Roxy's loyalty salved and saved my soul simply by being my best friend as world rotted around me: 'Goodbye ... I love you. You are a good girl'

 

My bloodshot, blue eyes looked into her brown eyes as the light left for good, forever damaging the muscle in my chest, already torn from too much heartache and melancholy.

In the moments before, I told her it was OK as I stroked her head, placing my hands beneath both sides of her face and rubbing her neck in that way that had always left her wanting more.  “I love you so much,” I told her. “You are my best friend. I love you.”

I tried to be brave for her. I didn’t want her to see the tears that had been flowing for the last 12 hours or more, ever since her pain became too much, the crippling effects of the lymphoma that had spread from her lungs to her spine robbed her of her motion, even of her ability to go to the bathroom.

I thought of the times she sprinted back and forth across the back yard, speed, grace, joy. Maybe chasing a squirrel. Maybe her beloved purple ball that is now on my desk. Or maybe because Suzanne and I had simply hollered “Run! Roxy! Run!” and she happily responded.

And I thought of the time, in the early days of the COVID nightmare, or maybe a few weeks before, when her gallant lope suddenly stopped. She had run to the fence, then pulled up, winded, tired, and ambled back across the yard to us.  It was a signal of the beginning of the cruelty that found her on that table the other day, my hands rubbing circular motions of love into her neck as the doctor prepared for the end.

Roxy, who usually slept on a dog bed in our bedroom, had cried long and hard during the night, because she couldn’t get to me, she couldn’t get up to love me, to allow me to take care of her.  I was the one who always took her out, late at night, regularly, as the chemicals tore at her digestive system. I was the one who stroked her when she came in. And she was the one who always led me to bed when she knew it was time.

She couldn’t move the back half of her body at the very end. Her hind legs no longer worked. The limp she’d dealt with for a few weeks finally had turned crippling.

I had stopped her crying that night by lying down next to her on the living room floor. She was happy as I curled up next to her on the floor. Then I coaxed Roxy into the long, final journey to the bed she so loved against the wall and maybe two feet from where Suzanne sleeps. She settled in, happy to be in her bed, for sure. But I’m sure she knew her end was coming.

So that next morning, as she lay near death, awaiting the injections on the table in the quietly decorated room where the medication is delivered, I smiled at her. It wasn’t easy, but I knew I had to, because she expected it. She always made me smile, so I knew she’d expect me to be smiling even now, as she lay moments before death. There was love, not fear, in her eyes as the lights extinguished. Suzanne, who had spent many sleepless nights caring for our beloved Roxy, allowing me to get rested enough to work during the day, stroked her head and shoulders as the end came.

And then the doctor said her heart had stopped. She was gone. My most loyal friend, the one I spoke to most as I battled the constant depression that has colored my soul for 69 years, the last nine years with her by my side, was gone. By being with me, Roxy had lighted smiles on my face even on her worst nights during the deadly spring, summer and fall of COVID and Trump, of murderous police and senseless burning and looting. Of hate-filled rhetoric. Of 300,000 Americans dead from a virus whose imminent arrival was kept from us by our leaders until bodies began piling up in the city that never sleeps, portending what was to come even as far from Manhattan as Rochelle Drive. It was a spring, summer and fall when shared love with a dying dog reminded me there is goodness in this world. Unfortunately, to me, she was a big chunk of that goodness.

I would stand next to Roxy in my quiet back yard several times each night during her decline, as she had good days and bad for weeks before the last hours when the lymphoma finally stopped the back half of her body from working. “I hope I don’t get this virus, Roxy,” I’d say as I stared at the dippers, Mr. Big and Mr. Little, or the occasional meteor. Even the space station came round once or twice.  Roxy didn’t really pay attention to the stars, I don’t think. She generally was focused on the small deer herd that lives in the acre of woods I have allowed to flourish behind my house in the middle of a city. The occasional police or hospital helicopter chopping the skies overhead did draw her attention, though.

As she got weaker, she wouldn’t even want to go out into the yard at night, unless I was with her. She wouldn’t “do her business” unless the long-haired guy she knew as “Daddy,” stood between her and the fence that separates us from the creek and the woods. The deer often would gather at the brush pile built my yardwork labors – I’ve always been crazy but never been lazy – to nibble.  Roxy would watch them warily.

