, death is a cycle. And they're all beautiful, you celebrate all of them. Animals do grieve, but they move on. That's the lesson behind animals.”

***  

I emailed my therapy clients to inform them that my grandparents, both in their 90s, died of age-related illness—not COVID-19— and I needed to take some time off. I’d never been so open about personal experiences with my clients. Years prior, heartbroken after a miscarriage and subsequent D&C, I told them there was a “family emergency.”

It wasn’t too long after my miscarriage when Tahlequah the orca whale carried her baby's lifeless body in the Salish Sea as if she were her own funeral ship. On my morning ferry commute, I eagerly read about her on my phone. People were baffled by her behavior. We all wondered if she was displaying her grief, or if this was instinct, as orcas will save each other by carrying a loved ones’ body upon their strong heads. I hoped Tahleqhah would never let go. I hoped she'd hurry up and let go. After seventeen days, the news reported she released the calf to the sea and swam away. Eventually, the orca became pregnant again, as did I. But I'm sure that sadness never really left her. Starting something new does not erase what has been lost. I can imagine other orcas telling the mourning mother: it's okay, you'll get pregnant again, as she swam with fury, holding on to her decaying calf like Achilles dragging Hector's dead body, blinded by rage and heartache.

*** 

Television continued to offer respite for my family and in a matter of weeks we watched all nine seasons of The Dog Whisperer, which aired from 2004 to 2012. In all episodes Cesar is talkative, with sparkling white teeth my daughter calls “Hollywood teeth.” I remembered when my husband and I watched so many episodes of The Dog Whisperer; it was in the apartment we lived in when we were first married. We didn’t even have Radar yet, and Sasha was so young and scrawny back then. I remember her enthusiastic tail thumping against the coffee table like a heartbeat.

*** 

My grandparents died just months apart. Even though I’d spent years as a therapist—countless hours sitting with people in their grief—I struggled to sit with mine in the same way. Instead of offering myself gentle validation, I judged my responses. It seemed like other people had bigger problems, especially with the backdrop of all 2020 had to offer, yet I was heartbroken by the predictable deaths of two people who lived very long lives.

My friend Cynthia, also a therapist, asked me questions about my grandparents: What were they like? What are my favorite memories? She reminded me that they were the leaders of the family, the people I’d always looked up to, the ones who encouraged me no matter what. It made sense to be sad, of course. But my mind, eager to not feel that dark weighted center, only wanted to judge.

I scoffed at my naivety when I inevitably yearned for reality to be different, lamenting how I hadn’t grown up in Minnesota with all my relatives, wishing I could bargain for one last visit with my precious grandparents. Boppy and Nana had always encouraged me to travel. They loved my writing, and they hung my artwork in their bright kitchen. During my years of youthful rambling, they printed all my travel emails and put them in a blue folder marked Megan- Travels. When I thought of them at night I felt like a kid again, crying at the airport after a visit with them. For my daughter, though she only met them a few times, it was her first big loss. She burst from her room at night, howling like a wolf at the stars.

“Nana!” she yelled for my grandmother, her favorite person, whose name is her middle name: Margery. “I never got to say goodbye!” she sobbed, as if she could read my mind.

*** 

My favorite dog in The Dog Whisperer is Daddy, a stocky, caramel-colored pit bull, Cesar's co-star for the first seasons of the show. The two even looked alike, solid and handsome with big smiles.

"Daddy!" We cheered each time he appeared on the screen. I often felt a leap of joy when Daddy waddled on the screen as I rested my head against Sasha’s solid body.

But then Daddy died sometime in the show's final seasons. We continued to huddle under blankets and eat bowls of ice cream, our dogs circling around us until we eventually decided it was time to turn off the TV to go to bed. Time passed so quickly on that television show while we existed in the pandemic standstill.

*** 

Nighttime is when we feel our sorrows most acutely. In the ancient Hindu story of the twins Yama and Yami—the first man and woman on earth—Yama died, and Yami grieved. When the gods visited Yami, she told them of her anguish over her lost twin, and the gods created night, a quiet time to remember her beloved. Yami did not forget Yama during the day. It’s just that, in the light of day, Yami could distract herself from the Yama-shaped void.

Once the night descends, the gaping maw of absence will show itself. I know there will be no end, just as there is no end to the cycle of day and night. Not while Yami is on this planet, in this orbit around this sun.

And like Yami at night, I often found myself alone. Everyone was sleeping, even the dogs. The grief stared at me with those endless gray eyes.

*** 

I scrolled my phone when I couldn't sleep. Cesar Milan, quite active on social media, posted new content almost daily. On Instagram, he sat near a statue of Daddy, immortalized as a giant figure cast in bronze. Cesar said he spends hours at Daddy's monument with his current dog pack. Although his favorite dog has been gone for years, Cesar said his memory lives on.

"Daddy!" I cheered out loud to myself, and wondered how Cesar makes loss seem so simple.

Since the years of his show’s popularity, there's been much scrutiny about Cesar Milan’s aversive training techniques and the show’s depictions of unrealistic, oversimplified interventions. We once used some of his methods with Sasha, before the training world knew better, but she got so old that we no longer needed to worry about her overexcitement, how she jumped on people or ran away to chase a seagull or a rabbit. In her old age she slept under trees or waited patiently by her bowl for the next meal. We put her thyroid medication in peanut butter, and Radar always wandered over, led by his nose. He wanted to have some too. Sometimes while Radar played with his ball in the yard, Sasha wandered into the woods behind the house, confused yet happy when I’d find her sniffing under the cedars.

