Pilgrim the Dog

JUN 2022

Written by Alex Sparks

2,900 Words - 15 Minute Read Time

My body was not ready for this. My soul not around often enough to get an opinion, stood still and stoic long as it could. Every man a mystic until his dog dies. Me, a man again, now too aware of how the body shakes when it has no where else to shrink to. I write this, from the house of a family who does not have a dog. No mere magic trick to leave this body. No mere mortal would beg you to stay.

Pilgrim the Dog (2013-2022)

Pilgrim was only eight years old, healthy and active, until one day he wasn’t. Kidney failure. It was quick and confusing and left lots of open space for doubt and insanity. We loved him into this, the only way we knew how, holy and above it, outside our need for closeness, for answers or more time. We swallowed the moment and said our goodbyes to physical bodies.

Love is a borrowed emotion, a shared experience between two bodied souls in tango. To love something is to become it, to exchange pieces of yourself for those of the other. To blend and mesh and become one moment. Sorrow is often the tactile experience of giving these pieces back. The stretching and tearing of love across space-time as the two bodies exit each other’s orbits. Again, forever, for now.

This is a collection of short poems, and memories, and journal entries I have made over the month since Pilgrim passed. Some of it is fluffy or sad or dark. Some of it raw and vulnerable. This writing is not finished, but writing never is. I have much more to say about that lil desert mutt, but I can only hold my breath for so long.

Written from the house of a family who does not have a dog.

We got Pilgrim seven weeks after we got married. Almost nine years ago. We have hardly been a family without him. We honestly don’t know how. Never had a Christmas alone. Never lived anywhere that wasn’t pet friendly. Never not had a house covered in fur. Even when that house was a van, a cabin, a spare room, or a Motel 6.

What do we do with his stuff? When are we supposed to sweep? The last of him still collecting as tumbleweeds. Still lingering in the air. Nose too familiar not to notice.

I’ve never really considered myself a typical “dog person”, not a fur-baby daddy, and never much wondered who rescued who. I have always had dogs, always loved my dogs, but always thought of them primarily as dogs.

Pilgrim was different. He was a special dog, a real good boy, my boy, a son if I wasn’t embarrassed to phrase it that way. I objectively do not know much suffering, but I do know we’ve mourned that dog like a child, like mommas do in movies, all wailing and weeping and sobbing, shook silent in how long forever is. We run out of tears and replenish them. We stay drunk, we stay high, we stay crying. Coping with loss is not supposed to be pretty. It is not supposed to be easy or admirable or quick. It is a funeral procession of phlegm and want, a thousand mile crawl through every memory your body musters. It is exhausting, exhaustive, and lonely.

PILGRIM THE DOG

2013 - FOREVER

*I swear to God that wasn’t a dog.*
*Pilgrim was a spirit,*
*a Bodhisattva,*
*that God I’m swearing to.*

The day we picked up Pilgrim from Best Friends Animal Sanctuary in Kanab, Utah he was still groggy and time traveling. We had waited three days in that small desert town for him to get the necessary shots and neutering to be ready for adoption. They had just pulled him and his brother off the Navajo Reservation. The only survivors of the litter. Our Sport and his brother Blazer. Two little Rez dogs looking like they do. Like the kids’ book drawing of a puppy. Kinda like a blonde shepherd but mostly like a mutt. PIlgrim was cute as shit and we fell for him right away. He still had a small bald patch on his front leg, shaved smooth for the shots and anesthesia and his first few weeks with us are heavy with the memories of that cute lil mutt with a bare square on his left arm.

When the vet prepared to put Pilgrim down, she shaved a smooth square on that same left arm. Our sweet Pilgrim. Our last moments. Groggy again like our first day together, his arm shaved again, that bare square of soft skin eight years later.

This is all too cyclical, all too symbolic. Why do I have to notice this shit. What am I supposed to do with this kind of magic. I don’t want it. Not now. Not here. Not on the floor of the vet.

Dogs are saints

holy men in fur coats

shamans and skin walkers and therapists

There are certain moments in this life that you can feel the weight of as they are happening. The pull of the future memory of this instant, too strong to let your consciousness stay solely in the present. Like inter-dimensional deja-vu. It can feel like you are remembering this presence before it is happening. In the heavy muck of a normal Thursday morning your what-if anxieties leave your body in a gasp. No room for what-ifs in the presence of right now. No grace for maybe in the certainty of death. Time moves slowest closest to the end. Moves so slow we can play with it. Our brains not sure which signal we need, so it just sends them all. The thought, the moment, the memory.

