Things that are Human & things that are Not
An ode to my longest companion
Trigger Warning: Pet Death
Before:
We decide running away is a very Human thing to do. We decide this somewhere between LA and Los Padres National Forest, after we begin categorizing the world. Going eighty miles an hour on the highway Dylan starts it by declaring driving as Not Human (with the way we are all inches away from collision in our two-ton hunks of steel but pretend otherwise). Scout climbs onto his lap and sticks her head out the window, her ears flapping in the wind.
“That’s Human,” he says. Then joins her.
We’d packed up the dogs and a weeks worth of food, too many cameras, and a vase of tulips. The goal was to drive until we didn’t recognize the roads and the air smelt different. Until Scout and Jack were scratching at the windows to be let out cause they could see the wide open spaces and how much room there was to run. Stay until our nails were black with dirt.
We work at refining our list as we settle into a campsite somewhere on Tecuya Ridge. Our location blinks and loads and we are Uncharted — the town at our base called Frazer Park, with building names like Mountain Air Veterinary hospital. I know where all the veterinary hospitals are. Anyway, we’re 7,100 feet up, the van’s front wheels propped up on two rocks, bacon cooking.
“Letting little immigrant children pick your produce is Not Human either,” Dylan says, examining a badly bruised banana. “Eating with your hands is though.” He takes a bite and I add it to our growing list.
NOT HUMAN
- Online shopping
- Pre-cut fruit
- Six lanes of highway
- GPS voices telling you what to do
- Single-use anything
- LED candles
- Power tools
- Self-checkout kiosks (we fought over this one)
- Read receipts
- Storage units
- Same-day shipping
- Terms and Conditions
- Parade of Homes
HUMAN
- Campfires
- Hand tools (shovels, saws, axes, hammer)
- Drinking from a bowl
- Braiding hair
- Free-peeing
- Getting sunburnt
- Skipping rocks
- Binoculars
- Not using utensils
- Choosing the scenic route
- Pulling over just because the dogs want to sniff something
- Crying in the car
Night three I am texting Kailee about when she should meet us in Utah, which will be the final destination in our escapade. The projector is on, playing some sappy rom-com. For the first time since Scout’s diagnosis, I text the word euthanasia. I start crying. Dylan hugs me.
“I can’t— I’m planning this “thing” and she doesn’t even know it.” I nod down at her sleeping head curled in my armpit. “That’s Not Human.”
“I know.” Dylan strokes my hair and holds us. “But if everything were Human, she’d never have made it out from under the bed.”
Animals often instinctually hide when they are dying. I keep having nightmares where I didn’t wake up. “Not Human means she’s here now,” I say, rubbing her petal-soft ears.
It isn’t necessarily a bad thing, he agrees, kissing me.
The next day we head toward the beach because Scout loves being chased, by humans, dogs, and waves, she’s not picky. We roll down the mountain road until we reach the seaside. Her head on my lap.
I think about how driving is technologically mediated movement but grief is not. Grief has frozen me in time. I wake up and think cancer. I go to sleep and think cancer. Someone asks me how I am and I think hemangiosarcoma is a very aggressive form of cancer.
NOT HUMAN
- Fluorescent lights
- Faux plants
- Pugs and French Bulldogs
- Insurance forms
- Metal tables
- 24/7 access to streaming services
- “Skip intro”
HUMAN
- Winking
- Peek-a-boo
- Building sandcastles
- Showing off
- Aging
- Riding horses
- Walking sticks
- Leaving a voicemail
- Sitting on the ground or floor
- Treasure maps
- Poetry
- Finding shapes in clouds and rock formations
- Digging a grave
After:
When she’s been gone two weeks, we drive to a sacred Pine grove Dylan does not want shared on the Internet. My first camp without her. Dylan drags me away from the fire to collect more wood and watch the sunset. We follow the deer trail and I point to a boulder to climb. It hovers over us some 10 - 15 feet tall and Dylan says it looks like the imprint of a giant wiener, balls and all, and maybe it belongs to god. I crawl into the imprints, which are actually just pockets of white limestone carved by thousands of years of wind erosion - nothing mystical about it. I still feel reverent, as one does after a loss, praying for whatever exists of the afterlife to treat her well, please. We stay there awhile, sitting on gods left nut, drinking Caymen Jacks (blood orange being our favorite) while my heart tries and fails to untwist itself, to fathom her non-existence.
Every morning I wake without her I crash and break into a new reality. One where I have to rely on a failing memory and an aging brain, to know the truth of her — oh how very human she was! Maybe more human than me. With the lilt of her prance and how long she would spend searching for the perfect place to pee. The way she stepped in between Dylan and Jack when Jack was getting berated a little too long for misbehaving. The alternating colors of her nails. How she rolled down the van windows when we got off the highway so she could stick her head out, breeze facing, heart open, claws flexed around the armrest.
