Wildfire Season

The thing about grief is that it tends to open the floodgates to all past griefs, like they’ve been waiting behind some grief dam you’ve managed to erect in your heart. There must be some mechanism in there, along with the four chambers and the four valves - some spot they haven’t been able to see on the scans - where we keep the river of ache for the people and animals we’ve lost along the way. Otherwise we wouldn’t be able to get up in the morning.

When the seconds between our dog’s last breaths grew longer and longer, when we realized his last breath had been his last breath, the portal opened. The pain of realizing he wouldn’t get back up on his four paws, wouldn’t head-butt his nose and face into our hands throughout the day demanding pets and love, wouldn’t follow us around the house like surely something fantastic was going to happen if we were moving from one room to the other - when the fact that I’d no longer have a morning companion curled up by my feet as I wrote, or a big guy who’d come and shove his entire self into a space made for half his size because he was always a giant muppet with no spatial awareness - was a thing that was real and happening, it hurt like hell. It always does.

You don’t think clearly in the minutes and hours after you lose someone you love, because you’re grappling with the pain and the shock, even if you knew it was coming. It happened after the doctor stated the time of death in the hospital room with my mom, too. The nurses whispered their condolences and followed the doctor out of the room, and I realized I was going to have to be the one to wake up my brother and my stepdad who had finally passed out about an hour before.

How do you deliver that news? You have no frame of reference, no guidebook, just whatever love and empathy pours out of you as you put your hand on your brother’s shoulder and he’s awake instantly - and it turns out you don’t have to say anything at all because he knows by the look on your face. He’s on his feet, saying no and it’s the worst no you’ve ever heard. This man, who used to be a tiny kid sitting on your hip, a kid you could comfort no matter what, and now he’s taller than you and sobbing and there’s nothing you can do because you’re destroyed, too. And your stepdad? In a way that’s worse, because he thinks it’s just time to go. He thinks she’s okay. He thinks she’s coming home for Christmas.

I can't write about that anymore right now, but when our dog stopped breathing and I covered him with a blanket, but not his face - why do people want to cover faces so quickly? - I realized I needed to call someone. A cremation place for pets is what I was thinking. I guess I thought he was going to get better because it seemed that way for more than a week, so I hadn’t planned for this. Maybe I thought it would be like my last dog, an urgent situation, and a race to the emergency vet. A devastating goodbye as he looked at me, there on the operating table - and I had to tell them to go ahead and give him the shot because there was no way he was making it through a surgery after what had happened. Whatever I thought this time, I had not planned for our dog to die in the living room. So after a while, after we were just streaming tears instead of sobbing, I googled pet cremation, Santa Monica - and the first company to pop up was Rainbow to Heaven.

Normally for something important, I’m the kind of person to investigate, to look at reviews, to try to get a recommendation from a friend if possible. But at that moment, I just called the first number. The woman I spoke to was kind, she offered her condolences, she sounded like she cared. She said they could have someone at our house in the next couple of hours. Because he was a bigger dog, the cost would be five hundred dollars, and she would send me a receipt, and an email with links to their website in case we wanted to order paw prints or a special urn. I’d be able to call 24 hours a day to get updates if I wanted them, they’d let me know when the cremation was going to happen - and we could expect to have his ashes back within 5-14 days. I heard all of that, it sounded okay. Expensive, maybe, but maybe not. I couldn’t remember what it cost when my last dog was cremated, because that was eighteen years ago.

Anyway, I’d already spent $1500 at the vet on a surgery I hadn’t anticipated the week before, and one that seemed to go well until he took a turn. What was another $500? Even though I do not lead a life where an unanticipated $2000 is not a big deal. Anyway, I said yes.

A very nice man showed up a couple of hours later. I still hadn’t covered our dog’s face, because I couldn’t. I’d been sitting with him, kissing his head, petting him like he was still there. Telling him how much we loved him. Thanking him for being the best boy. The man asked if we wanted to keep his bed, which was not even a thought. The bed was going with him. So I picked up one side of the bed, he got the other, and we lifted him onto the gurney together. Then the man strapped him in. We watched him load the gurney into the van and secure it. We watched the van disappear around the corner. We were beside ourselves.

I miss that nose. And everything else.

Which is why I was awake early this morning, unable to sleep, almost two months and ten phone calls later. The ashes haven’t arrived. I’ve been calling every week to see what’s happening, when we can expect them. Not that it matters, it’s not like they’re bringing him back, but also, it really matters. I still have my last dog’s ashes, his paw print, his collar. I never scattered them because the only place he ever wanted to be was right next to me. I was going to put Chewy’s ashes right next to his. Chewy’s paw print and collar are already there.