When I carried Pilgrim through those glass doors, I left again, my body the puppet, my mind out there directing the cameras. I swear I watched that scene unfold from every angle. From Kelly’s wet eyes, holding the door open. The knowing grace of the front desk. My reflection in the window. Pilgrim’s body light and snuggled tight to my chest. The last time I would hold my boy. The best boy. Time too slow to notice how long I hung around in this moment. Let it drag its feet through my mind and made sure those grooves wore deep.

In the then-present now, I could feel the now-present future. I could feel myself reflecting on this tragedy as I was still living in it, which is maybe just mental illness. But I’ve really been learning to let myself feel things lately and what a shitty time to do so.

The back door does not open first thing in the morning

I do not let anyone out to pee

I do not let them back in before the water finishes boiling

It is just me, alone

here in the whisper of 7am

a quiet house

with no dog

No earlier reason to roll out of bed

no soft or slobbery Good Morning

no one waiting

no one sitting

no one speaking

Two weeks after Kelly and I got married and set out on our roadtrip honeymoon, the Federal Government shut down and as consequence closed all National Parks just as we were nearing the West Coast. At the time it was frustrating and disappointing and tedious, but we rerouted and drove on. When the parks reopened a few weeks later, we rerouted again to make sure we hit Yosemite on our way back East. Without this forced change of plans we never would’ve found ourselves in southern Utah in mid-November of 2013, on a particular highway heading North. We never would’ve seen that billboard, never gotten curious about that animal shelter in the desert with a vegan buffet. We never would’ve stopped and never would’ve adopted Pilgrim.

Of course, I am looking for these moments of fate, wooed and soothed by the wisdom of hindsight. And surely I could find it anywhere, but I guess the lesson is this simple. We never know what’s what until it is.

Dogs are like kids who don’t live long enough to return the favor. We are there for the whole cycle. Birth to death.

Real easy shit talking holy when you aren’t attached to the wheel. Oneness is fluffy pillow talk, but a useless metaphor when you’re getting fucked.

Last night, I dreamt of Pilgrim for the first time. Kelly and I were standing in our kitchen and Pilgrim just waltzed in like he never left. My prodigal son returned from the void. Still bodied and bouncing and beautiful. I have always been fairly lucid while dreaming, a blessing and a curse. Sometimes I turn into Spider-man when there are monsters, usually I just wake myself up, but this time I had an emotional breakdown in the dreamscape. Cried and screamed aloud in whatever dimension we sleep in.

“How is he here? How is he back?”

“Do you see him too? Do you see him too?”

There was no answer. Just silent awe in the wake of a risen god, just the slow creep of consciousness taking him from me again. I woke up to the hush of a house that does not have a dog. Quiet and tired of remembering. When the star dust of sleep finally settles into my waking mind, I have something I didn’t think I’d ever have again - a new memory with Pilgrim.

Several thousand people left a lot of really lovely comments online about Pilgrim’s passing. Strangers sent us cards, and gifts, and money. The internet can be a weird place, even weirder when you’re married to some kind of internet person. But its pretty fucking cool that my dog was loved by so many people. And I’m really proud of him for being such a good boy that people could see it through the screen. He played a small, but tangible role in bringing love and joy into the digital moments of tens of thousands of people. Not a lot of dogs get to do that. Pretty rad.

If any of you are reading this. Thank you. It has meant a lot to us.

The Small Losses I Cannot Describe Pretty:

The way he bumped his nose into my leg when my eyes were closed and he needed something.
It has been three weeks since we’ve swept and the floors have never been cleaner.
No more “Boys Nights” when Kelly is away.
No more bark park or walks, no more tricks or treats.
Him bringing a toy to break the tension anytime Kelly and I would fight. His timing was bad, but his heart good.
I lock the bedroom door now. I didn’t know I was still scared of a quiet dark.
Now we just throw away steak bones and sweet potato skins.

Dear God,

I did not pray once the day we put Pilgrim down

did not beg you for a miracle

or bother to ask you why

I just tight lip walked the line

like men are prone to do

held myself up

by the bootstraps

or whatever

no atheists in fox holes

the saying goes

and I the fool

assumed the floor

of an animal hospital

was close enough

to be honest

in the presence of death

I did not even think of you

which is a loss

too deep to dig up here

but know that I noticed

it was mutual

how quiet

you were

in the presence

of the

now

cliche

how

loud

silence

can be

I have cried everyday since Pilgrim left. Always in the mornings and always while writing this. Crying has become a second language to me, a mother tongue I had forgotten to practice, but like riding a bicycle the body will remember how to speak suffering long after you are tired of talking. Loss like this has a way of changing the ecosystem of the body. All chemicals and callouses and the rising tide of trauma.

