base camp to home. over.

I dreamed I was driving with you as your passenger through a crowded parking lot.  It was sketchy. You were talking about how nice your new truck was as you maneuver the big truck in tight spots with ease.  

I will help you with the translation of the scene: you can do things I cannot do and I'm tired of pretending that I am as big as you. 

In the dream, I listened to you the same way I listened last night over the background ground noise of the distance between us.  

You talked about carbon footprints of the materials you were using.  You talked about the paint crew and design meetings- something about February.  And back to the carbon. 

Have you ever realized that you fight your ethical battles and then leave me to hold them for you? 

I'm not going to get into it because you aren't wrong to fight them.  Just crazy to think I am qualified to tend them for you.  I'm really not.... 

I know at times I appear as strong as you but that's all alchemy.  The right mixture of stubbornness and self-sabotage can go a long way.   

You drink wine and dance with the idea of a higher power.  I drink coffee and chase the ground. 

I never asked to stand beside you... I never pretended to be so brave.  

I prefer to stand behind you; let you block the wind.  A hand pressed flat on your back so you don't forget I am there.  Head dipped looking safely out over your shoulder.  

You know, I didn't dream about the dog whose life I am now pleading for you to end. 

 I slept and my words to you "this is not about a trivial inconvenience he is suffering and there is going to be a moment I can't handle, he's going to fall and I won't be able to carry him" they floated outside with the falling winter rain.

I slept beside you as you drove but I knew it was only a dream because I never sleep in the car. No matter how much you beg me to.

I woke to snow.  And hot coals still glowing in the stove.

"I know, Misty," you had said,"it's time and I promised he would not have to live through another winter. Would you please get the number for the vet that makes house calls...."

There is one thing I forgot to tell you. Not that I actually suspect the dog's foot is broken from his latest fall down the stairs.  Not that I have to carry him up and down the steps on the deck- and that he has bit me more times than I can count now- he's in pain. Or that part of my morning and evening routines include cleaning up after him and bleaching the wood floors. 

Those things you never need to know.   

Of course, I worry about you and about Beach.  I worry about the moment that will be his last. Did we give him a good life?

The thing I forgot to say is, I'm not sure what's going to happen to me when the moment finally comes.  

I am the one pushing to end his suffering but I worry about being able to face the finality.  It has nothing to do with the dog and everything to do with death. 

I worry about the strength of the ice sheet I skate.  I worry about the depths of the crevasses below me.  

When we talk about putting him down I see the house the way it was the night I talked to my sister for the last time.  I see the high chrome window in the kitchen wilting between the bricks just as it was when she said, "I don't want to die. I'm going to stop drinking." And I laughed at her. 

The window and half the wall for that matter are not there anymore.  You ripped them out and put in the sliding glass door. But I can still see it. 

I don't want to go back there. Back to the silent madness.  Sentenced to walking the walls in own my head.  Counting black bricks.  I'm scared.

I dreamed I was driving with you as your passenger through a parking lot. 

I bet your dog he dreams the same.