The Routine

For a long time I have wanted to shoot a Documentary Short on my daily routine with Desi.  It has a beginning, middle and ending but that's all.  There is really no story to the piece.  It's just a daily routine that we got into twice a day.


I was thinking of pitching the idea to a filmmaking group - but now that Desi is gone, I don't even know how I would shoot it.   The whole point was his age, his lost eye and how specific we had to tailor the walk so that he could enjoy it.  As he became less and less mobile and more and more delicate, I had to simplify the walk even more.


I never missed that twice a day walk.  It was very important to me to get him out there especially since he was so old and this was the only time he really got to enjoy himself.  If we weren't out walking and he wasn't inside eating or having me put in his eyedrops and  ointment, then he was sleeping.  That's what he did mostly - sleep.  It was comforting to me to hear him snore.  I actually recorded the sound of him snoring because it always brought me joy, comfort and peace.


During the last few months and then weeks of his life, the sound of Desi snoring made me happier on a deeper level than usual.  The way he would dig his hind legs into the earth and instinctively kick up the dirt to cover his tracks filled me with joy.


He also used to do what I call "Happy Dog"or "Crazy Dog"...

I posted that video on 12.23.11 to my other blog and just reposted it to my Desi Dog blog now.

Yesterday, before the Joe Kleinerman 10K, I saw several beautiful dogs playing in Central Park.  I saw one on his back doing "Crazy Dog/Happy Dog" and it made me smile.  Mostly because I know how much that simple act of rolling on their back and wriggling around means they are enjoying a very honest moment of simply being alive.


As I'm sitting here thinking about how I could tweak the script with another dog playing Desi I'm at a loss.  The closest thing I could come to that would be Mona.  But Mona is no Desi.  Desi was a very specific dog, in a very specific time and space that simply cannot be duplicated.  I could try and find another one-eyed Boston Terrier.  And there may even be one out there that is close to Desi's age.  Although, I highly doubt that.  But even if I did, it would NOT BE DESI.


Even thinking about recreating "The Routine" brings such anxiety and sadness on that I don't even know if I have the emotional energy to carry it out and see it through until the final edits were complete.  I would pour everything into it and I don't know if I have it in me to re-break my already unrepairable, broken heart.


I don't feel that it's healed but it's just not as raw as it was and although I can easily go to that raw place emotionally at the drop of a hat, I am not sure that is a place I want to intentionally direct myself to go.


The way I held him on my lap to put in his eye drops and ointment.  The things I said.  The way I held his head.  The way my thumb and forefingers spread the tops and bottoms of his lids in my left  hand while I applied the drops first and then the ointment with my right.  Everything was so specific and so precise and so repetitive.

And what scares me and saddens me the most right now is that it feels as if the memory has faded and is fading.  And I don't want it to.  I want it to always be with me but I don't want it to make me sad or make me feel pain and loss.  But how could it not?  I loved caring for Desi.  Even as an elderly, aging, dying animal I felt a sense of purpose in my ownership.  I felt that I was being of service, being useful, serving a high cause or purpose on some level.


Here comes the pain in my heart again.  It's a physical pain actually.  It's not just emotional.  I feel a sensation of a huge, gaping, hole in my solar plexus.  It feels like a bundle of jumbled and tangled nerves that are all firing off all at once in a ball.  And at the same time, it feels like deeply rooted, nausea that will never come up and out.  It will always just lie deep within me like a bottomless pit that never ends.


I just re-posted the blog I wrote on 12.23.11 one month after Desi died.  I can't believe it's only a little over a month - not even two months yet.  That's what frightens me.  There is some part of me that feels like he has been dead for a year or years.  And there's another part of me that thinks maybe I will wake up and he will be in the next room still old and ready to die and waiting for me to make that horrible, awful, terminal decision which I can never come back from making.


Maybe there is a movie in this story of "The Routine" after all.  Maybe it is not a Documentary but a Short about a guy who lost his dog who he was closer to than any human being or animal in his entire life and he now thinks he may be losing his mind...