Every time I’ve called, the person on the other end of the phone has been kind, apologetic, promising me we’ll have the ashes in the next few days, things have just been really busy. The first two weeks, okay. Four weeks in I was starting to feel confused. Where was his body? How could it be taking this long? The tone of my phone calls changed. They kept telling me they were sorry, they’d have the manager give me a call, they’d send an email with details, they’d “get him home to me for the holidays.”

He’s not coming home and I hate the false narrative, but I want his ashes. Anyway, this morning I got up and looked at reviews for this place, finally. I haven’t wanted to because he’s with them, it’s done. I’ve been hoping maybe it will end up okay. But my heart sank. There are lawsuits and Better Business Bureau complaints. People just like me who sent their pet off, thinking they’d be getting an urn, but then weeks had gone by. Turns out the company outsources cremations, but they don’t say that anywhere on the site.

I called again, spoke to a woman I’ve spoken to before. I told her this whole thing was not okay, and lo and behold she told me the urn would be arriving tomorrow. I don’t believe it, and if it does arrive, I’ll never know if the ashes belong to our dog. I went to check my credit card statement, and sure enough, the charge is from some LLC with a totally different name. I called the number, spoke to a guy. He told me they’re the managing company for Rainbow to Heaven, they do the billing, nothing else. Sounded like he’d said the same thing to lots of people. He gave me a number to call to speak to someone, but it’s the number I’ve been calling. So I called my credit card company to dispute the charge, and wrote my own Better Business Bureau review.

I can’t write about this anymore right now, either. There’s a limit, and I’ve passed it. But I can tell you the other thing I did after I hung up with my credit card company is call the billing department of my ophthalmologist. I did that because I got a bill in the mail for $275, even though I paid $288 when I was there at the office. Turns out the $288 was for two pairs of glasses - new readers which I needed, and sunglasses that also have my prescription, which I now need for driving. Then there was a $50 co-pay for the visit, which I also paid while I was there. And I saw they’d billed my old health insurance company from two years ago, not the one I’ve been with since 2023.

So then I thought I should call the doctor’s office directly, because I’d given them my new(ish) insurance card when I was there, and figured someone had made a mistake. So I hung up the call with the billing department which was a shame, because who doesn’t love muzak? And the receptionist told me that VSP - my eye insurance - doesn’t cover medical issues, that their only covered services are for optometrists. And since I have the very early beginnings of cataracts and a tiny bit of astigmatism, and am a little more farsighted than I used to be, none of that was covered. Or something like that. Oh, and also, they don’t take Kaiser, my main insurance company.

You need different policies for your eyes and your teeth, see. I know it’s weird because it’s kind of essential to be able to see and also chew and swallow and eat if you want to be in good health, but that stuff isn’t covered under your health insurance plan because - checks notes - corruption, greed, capitalism, billionaires making more money. But anyway, all of these things would have been good to know when I was at the ophthalmologist, before they took me in and did the exam. I needed the exam, that’s not the issue, it’s just that maybe it would have been covered through Kaiser if I’d gotten a referral from my primary doctor. All of this insanity costs you more than money, it costs you time and energy, too.

The receptionist said they should have charged me for “a consultation” instead of billing my (old, wrong, inactive) insurance company for the eye exam and imaging. Billing Kaiser wouldn’t make a difference since they don’t take it. Maybe they’d be able to cut me a break on the consultation cost since I’m an old patient. She sounded annoyed that I kept asking questions, but I really didn’t understand what she was telling me. On account of, it didn’t make sense. I asked her what the consultation cost is normally - without the special break for repeat patients who’ve been coming for years and also bringing their kids to the doctor - and she said $350. So after all that time and effort, I’m probably better off paying the $275 bill that came in the mail, to an insurance company where I’m no longer a member. Makes as much sense as anything else.

I’m likely going to shorten this. Maybe I can lose some paragraphs somewhere. Because here’s what happened. I sat on my couch in the den where I’d been intending to write most of the day. My son is home from college, but he was out with friends, my daughter was taking a final. But I was so…what is the word…disheartened? depressed? anxious? - I was so disheartened by the cremation people and the eye doctor, I didn’t feel like I could sit and write. Because all of this awful stuff is in addition to this other, far more awful thing.

I’ve been noticing for the last week that the gutters around the roof of my studio (converted garage) are overflowing with dead leaves, there’s a small tree that was blown almost out of the ground by the Santa Ana winds that needs to be righted, and the plants around the Buddha garden I made for my mother need attention and pruning.

The reason everything is in disarray is because our gardener - a man who’s been coming to my house twice a month since I moved in twenty years ago - was hit by a car on Thanksgiving day. (His name is pronounced “Martine” not “Martin” and it feels important you know that). He was riding his bike, and he was struck by a speeding car that did not stop. He was on life-support for a week, but he did not make it. And of all the things, this is the one I cannot wrap my head around, because how does anyone do that, ever?

