More than ever it seems true to say things won’t always be this way
Throwing off the shackles of unfashionable existentialism, I produced forth to my sister the other night alien phrases. We were driving east, in the wayward direction of Boston, Massachusetts, with the check engine light coming on in her car, as I spewed forth things I may have fully believed in a coffee-addled state. It’s easy to do, really: living in the first world, you have all sorts of examples. There’s no deep digging to be done, really. If you want something to make you feel really great about your life, just try rigging up some construct about South Africa, and how bad the people there have it. Sure, you say, tearing yourself from a lowly state, those people have it really bad, and comparatively, it makes you feel really awesome for two seconds. But I think I may have actually meant some of those things. Some conceptual shift has taken place, and I’m able to recognize the minute good sometimes. It’s all part of my late day paradigm shift of not jumping off a bridge, and I can feel myself backing from the precipice. “Things aren’t all bad,” I told my sister that night, much to her own befuddlement, wondering if I had not been replaced all together with someone who shared a striking resemblance. “Not everything’s going to end in a horrible disaster,” I said cheerfully, “We’ve had OK lives, good parents.” I went on at length, showing off a little, like a guitar player adding in a tricky little solo for effect. But I could tell, even as I said these things, that I had produced a spell. Surely something bad was going to happen now that I had said these things. A car crash, imminent death, I did not know what—something, though, surely. That’s the power of positive thinking. There are people in charge. That’s the basis of most superstition, really. Some benevolent figure, you imagine in your head, is waiting there all the while, to will something into existence. The converse is true too, obviously; just find yourself saying or doing the wrong thing, and the next thing you know things are slipping away—the framework of benevolence and good turns to rot and decay, and it all comes unrelentingly crashing down around your head.

McBeans is not going to live. I should have known as much. The fancy little chart in the examining room of the veterinarian’s office tells you his age in human years. 88-years-old, it lets you know, sizing up any potential ailments. You can do the math, figuring things out in your head. And you can tell, on a walk, that his legs are not good. But nothing can prepare you for his immediate collapse, the festooning tumor in his stomach that was there all the while. Or for your own inexplicable response to this series of events, lying down on the floor of your grandmother’s kitchen and praying in the light of a new day beside your sick dog. Please, do not take McBeans away from me. It makes me feel like Candy in Of Mice and Men, groveling over his old dog. It makes me really sad.

The veterinarian explains the situation to me in detail, illuminating the x-ray in the examining room. He outlines the dense mass all around the spleen, and the crippling arthritis. There is not long, he explains compassionately. And it makes you contemplate the nature of his job. Not everybody could do it. You would need a sense of compassion that goes well beyond general human suffering and forays into entirely different realms. Not everybody is capable. But this guy has toiled away in the pursuit of this, and it makes me feel some gratitude toward this total stranger, telling me my dog is going to die. I look over at the dog on the examining table. He’s there all the while, completely absolved from his own predicament. No idea does he have of what we’re even doing here. And when the anemia has temporarily vanished from his system, when the toxicity has been reabsorbed, he holds the leash triumphantly in his mouth and wags his tail. All I can do is shake my head. It seems weird to take example from a dying dog, but then it could be worse, too.