Jolene’s medications came on time. Las medicinas de Jolene llegaron a tiempo. I’d spent days watching her struggle more and more each morning and feeling like my body ached like hers. Los perros de campo are different. They move about the world differently; with a confidence from worlds outside of my reckoning. They’re intuitive and strong and come in and out of the land as they please. At least that’s how it goes for Jolene and Guaricha, the dogs that live in the land where I am now.
Jolene (left) and Guaricha (right)
Their guts are strong, they’re able to get into the finca’s compost as if it was fresh food on a silver platter served just for them. They come back from adventures smelling rotten but I still pet them when they greet me. They’re the land’s guardians, las que saludan al sol y a la luna.
I forgot about my series of delights I’d started months ago. I knew that would happen but here I am, wanting to focus on these delights instead of my heartbeat. Soon after this, I’ll have to fill out a digital stack of insurance papers that I’ve been avoiding for days. But for right now, I’ll focus on Jolene, the dog I’ve gotten (over)attached to as if we’ve met in another life, greeting the moon and the sun together.
She showed up with a limp a couple weeks ago and at the time, we thought she’d recover on her own easily as these dogs often do but each day was a little worse and as I struggled with my own share of health things, I eventually began to attach my pain to hers and hers to mine; absorbing and connecting each other with no separation.
“You’re a psychic empathic sponge” my therapist has said (ha!)
The vet come on time with a list of medications after a couple of tough days. Un hombre trigueño with pristine white hair like my grandma’s, slicked back with goma. He smelled of cologne and cattle from the rest of his visits nearby this part of the mountain and he brought a helper with him who smiled through the whole consult and couldn’t remember where anything was in the toolkits they brought.
“¿Ven este pelo?” He asked me and a friend who helped me handle the dogs while he inspected them. “Jabón Rey. Toda una vida. Nunca use champú ni nada de eso. ¿Pa’ que´?”
I relinquished the responsibility to give Jolene her medication, overcoming my controlling ego-state and surrendering the task to someone else, accepting that being first to witness her delicate state was making my own body feel weak and gone.
“Qué tal si se muere?” I asked Camilo a few days ago when she laid in bed all day, barely acknowledging me or anyone who visited.
“Pues tenaz, pero se muere, vida.”
I cried.
I realized through those days of uncertainty, the true impact of the lack of separation between me and Jolene. That taking care of her was in a way, nursing myself back to health. The unpredictability of my own health, of days where I had to surrender and understand that I couldn’t control it all that I could only wait things out; that the more I surrendered, the better for my mind to connect with my body. Telling her every morning that her body would be here still come night time. That we’d all be here, including me, my own body. And struggling to accept that if she needed to go, that it would be alright. And that I’d be alright.
I’ve found myself saying that many times the last few months. Reminding myself of the impermanence needed to feel things deeply earthside. I remember thinking it as I held abuelo’s hand at the hospital back in December and he looked back at me, his eyes distant. I say it to abuela when she visits worlds unknown, and was crossing my fingers that I’d not have to mention it to Jolene as the medicine slowly entered her body and I tried to ground myself on little improvements (delight) which eventually did come along in bigger ways. Waking up and jogging down the stone steps with her sister Guaricha, saludando al sol y despidiendo a la luna.
I’m looking at Jolene from atop the granero right now. She lays on the cool tile of the house’s wrap-around porch. We both went down the hill to see a group of residents off as they headed into town for dinner. I can walk down now knowing I can come back up. She does too. She sat at my feet for more than a few minutes while looking up into my eyes, hers less distant now, mine more here.
hola vida mia.
estamos bien.
This post was republished here with the generous permission of the author. Maria Perdomo Ardilo’s writing can be found here.
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