I am always sad now. Grief has become my default emotion and all other efforts at feeling are first filtered through this lens of loss. I have been happy since, but not in the way I have been happy before. Being so blue makes it very hard to see anything but purple when looking for red. Depression is the way a body looks when it runs dry of tears and still has more to say.

From my second hand misunderstanding of reincarnation, Pilgrim must have had somewhere better to be. He had lived the perfect dog life. Rescued from the desert, adopted, loved rotten, vanlife raised, loyal and well-behaved and somehow internet famous. Squirrel serial killer, siren family howler, dirty clothes food burrier, and part-time DO NOT PET collar wearing saint with a history of small bites, a good boy but still healing like the rest of us.

You did it Pilg! Enlightened little shit. Ascended Holy and mostly human by now. Screaming snot, diaper wearing, lil Buddha, somewhere on this planet turning water to wine or whatever. Grown in waiting, ready to love and heal this world whole, to brave the Bardo, complete the circle, or exit the wheel. I don’t know if I believe any of this, but I know I might.

All dogs go to Nirvana.

Sad songs to be sad listening to while thinking about my dead dog.

Some of these are beautiful and haunting, and some of them just try to rhyme “All Dogs Go to Heaven” with “iPhone 7”

Pilgrim the Dog was a man’s best friend.

June 2nd 2022

Written the day of Pilgrim’s passing, just before we took him to the vet, before we knew what was coming. It is a little rough, and rushed, and raw, and sometimes too honest, but I wanted to include these feelings here and don’t have the stomach to rewrite it pretty.

Pilgrim isn’t doing well. I’m overwhelmed and really sad. He is the best dog I’ve ever had and in a lot of ways has spoiled the species for me. He has been with us our entire marriage and its scary thinking about living a life without his constant presence. Pilgrim has been a lifeline to this life for me many times. He has been the only familiar and present thing I could latch on to. It is hard for me to put these words together right now, but I want to try. I want to write and to get this gunk out of my chest. I don’t know if I’m writing a Eulogy or not. I don’t know if he is gonna make it or not. Or whether it will be this afternoon or weeks from now. Dogs don’t talk, so I get to panic about it instead. I don’t know if it is easier to mourn him now, so that when the loss is real it is already old, already softened by time. He isn’t old enough to die. It shouldn’t be his time yet. Good boys shouldn’t have to go too soon. He’s supposed to be here. To grow old and feeble. I still need him. I still need that tether. I’m not all the way back yet. And I’m so afraid to go dark again. If I get lost, without him, I don’t know if I can find my way back. I have so few strings left. But mostly, I’m just gonna miss him a lot. Gonna miss the presence and the fur and knowing he is listening for trouble. I always knew that if he was relaxed then I could be too. I don’t know how I’ll tell without him.

I tend to push away what hurts me. To close off. To guard up. I’m so sensitive to rejection, that my only defense has been to project distance and independence. If I don’t need anything from anybody, then I never have anything to lose. With Pilgrim, I can lose it all. He never got these walls. I never pushed him away to hope he rubber bands back. I just loved him, directly, fully.

In the moment of re-entry, or at least in the moments close to it, life does not feel like a wheel, but rather a pin prick. A stop watch ready to start the “after” phase. It doesn’t feel good to sit in waiting. A dog’s death is certainly easier to process than a person’s, but it is only easier in the weight we put on it. How serious we let this little dog be. A good boy going home is good thing for the good boy. And if we are all one in this spinning then it is a good thing for all of us. I will be sad, yes, for a long time, I hope. I have to force myself to cry early or I will bury this out of habit. I really don’t know how to tell the difference between letting something go and putting something away. The only way I know to heal is to stop feeling bad. I am really good at stopping the feeling. I thought this meant I was good at handling emotions, but I’m really just good at Tetris, at folding and organizing and tucking and tossing and ignoring. My body is a storage locker, I have packed well. The obvious thing about packing instead of processing is that all emotions must eventually be unpacked. They cannot stay in this body bag forever. Eventually you will burst and everything oozes back into your conscious. The emotions gotta go somewhere. Breakdowns, depression, substance abuse, violence, self harm, insanity. There is no way to pack a wound other than to clean it out first.