He paused a moment at the gate… still Wahb stood in doubt. His lifelong guide was silent now, had given up his post. But another sense he felt within. The Angel of the Wild Things was standing there, beckoning, in the little vale. Wahb did not understand. He had no eyes to see the tear in the Angel’s eyes, nor the pitying smile that was surely on his lips. He could not even see the Angel. But he felt him beckoning, beckoning.
A rush of his ancient courage surged in the Grizzly’s rugged breast. He turned aside into the little gulch. The deadly vapors entered in, filled his huge chest and tingled in his vast, heroic limbs as he calmly lay down on the rocky, herbless floor and as gently went to sleep, as he did that day in his Mother’s arms by the Graybull, long ago.
– Ernest Scott Thompson, The Biography of a Grizzly
Tomorrow I will step into the veterinary hospital where I work and where the resident “house cat” named Angel lives. And when I do, I will expect to be greeted with happy little feet running alongside mine as I walk to my desk. But that won’t happen. I will expect to hear him jump on the desk and push his face into mine while I try to review my morning appointments. But he won’t. I will be prepared to mouse around him as he lies on my keyboard with a purring appeal to be scratched behind the ears. But none of that will happen. Instead, I will walk in and it will be quiet. I will sit down without any obstacle to keep me from my work. And I will have no distractions from a cat who would miss me so much between work days that he couldn’t curb his enthusiasm when he saw me.
My love of animals traces back to the books I read as a child. From Ernest Thompson Seton’s classic The Biography of A Grizzly to Scott O’Dell’s Island of the Blue Dolphins, books opened my eyes to perspectives beyond my small suburban world. They allowed me to travel in other souls and other skins, and in the process taught me sentience and sensitivity. I also learned from the animal characters that there was a instinctive acceptance and even a dignified resignation to death. It was as natural as the back cover of those books, as inevitable as the period at the end of a sentence. It was apart from life yet a part of life. Still, I remember streaming tears for some of the characters with whom I had built love through most of the book, hoping to turn a better page that would have them fight for life rather than resign to death. In all the years and real deaths that followed – after losing parents, best friends, and beloved pets, and after witnessing sudden deaths, slow deaths, and even suicide – I have yet to know an accepting grace.
I suppose religion tries to give us the guidance and structure to find that grace. The enormous vaulted dome roof of the synagogue I attended as a child promised a clear architectural channel to God. The oculus at its center was the eye of God looking down upon me, watching me pray, remaining hidden until I proved worthy enough to see Him. The ark in front of me was adorned with a life-sized sculpture of Moses, dramatically lifting his tablets to that lofty ceiling. I would look up through squinted eyes, straining to see the God that our rabbi, our cantor, and even a bronze Moses knew was there. But I never saw him, and more often simply snoozed through another snoring sermon.
So maybe I’m a bad Jew. But while I never found God in the synagogue, only recently have I come to realize that I was perhaps looking in the wrong direction. Maybe he wasn’t floating in the clouds looking down at me. Perhaps instead he was swimming in my tears as I read those books as a boy, planting Himself in my open heart. I eventually listened to that heart and became a veterinarian. Every now and then, when I look into a patient’s eyes, God is right there. On Angel’s last day, looking into those dark pools clouded with cataracts, I stepped into the only temple I’ve ever really known.
Angel fought so hard, and we did, too. But we could not stop the inexorable progression of long illness. Like the characters I have read about, I wanted Angel to fight for life. To fight for one more day. But instead, I carried him to the table where everyone had quietly gathered, to a gliding needle that promised release from his pain. He raised his head one last time and looked at us as if to say, “It’s okay. I’m ready.” And with simple grace he gently slipped into our memories.
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Photo credit: S L Friedman (author)
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