07. Ode to Edie
When I first left for Spain, in early September 2018, I said goodbye to Edie thinking that it could be the last time I saw her. There was nothing drawn out or ceremonial about it, I just stroked her soft ears and kissed her in the little valley between her eyebrows and said bye girl, love you. It’s not that she was really old or sick or particularly vulnerable, but she was “getting up there,” as they say.
When she was younger, she’d greet me in leaps and bounds, running up to me, skidding to a stop, sticking her long snout between my legs, whipping her long thin tail back and forth. Sometimes I’d rile her up, get down on her level, scruff her shoulders, squeal hey girl! hey girl! and we’d end up rolling around the floor in a fit of excitement.
She couldn’t quite muster this level of energy when I returned home from Spain last summer, but she made an effort: she climbed out of her big bed in the corner of the living room, ambled over, and greeted me with her big wet nose, tail wagging a bit. I was so grateful to see her again—my twin, my soulmate.
When I left for Spain again, in late September 2019, I said goodbye to Edie as if it was the last time I’d see her—just in case!—and it was. Mom started texting me in January saying that Edie wasn’t eating as much, or that she wasn’t excited about her walks, but then the next week she’d report that Edie was doing better or back to normal. I knew she probably wouldn’t be home when I got back.
Around the same time, the word coronavirus—pronounced coronaveeroos in Spanish—was creeping into conversations and making the air feel heavier on the Madrid metro. Young people in my neighborhood were chasing each other down the streets screaming coronavirus! and laughing. I was starting to worry that public transportation would be shut down and I wouldn’t be able to see Victoria for a while. Mom told me that Edie had a tumor growing near her heart. Spain was just a couple weeks behind Italy, and it felt like watching a tsunami coming towards us in slow motion until it crashed down on Monday, March 9, when it was announced that all schools were closing for two weeks. I wondered if I should go home. By Saturday we were in a state of emergency lockdown, and we stayed that way, indoors, for ten more weeks.
Saturday, March 21 — It’s day 9 of quarantine and day 1 without Edie in this world. So her time came, she’s somewhere else now, although always beside me. Probably the reality of Edie being gone really won’t hit until I return home—whenever that may be. I’m heartbroken I couldn’t kiss her goodbye, couldn’t look into her eyes, couldn’t be with her on her journey to let her know she’d be ok. I’m sure she already knew—she’s always been mystical, otherworldly.
By the end of March, hundreds of people had died in Spain, and the virus was making its way to the United States. I was still struggling to grasp the reality of what was happening. Death was like a smog blanketing Madrid. My brain capacity was the length of a shitty dating show on Netflix, no more, no less. The specific, personal pain of Edie’s death was simultaneously lost in the smog and an ocean away. I felt I needed to do something—a ritual, a dance, an Instagram post—that would allow me to acknowledge my twisted knots of grief. But I couldn’t determine what the ritual might involve, and figuring out how to compose an Instagram post about a dead dog (soulmate, even!) was too confusing at the peak of a global pandemic. Before I knew it, 68 days passed, and I hadn’t done anything for Edie. But I was finally free to go outside.
Most of my recent memories of Edie are from the summer of 2018, when I lived at my parents’ house in Charlottesville. My parents traveled for two weeks, leaving me to care for the pets. I took Edie and Rudy on two walks a day. Edie set the pace: slow, meandering, stopping to sniff every two feet. She performed her signature move on almost every walk: flopping down in a shady patch of grass halfway around the block. Getting her back up and moving was difficult—she’d stubbornly resist by pushing her head into the ground and stretching out her legs—so it was usually best to just sit there beside her for a while.
We flopped out on various lawns around the neighborhood every afternoon, with the mid-summer sun beating down, and every evening, with the pink dusky air just beginning to cool. Sometimes I sat with her feeling grateful for the break, happy to observe the grass or a tree or a (concerned) neighbor walking by, and sometimes I had to sit with my impatience, my frustration, my eagerness to get up and keep going. In all our time together, we practiced being still, being slow, being patient, and resting. Edie was the best teacher.
When I think about my first walk through the park post-lockdown, I’m reminded of Edie. I went to the park in the evening, after an afternoon rain. It was my first time seeing trees and plants and flowers in two months, everything sparkling with rain drops. I took my mask off for a moment and inhaled deeply, crying because of how fresh and delicious the air was and the fact that I had to put my mask back on. I wandered through the park slowly, as Edie might have, sneaking my mask off occasionally to sniff the air or a rose. She was not here to greet me when I finally returned home, but I still feel her beside me, urging me to slow down. She’s forever changed the way I move through the world.
✽ Oops, Only Five Things This Time
Pre-order Black Futures, edited by Kimberly Drew and Jenna Wortham, coming out December 1! “An archive of collective memory and exuberant testimony — A luminous map to navigate an opaque and disorienting present — An infinite geography of possible futures.”
Fractal Theory for Systemic Change by @chiara.acu on Instagram. A good teaser for adrienne maree brown’s Emergent Strategies.
I’m working my way through two KCET series, Tending the Wild and Tending Nature, to learn about the environmental stewardship and knowledge of California’s Indigenous peoples. The episode on Cultural Burning (Tending the Wild ep. 1) is particularly relevant right now as much of the west coast continues to burn.
I’ve been listening to Gillian Welch’s Boots No. 2: The Lost Songs Vol. One and Two, which is setting the right mood for fall in central Virginia (it’s not even October and I’m already layering a turtleneck, a wool sweater, and a hoodie).
Miranda July is one of my favorite artists, and while I follow her Instagram pretty closely, I’m late to the game in discovering Jopie, a strange short film she directed in quarantine and brought to life with clips submitted by random IG followers. I’m curious to see her new full-length film Kajillionaire, coming out Sept. 25.
✽ A Painting I Love By An Artist I Love Who Also Used To Have A Greyhound They Loved
As always, thank you for reading! Thanks for your support and feedback!
I don’t know what issue 08 will be about yet… we’ll see what develops in the next couple weeks. Stay tuned ;)
💌 Ava