I am sorry I missed yesterday…..

People in our area love fireworks; one of our dogs does not.

Memorial Day seemed (to them) a good excuse to set them off, which in turn set poor Herbie off and into panic mode.

We wonder where he came from, my husband and I. We adopted him from a rescue that got him from the shelter when he was brought in as a stray.

But true strays don’t usually know basic commands, don’t love to ride in cars; trusting they are headed to the park.
True strays are not usually housebroken and non reactive.
Not usually so adept at reading cues and intuiting emotions.

Herbie was.

He belonged somewhere with someone else at some point in time.

He had a family that worked with him, that loved him, that was unable to find him when he went missing.

It is in the missing where the mystery and the odd shaped pieces and the panic live.

It was fire I am sure, that took him from one life and brought him into ours. The way he alerts when leaf fire smoke fills the air. The way the acrid smell of bread stuck and charring in the toaster widens his eyes and sends him out of the room.

The whimpering and whining at sudden flashes of light. The way his sides heave and he hides in the corner at the sound of hissing and humming; crinkling and crackling.

And so last night; after I slipped him a tranquilizer (prescribed by the vet) in a piece of rolled up lunch meat; as I placed him on our bed, as I watched him fight against sleep as the sky exploded overhead; as I wished I could take this burden from him, I penned the following….

*****

He twitches and fights and runs in his sleep.

Dreaming again of fire.

We hold  him tighter than usual on nights when thunder cracks the sky. Make sure the leash is secure when fireworks explode. 

He is shell shocked and damaged from an unknown war he waged in his past and still navigates in the present. 

We are comrades in arms he and I. 

So I don’t tell him to lay down and be quiet. I don’t tell him it will be alright; that he is being silly, that it is all in his head. 

I don’t explain to him the physics of sound and percussion; how the source is far removed from his fear. How his trembling limbs and heaving chest are wrong. How his racing heart is not to be trusted.

How it is all in the past and he is safe now. 

That he can relax.

Let down his guard.

I don’t tell him that he can allow the smoke and flame and crumbling walls to finally be extinguished; that he no longer has to choose between suffocation and burning. That it is ok to leave the smoldering rubble behind; cooling and resolidifying to become someone else’s solid ground. 

I don’t tell him these things.

I know he is not there.

Not yet.

Despite all of the progress made.

So instead I give him space. Allow him to run from the flames; crawl under the smoke, tell him I will wake him when it all becomes too much. Tell him we will try again tomorrow night, when the sound of his own shrieking wakes him up. 

I sit on chair in the corner of the room. Knees tucked under chin, blanket wrapped tight. 

Assure him I will stay awake. Promise I will not drift off.

Swear I will remain vigilant.

As his heavy eyes finally close, mine open wider.
My heart picks up an extra beat as his steadies and slows.

And as he surrenders and allows himself to be pulled under, my lungs fill with the heaviness of smoke and I see flames in every corner as the room and the house are set alight.