For now, it just hurts

There is a tiny dog bed in my office. It sits at the base of my

bookcase, a few feet away from my desk chair. It is covered with

black faux fur and a shabby green blanket. Bare spots attest to its

long life and use, and there are fragments of leaves embedded in its

fur.

It is empty.

For many of her 16 years, our long-haired dachshund hausfrau

monitored her world of certitude from that bunker, her nose propped

on the edge, her soulful eyes mostly fixed on me when she was awake,

but ready to turn, at instant notice, with outrage on any outside

violation of her space.

Sitting now at my desk, if I look long enough and hard enough at

her bed, the emptiness fuzzes, and her liquid brown eyes -- so filmed

over in recent years that I was never sure what she was seeing -- are

still on me, demanding nothing but a soft word of recognition that

she can sense through my body language, which is enough to set her

tail wagging.

Coco died two weeks ago, and -- until now -- I haven’t been able

to put these words down. She finally struck a reef she couldn’t

navigate. The resilience and determination and refusal to become

sedentary that had carried her through a steadily more frequent

series of afflictions finally proved too much for her stout heart.

And so we lost her.

The instant you bring a puppy into your home and heart, you are

setting yourself up for what we are now going through. We had a

longer run than most, but that doesn’t make the end any easier. I’m

not comforted by the cliches -- that she was very old, that death

comes to us all, that she lived a full life, that the suffering of

her last few days has mercifully been lifted from her. All true. But

right now, they don’t change the ache that tells me how much I miss

her, and so I demand the right to feel that ache without trying to

soften her loss.

I never wanted this dog, an apostasy that Coco forgave me many

years ago. I wanted a male dog I could roughhouse with and show off

to the men in my neighborhood. Coco was foisted on me by my wife and

stepson when I was away on a trip. I came home to this overgrown

wharf rat, embarrassed at the certain contempt she would produce from

my neighbors out walking their good old hound dawgs.

Coco solved this problem by simply refusing to walk. She would get

very excited when we hooked up her leash, then would sit in the

gutter and refuse to move when we got her outside. So my wife and

stepson took her to discipline school. She came home with a diploma,

a score of 176, and still refused to walk. I was never able to find

out how 176 translated into performance at school, but Coco carried

that 176 proudly as a banner throughout her long life. Somewhere down

the line, I realized 176 meant that she would deal with life pretty

much on her own terms, and we’d all get along better if we understood

that up front.

Coco was the first joint love affair of a new family still feeling

its way. We all grew with her, and if she felt this responsibility,

she must have rejoiced in her last days to see where she was leaving

it. For this unity, alone, she will be gratefully remembered.

But there is so much more. Coco’s entire universe was our house

and its spacious backyard. It is impossible to set foot anywhere

within her habitat without bringing up vivid memories of the life she

lived.

When we come home late at night and open the garage door to our

patio, she’s not there waiting, so furiously happy we’re home that

she forgives the late hour.

The sparrows still gather at her supper hour. We fed her outside

because she was a sloppy eater, and when she had her immediate fill,

she sat aside and watched the birds swarm over her bowl, comfortable

in her own generosity while I exhorted her to protect her territorial

rights.

Her face no longer appears framed in her dog house entrance, where

she retreated when we chastened her, then followed us with her eyes

from the doorway, telling us she was willing to overlook our

unreasonable behavior.

My wife and I now have the entire bed to sleep in rather than the

half we had to make do with to accommodate Coco on the other half. We

still sleep on our half. We don’t talk about it, but perhaps neither

of us wants to close out the hope that when we wake up, she’ll be

there.

And she was funny. Just those short legs plowing through high

grass was funny, but she also had some ridiculously excessive habits.

She may have been the only dog in the universe to be regularly

rewarded with a cookie for relieving herself. I have no idea how that

started, but proper performance at her bedtime toilet got her a

treat, and she learned over time to stretch that into two or three

performances. We are told that she multiplied this number when we

left her with house sitters.

Whatever and wherever dog heaven is, Coco is sure to be there,

because that’s where she has always lived. In all her life, Coco

never encountered evil and thus had no knowledge of it. No person or

animal ever tried to hurt her, and on the few occasions she

encountered strangers with uncertain motives, she rolled over on her

back and wiggled her paws in the air. And her vulnerability was never

violated.

The other day, my wife was away for the afternoon, and I was

sitting at my desk trying to write and drifting instead. And suddenly

it hit me, like a fist in the stomach, that I was alone. This is

scarcely new. I’m alone a lot. But this feeling was different. I was

really, really alone. My dear friend who demanded little of me, but

seldom left my side was not in her bed, watching me.

And I realized the thing I missed most was her presence. It was

deeply embedded in the mosaic of my life, and there is a substantial

void where it has been ripped out. In time, we will realize that her

presence will never go away, and we will rejoice in that. Right now,

it just hurts.

* JOSEPH N. BELL is a resident of Santa Ana Heights. His column

appears Thursdays.