Propped up on pillows on my bed in the middle of the night, I watched Cesar Milan’s Instagram video. He looked the same, except his hair had turned silver, just like mine was starting to turn white. He danced with his wiggly dogs while an exotic bird perched on his shoulder. It was like a fever dream. His t-shirt showed Daddy's smiling face.

"Hey, Daddy!" Cesar yelled with a sparkling smile as he danced. He looked down and patted Daddy’s face on his shirt.

It must have been over ten years ago that Daddy died. I was surprised that he so often featured Daddy, spoke of Daddy, but felt touched by his earnest depiction of his gratitude. Cesar made no attempt at a stoic display of grief, that he endured some allotted amount of time and moved on. Instead, he danced as he pointed to the smiling dog on his shirt. Perhaps he learned more about joy, ritual, and death, growing up in Mexico than I ever learned, growing up in different parts of the country, always so far from the place we all considered home.

“Hey, Daddy!” he said again.

Cesar Milan’s dance is a joyful homage to Daddy, and the movement must release what can get stuck. He longed for Daddy just as he celebrated all that the dog brought into his life, the connection they shared. I imagined Cesar smiling as he howled into the night sky, Daddy’s face a constellation in the stars.

***

Thich Nhat Hanh taught that existence is about “interbeing,” a recognition of our connection with everything. There is no me without you; this word isn’t here without you reading it; there is no life for humans without the lives of other beings; and there is no Earth without the Universe. There would be no Dog Whisperer without Daddy. There is no me without my ancestors. My grandparents.

And so it is with loss: the pain can’t exist without interbeing. Grief is interbeing, an acknowledgment of relational inevitability, a way of looking at the stars even though they are always changing. Even though we know that the stars we see are images from history, pictures from the past.

*** 

Daddy was gone, my grandparents were gone, and Sasha could barely walk. We let her out the side door to the backyard. She often had to sit for up to an hour before she was ready to limp back inside. Sometimes I held her hips so she could walk on her front legs but she was much too heavy for us to carry. Radar, so much smaller, sensed her and followed her as he always did, his lifetime guide. He sniffed at Sasha, pacing around her as if he knew something was wrong.

We decided that it was time to say goodbye and called the vet to come to our home. My husband at work, and my daughter at school—I was the only one there when the vet injected Sasha with barbiturates, my hand on her large chest as her breathing slowed and slowed until it stopped forever. I cried softly when the vet said, “She’s gone now.”

“You can have the other dog come in to see her,” he suggested, his eyes kind as I attempted to blot my stream of tears with a wad of tissue.

“He’s blind, so he won’t see her,” I told him.

“He’ll smell her though. It will help him understand that his friend is gone.”

I nodded and went into the house to get Radar, who stood anxiously at the door. He stepped quickly into the garage, his nose quickly leading him to the big dog’s still body. He stopped near Sasha’s still head. He was still for a moment. He then lifted his head and howled, a loud cry to the sky above. 

*** 

For weeks after her death, I could feel Sasha’s gaze following me like a ghost around the house. We stared at her empty bed. Radar spent even more time coiled up and sleeping. I wondered if he was depressed, and perhaps I was, too. My daughter continued to burst out of her room at night with that high-pitched wail, howling for her great-grandparents and that big, gentle dog.

When I watched Cesar and his dancing, I wondered how I could ever do that because I felt so heavy and sad. I wondered if we would all still talk of Sasha in ten years. Would we still miss her the same way? Would I still miss my grandparents, too?

“She was my best friend and I would do anything to see her again,” my daughter said about Sasha, a tear falling down her round cheek. She didn’t want to sleep in her room because Sasha wasn’t there. I gave her a hug and imagined I offered some warmth to the sad, heavy mass in the center of her little body.

*** 

My daughter and I stood on the beach and looked out at the water. Out there, somewhere, Tahlequah swam with her pod. Later, the sea would darken during Yami’s ever-repeating night of mournful reflection. The grief demands I acknowledge its inevitability, and while there will always be distractions—so many distractions— I can never completely turn away.

I’ve been watching the water, imagining that ghost ship for so long, that eventually it must have sailed out of sight. Other than somber funerals and clenched jaws, my family did not teach me rituals to mark a transition to death, and I have yet to mourn my grandparents’ deaths properly—in person— with my family. But to this beach we return, my daughter and I, to make our sculptures. Maybe this process of gathering and creating is my version of the dance, my method of balancing surrender with celebration.

We can’t bring back what we’ve lost. Such a messy, imperfect process is a reminder of love that is as endless as the night sky. Despite the sad heaviness of the body, we can learn to find movement. We are here on the earth, tethered by gravity, and we look at the universe above. Even when we feel stilled by its vastness, we must somehow move. This is how we remember. Perhaps this is the most alive we will ever be, when we spin like planets around this orbit of love and loss. 

My daughter places another bright flower onto the dark water. We don’t know if it will cast forward for a long journey or wash back onto the shore. We stand together and watch.