Waiting for Family

-- a note from Audrey

Scaramooch was my birthday gift from Annie in the middle of the 1990's.  With his brothers and a sister, he waited for Human Family in the back of a red pick up truck.  His driver knew Park Slope was the place pups could find homes and live well -- a fact I am quoted on the front of the New York Times expousing a few years later.  The little blond pup shyly backed up in retro action as Annie reached for him  and she knew this was THE ONE.  He was my gift of love every day thereafter for over fifteen years.  Annie was with Valerie when she met me with this surprise pup and he was already named after Val's childhood dog, Scaramooch, by the time I picked him up and held him.  His little body wobbled on the wooden floor in the far front corner of Val and Andrew's apartment in the east village.  He was a flat nosed, soft eared creature, tiny enough to curl up in a pie plate for weeks. His ears and nose grew huge and distinct, as he became, in adolescence, "the barking deer." His widow's peak became regal, and his bark, unmistakable and persistent.  We learned years later from Val, that her original Scaramooch dog had been, true to form, an incessant barker too.

"A gift to me, a responsibility to you," I announced to Annie, fearful of commitment. Yet the truth  after fifteen and a half years is, the actual responsibility of caring for Scaramooch became life's most loving gift to me.  And now, dog has turned to god, and is everywhere, but here.  I feel him and cannot see him.  I talk to him but do not hear his bark.  I love him, and I CAN feel his love.

A lot of the pictures I've posted here are from our final processes together.  He became weak in his last few months, not eating much, and loosing weight and muscular strength, but still waking up to beam with the glow of loving presence.  I'd studied Restorative Yoga with Jillian Pransky and now I knew why.  Scaramooch needed comfort and ease while his body was weak.  I'd create an arrangement of pillows of all shapes and sizes that upheld his center taking the burden of weight off of his limbs.  Many of the photos I've posted are Scaramooch in this state of comfort in the final spring and summer of 2011.  There, in the restorative process, he nurtured readiness for his death -- his readiness and my own.  He took time to slow down, and let me work hard for him and focus deeply on him.  He helped me help him -- and since helping him is exactly what nourished me toward acceptance as his path fully unfolding -- helping him became my greatest gift.  He died when he was ready, beautifully, in his own center, on his own time.