“It’s OK, Roxy, I’m standing right here. They can’t bother you.” Reassured, she’d do what she was out there to do, and we’d go inside to watch the news.  The deer would continue to nibble on the brush pile. An eight-point buck did stare at her and stomp a hoof a time or two from the other side of the fence. But as long as I was with her, Roxy was OK. She did her business and returned to the house, where I’d sneak her a double dose of her favorite soft, “Made with Real Chicken” Milk-Bone treats.  

Early on the morning after Thanksgiving, a day on which this year I did not find anything to give thanks for or about, the Siberian husky-German shepherd mix who had helped me through nine years of heartache and professional disappointment preceding this Armageddon-like 2020 suddenly was gone.

Oh, before the grammar cops step in, yes, I am using “who” and “her” and “she” here. To me, she was not an “it,” a term more appropriate for two-faced assholes who had used me and cast me off with their “I don’t give a shit about how you feed your family” arrogance.  Anthropomorphism? Hell, it actually better applies to some of those beasts in human skin who lack humanity and human traits but who are wizards of self-congratulation.  That’s a long story. Unfortunately, it is my life.

The spark -- that had showed how much she wanted to live even as the lymphoma spread to her spine, making it so she couldn’t walk, forcing her to drag-pull herself up and down the stairs with my help -- stayed in her eyes as the propofol first was injected into the catheter that was inserted in the same spot on her shaved back leg where so much medication had been injected in six or eight months. All four of her legs were shaved above her ankles. Another spot was shaved on her back. Her belly and sides were shaved to enable all of the scans she’d had, as doctors fought to stop the spread. I don’t know why they shaved a spot on her chest. I suppose to keep track of her heart rate during treatments.

The propofol glaze arrived in her eyes quickly, even as I kissed her on her mouth and nose, against the advice of the doctors who for months had been administering various types of chemotherapy as the disease advanced. “I love you, Roxy,” I said. “You are a good girl.”

The same words I’d used nightly for years, whenever she rested her head on my feet during the hour or two I watched the local and national news. 

Her doctor had told us that in most cases this chemotherapy would slow the disease, bring it to remission, extend the life of my best friend.  And sometimes it did give her a boost, a brief boost at best. But Roxy remained happy and even had come to love the doctor, nurses, techs and the staff who ladled her with love. “Roxy’s special,” we’d been told. “She is kind of snarky. A lot of personality.” I would guess that words of praise for the dying animal are part of the veterinarians’ idea of bedside manner. For that and for the months of love, I thank the vet and the clinic staff.

Roxy grew to love those people. And it wasn’t one-sided.

“We sure love her,” said the doctor, a lovely and loving young woman who was heading up the care that I prayed (and I don’t really pray much) would give me at least another summer with Roxy. If she could reach remission, the odds were great, the vet said. She could take a break from chemo for several months while we monitored her for cancer’s inevitable return.  

The day before Thanksgiving, Roxy had problems walking. I knew then that her time was short. So, we took her to see the doctor, who administered pain-killers and love and sent her home with us. The doctor fully expected to see Roxy the following week, when a new type of chemo could be tried.

“Call me Friday, though, regardless,” she said, or words to that effect. “I really need to see how she’s doing.”

Instead, on that Friday, she, too, was saddened as she told us how much the hospital loved my baby, even as the medicine was lowering in the vials.

I’m not a holiday guy. The celebrations leave me numb. Mostly I think about the people who aren’t there rather than those who are across the table. With Roxy, well it was the 13^th time in my life that I’ve held a pet while he or she went to sleep softly. Permanently.  Roxy, hard to admit it, was the animal I loved the most, though.

During this COVID Thanksgiving, though, I knew I was “celebrating” a good life that soon was going to end. Her hindquarters weakened even more during the night. And while she had strength enough to make it over to me for her turkey scraps – actually, they weren’t scraps, but rather were designated sections of bird that I pulled apart to offer her smaller pieces – it was becoming more difficult for her.

