I didn’t see the dog at first. The summer thunderstorm was putting on a spectacular show. Raindrops fat as jelly beans were pelting the ground as though they hated it for stopping their journey from the clouds. A bone clattering crash and then a streak of lightning lit up the tree line in my backyard. That’s when I saw it. At the edge of the forest was a white dog.
It was late, ten or so on a Friday night. I’m usually sound asleep by this time, but I took the last Ambien two nights ago. It seems you can wait until Monday for an Ambien refill. I wasn’t familiar with the kinds of meds that could wait. The kind we used to need? Those couldn’t wait.
The storm was coming on fast. I made a cup of chamomile tea that must have been dropped off by a neighbor. I headed to the back screened-in porch, hoping the storm would wash away the images I couldn’t seem to get the fuck out of my head. The wind whooshed through the pine trees along the backyard perimeter, nearly bending them in half. A crackling sound and with the next streak of lightning, I saw the dog again. The whole of its body now, not just the head. It was closer than it had been and I could see how massive it was. The dog was pure white from the tips of its ears to the wide, swinging tail. It was standing with a haze of fog and rain circling around its legs with the blackened forest behind it. I was transfixed by the appearance of it at all. I couldn’t tell if it was a stray or a neighbor’s escape artist on the prowl. It stood watching me, sipping my tea and wiping at my nearly always teary eyes. This dog, this stranger, began to lift one front paw and then the other, in a plea to come inside with me or for me to walk out into the rain and join it there. Neither of those things seemed appealing.
I didn’t want anything to do with this problem that was staring at me, soaked with the storm and probably hungry, too. I remembered the dog we had once “rescued”. The damn thing lasted five hours before heading for the hills and never being seen from again. The search for it never ended, I was forever looking at brown dogs with black tails hoping it was the one that we lost. No, I did not want a fucking dog. Especially now. Especially when it was all so raw, what was it? A month since that day? Next to the dog was Christopher’s plastic yellow bat and white ball, both turning a new shade of emerald green with growing moss and neglect. The storm kicked up again, the trees bent, the thunder rolled across the universe and the lightning sizzled overhead, filling the air of the porch with static energy.
The white dog came forward again and walked through the barely used swingset, the seesaw creaking as it made its way closer to the porch. Christopher never sat on the seesaw part. It was a hopeful gift given somewhere between the first cancer battle and the second. Was he five? I couldn’t remember. I did recall that he preferred the slide and went up the tiny ladder and down the slide over and over again until his thin and exhausted body finally quit. That was before the third time the doctor looked at us with that same, helpless face. The third time, Christopher was ten and he said he couldn’t do it again. He said no. I didn’t listen. My husband took off like our rescue dog.
The next clap of thunder and the goddamn tea was on the porch’s wooden floor. l bent to pick up the broken pieces of my mug and suddenly the replay rolled in my mind again of the home security footage. I saw my boy Christopher, stumbling through our backyard, swallowing pills from the bottles, watched him slowly drowse on our pool deck, watching the birds fly over his head, before choosing to slip into the deep end of the pool and disappear forever. It was the sort of death that left nothing for anyone to do but drop food and flowers at my door, then go quickly.
A shattering sound of a tree taking a direct hit from the storm not far from where I was kneeling, brought me back to my feet. There, at the wooden screen door, was White. Or so I’d come to call the beast standing at the door. He was pathetically soaked and presently holding the old moldy Wiffle ball in his maw. The lightning cracked and White’s fur stood on end.
I didn’t wince at the crash of the thunder this time. I looked outside the porch door and the windows. Trees were moving with the wind, in their great dance of give and take. The rain was hitting the ground so hard it was bouncing back up again, the grass its trampoline. The weathervane was spinning furiously and in a snap, the power went out. Black silence fell over the house and porch.
Oblivious to the lack of electricity, White happily circled round a few times then ran through the yard, his tail swinging back and forth with what looked like glee. The storm raged around him as he pranced and waited for me to join him in a game. I opened the door to the storm and as I walked into it, I looked up to the heavens, inviting whoever might be watching to join the game. We played in God’s chaos. I invited rain mikvah to cleanse away the hopelessness and rage to make room for something else.
Tonight I was playing ball with an oddly familiar friend, who had no idea what cancer was, or suicide or any of it. I watched as White threw himself into the air to catch the ball for no other reason than it was there and it needed catching, and for at least that moment they were in the game together.