How does a person driving a car hit a whole human being - in this case, a man with children and grandchildren, a man who lost his wife to cancer just over a year ago, a man with friends and a business he grew from nothing, a man with people who loved him so much - how does a driver hit a man on a bike and not stop? And now his children, who lost their mom not long ago, have to grieve for their dad, knowing he died in the most horrible, senseless way. It’s too much. Whatever the capacity is for us to hold the grief, there’s a limit.

Anyway, sitting and writing didn’t seem possible anymore, so I started with the tree. Moved on to pruning the plants - and this is how I found myself on the roof of my studio for most of the day. I was still up there when my daughter came home. I don’t know if you’ve ever peeled a little bit of paint, and then found yourself repainting your entire house, but it was like that. I went and got the ladder Martín has used for as long as I’ve known him, and I climbed up, without much of a plan. I just knew I needed to be outside, doing something physical to burn off the combination of rage, horror and disgust I was feeling, and have been feeling since I heard what happened.

I got up there, and started scooping dead leaves out of the gutter. The sun was in my face and I hadn’t brought my new sunglasses out with me, but whatever. I started scooping out the leaves and shoving them in a huge, industrial sized garbage bag. It was gross, because the dried leaves were sitting on top of muck - whatever dirt had been in the gutters when it rained last, whatever rain had not made its way along the gutters and down the hole to the ground - covered over by leaves, just sitting there. But there was something satisfying about using the dry, crunchy leaves to grab up the gross, smelly muck. I did four-foot sections along one side of the studio until it was mostly clear, climbing down and moving the ladder over as I went.

But then I saw there were more dry leaves in a small, windblown pile on the roof, and if the wind blew some more, they’d surely end up in the gutters I’d just cleared. So I climbed up on the roof, praying I wouldn’t fall and end up in the hospital over Christmas - because you may not know this about me, but I’m not generally a gal who stands on gable roofs. When I stood up, I saw the side of the roof that had been blocked by the slope. It was covered in a foot or two of dried leaves. They were brown, yellow, faded orange, and all very dry. Basically, it’s wildfire season out here, and I had the best kind of kindling sitting on my roof. All it takes is one idiot and one ember.

So, I spent the better part of three hours gathering armfuls of leaves and shoving them into huge garbage bags. I wasn’t wearing work gloves, so I ended up with dirt under my nails, and scratches on my hands and arms - some of them bled. I was sweating, it was pretty backbreaking work, and I thought about Martín, and how many times I’d seen him standing on this same roof in the sun, and how he’d always smile at me when I came out with water like it was the nicest thing in the world, even though it’s the most obvious thing to do. See also: the very least anyone should do. Eventually, when I’d filled three bags and thrown them off the roof, I swept the remaining tiny bits of leaves off the sides. Because when you scoop up leaves like that, you have to be gentle or they crumble. And no matter how gentle you are, there comes a point when there’s just one leaf against the hard, scrabbly roof and it’s going to disintegrate.

And I started thinking about how everything disintegrates eventually. People we love, dogs we love, family members who go for a bike ride and never come back. There’s nothing to hold onto, it’s all ashes to ashes and dust to dust, and that’s true whether people are kind and honest, or awful and without humanity. The only power we have is choosing the way we’re going to ride the ride before we disintegrate and head back into the earth, the rivers, the stars. It seems like there are a lot of people making strange choices these days, choosing to be hard and cruel. There isn’t anything you can do about that except try not to let it rob you of all hope.

I realized even though I was on the roof, I was writing. At some point it occurred to me that everyone I was thinking about had been in my backyard at some point. Martín, of course, my mom, and both of my dogs. They were there. I was with them. And now I’m here and they’re gone, and one day I’ll be gone, too. It’s just the way of things, painful as it is.

There are going to be people who leave this earth before you, and you will not know what to do with the grief. You will not know where to put it, or how you can hold it, or how life will possibly go on in any way that makes sense. The truth is, it probably will not make sense, and maybe that’s okay. We try to make sense out of everything, and some things are unfathomable. We try to keep it together when it’s the nature of things to fall apart. It’s wildfire season. Some things are going to burn.

If you’d like to meet me in real time to talk about grief, loss, acceptance, and also how to look after your mental health in a world that feels too hard for soft-hearted people, I’ll be here 12/20/24 at 11:15am PST, or you can wait for the Come As You Are podcast version, which goes out Saturdays. If you have a little extra and are in a position to donate to Martín’s family, here is their gofundme link. As ever, I am so grateful for each and every one of you. I appreciate your kindness, your comments, and your re-stacks so much. And I wanted to give an extra shout-out to my paid subscribers. I know not everyone can afford to support in that way, but I want you to know that your subscriptions have helped me get through some rough months, and I really appreciate it. Lots of love to all xx