Still, she smiled and her eyes gleamed. She did her regular “husky talk” – if you’ve ever had a husky, you know that they are quite verbal, with moans and mutters rather than barks. Roxy could say “Out-out,” “food” and “feed me” … or sounds very similar. She could put three tones of her voice together for even an occasional “I love you” offered to me or, usually, Suzanne. I know this sounds crazy to anyone who hasn’t lived with a husky.  

Roxy actually had a great Thanksgiving, bothering me and Suzanne for turkey and sharing love with our son, Joe, and our cat Champ. Champ – who I should say is my other best friend -- and Roxy had come from shelters within days of each other nine years ago. Joe (and his sister, Emily, who lives on the West Coast) had come from human shelters in Romania back in the 1990s.

In fact, the day we rescued Roxy from Animal Control, we were told we were just in time. New animals were going to be coming in that day, the animals that had been there the longest were to be euthanized to make room. Roxy was one of those “Dead Dogs Walking” on the day I carried her from the dog pound out to the van and her ride home.

Her name, I should add, came from my son, Joe. He was at school at Overton High on the day Emily, Suzanne and I went to check out the dogs at the pound, not sure we would take one home (although I’m really sure we were sure). We called him during a class break and told him we had gotten a dog. We’d promised he’d be with us when we got one, but, we told him, it literally was life-or-death for this 6-month-old puppy.

“What do you want to name her?” we asked.  “I don’t know…. How about Roxy?” he answered.

Suited me fine because Roxy was the name of a movie theater in Clarksville where I’d enjoyed one of my happiest nights back in 1982. In fact, it may have been my tales of that night at the Roxy that put that name into my Romanian son’s head.  No need to go into that night here, as I’ve written about it plenty, but basically the Roxy was where friends, many of whom no longer are with me  – showed a movie we’d made, a sort of Super 8mm “Hard Day’s Night’’ done in the crude days before videotape and then digital technology took over. We raised tons of money for charity and we were drunk, of course.

Turned out our love for the old theater, that we lovingly cleaned before our movie premiere, saved it from demolition because the mayor came to our premiere and saw what a great art deco facility it was, much lovelier than the city’s proposed parking lot.

Enough on the movie theater. The word “Roxy” now forever will not remind me of a theater and friends loyal and otherwise, but it will recall, in my brain, the face of the beautiful dog with whom I shared the last nine years.

I am far from the first one to write about the unquestioning loyalty of dogs (and cats, for that matter). And that unquestioning loyalty runs both ways. I would have given up anything I had in the way of possessions if it would have meant Roxy would live for a few more years. Months even.

Unfortunately, I have learned of the tenuous nature of human loyalty in the last few months. In an earlier version of this blog, I pointed fingers, "fer-instances," but I have decided that this is the story of a dog who loved me, not people who did not.

I will note, however, the kind humans, dog lovers, who I did turn to for both counsel and console: musician-historian Peter Cooper, musician-genius Bobby Bare, restaurateur and writer Jim Myers, Chicago music patron Van DeLisle. Fellow Class of '69 Deerfield High outlaw Josh Hecht and long-time running buddy (when alcohol was king and smoke was plenty) Jerry Manley.

Roxy’s loyalty, of course, goes back to the day we brought her home. Well, actually to her time when the Animal Control guy brought her into the prospective family room, after we’d pointed her out in her pen. And she has been my business partner for nine years.  When Suzanne was out of the house, working, I was here, working in my basement, putting words together for dollars, sure, and also for own heart’s sake.

Roxy was my assistant. She stayed in the basement with me, sprawled on the couch outside my office door. Occasionally, she’d come in and lick me in the arm. Other times, if she needed to go out, she’d nibble on my elbow.

Sitting here today, the heater on in my basement office, I look out, past my bookshelves, Beatles paraphernalia and the wall of awards given me as a journalist … at the empty couch

I realize I’ll forever miss those licks and nibbles, the loving reassurance of my best friend.

Fortunately, Champ, the handsome and loving tabby who relishes climbing into my lap as I type, has just come into the office.

As has Suzanne.  We try to talk about practical things: The vet will dispose of the experimental chemo medicine that came four days after Roxy died if we get it to the clinic. And the crematorium told us we should be able to get her in a day or so. 

My stomach twists as tears reemerge from their shallow reserves on both of our faces.

“It will be good just to bring her home.”

I wish she could jump up and lick my face, even one more time.