On June 3rd, 2006, I posted the first of several Woo Tales that told the story of our family's much-loved Alaskan Malamute, Missy, who'd died the previous month. For those who have been following those occasional tales, you may have caught the recent diary concerning our placement of Mumsie into a nursing home for full-time, long-term care. She had become a bit too frail, and both the doctor and her adult daycare providers had suggested we move her to a nursing home for full-time, professional care sooner rather than later.
It's been an adjustment, but we're all managing well.
Mumsie still enjoys talking about Missy, who she recalls has passed away and was a much-loved dog more quickly than the time it takes for her to recognize Wifey or I. In light of that special bond they shared, and apparently still continue to share, I thought I'd put together this piece for those who have been following our progress.
Mumsie first met the "Woo Girlz" -- Missy and Ember -- when Wifey and I began dating. She was not interested in physically meeting them or allowing them into the house. She knew what kind of maintenance pets required, and how much they could shed; her husband had often brought home strays. Wifey and I realized that could be a sticking point for Mumsie, and we wanted to find a way to convince her that the two "Woos" were very sweet and loving. Eventually, we decided to let the "kidz" do their own talking; we brought them 'round to the back deck, where Missy sat down facing the back door and put on her prettiest face. It worked. Within a minute or two, Mumsie was singing "You must have been a beautiful baby" to her. Since then, that was always Missy's song.
It wasn't long before Mumsie would tell me to bring the dogs over whenever I was coming to take her and Wifey out to eat; she'd say we could put them in the house with the air conditioning until we got back. She knew my place was also air conditioned, but we all decided to overlook that little fact. She was finding the two fluffy beings to be irresistible. When Wifey and I married, Mumsie's Alzheimer's had become much more evident; instead of Wifey moving away from Mumsie and in with me, I moved in with them. We decided that this way we could save money and prepare to purchase a home nearby with an in-law apartment, enabling us to have Mumsie with us so we could look out for her while affording us a little more privacy. The dogs took to their new home eagerly.
Maybe it was a factor of age and experience, or maybe it was the mutual recognition of each other's status as "family matriarch" of their respective clans, but -- regardless -- Mumsie and Missy hit it off especially well. Even when Missy's health began to decline a tad more rapidly than Mumsie's, and her walking became quite the chore -- her wobbles were due to the struggle to keep her legs and hips working, while Mumsie's wobbles were due to a combination of the effects of dementia and deterioration from spinal stenosis upon her sense of balance -- Missy still loved to go on short walks. She knew that Mumsie would always be willing to take her, and I'd take the little dog. They were a sight to see. Here's how I described it in the diary The Lady Vanishes...Again:
My mother-in-law had shared a special bond with Missy. They both had hip problems, and would lurch and wobble like synchronized dancers whenever we'd go for a walk. Missy knew that Mumsie was her human counterpart -- the eldest matriarch of the house, and fragile. She took care of her as best she could, watching out for her and letting my wife and I know if anything was amiss. Mumsie knew this, and it touched her heart as much as it did ours.
Both Missy and Ember looked out for Mumsie, but -- being dogs -- they also knew they could take occasional advantage of her failing memory. I'm not certain exactly when they figured it out, but shortly after we'd moved in and established a routine, I would come home from clients to find that the brand-new box of treats we'd opened that morning was nearly empty. Mumsie insisted that she had nothing to do with it, but she was the only one able to reach the treats atop the refrigerator. I decided to watch quietly and see what I could learn.
It didn't take long before I saw Missy peek around the corner from the kitchen to watch me as I sat in the living room. Moments later, Ember peeked 'round from the opposite corner. Apparently satisfied, they both withdrew and I heard them trot across the kitchen floor to where Mumsie was as she came in from the porch.
On her way out to water the plants, she had given them each a treat.
Now, on her way back in, they pretended that it was time for a treat. Approximately ten minutes had passed; Mumsie would have forgotten.
They got a treat.
Happily, they scampered back to the living rom -- and stopped short. They saw me watching.
They sulked back into the kitchen and found quiet places to hide -- Missy hid under the kitchen table, and Ember underneath Wifey's desk. They knew. What was worse, they knew that I knew that they knew.
They stopped, for the most part, taking undo advantage of Mumsie's forgetfulness, but Wifey and I devised a method to help Mumsie: we created a treat schedule on a poster with times and pockets containing treats for each dog. Mumsie could check the time, and if there were treats in the pocket she could give 'em to the dogs. If not, she'd know that she'd already done it.
The dogs weren't thrilled by this, but they complied.
Even though both the dogs and Mumsie truly enjoyed the giving and receiving of treats, Mumsie knew that too many treats could be bad for the dogs, and she tried to explain it to them several times. Missy tried the hardest to understand her, often "talking" to her about whatever was on her own mind in return. (Often, these conversations worked their way around to why Missy ought to get a treat right then and there -- if you knew Missy, you could follow the signs and know exactly what she was "talking" about most of the time.)
Dogs have a shorter lifecycle than humans, and this became painfully obvious in the final year of Missy's life. We watched sadly as our stalwart friend slowly began to exhibit more signs of enfeeblement from both age and arthritis. When she could no longer climb the stairs to check on Mumsie, she stubbornly refused to give up her "Mumsie-watching" responsibilities. As I wrote in the piece Someone to watch over me..., Missy compensated for her single-floor limitation by employing her ears and her voice:
When Missy could no longer climb the stairs to check on Mumsie at night or to let Ember in to wake her in the mornings, she'd sometimes lay at the foot of the stairs and gaze up toward "Yia-yia's" room. Other times, she'd slowly meander the house, following a circular route on the first floor that took her primarily around just beneath Mumsie's bedroom floor. If Mumsie got up in the middle of the night and began rummaging (a symptom of her illness), Missy would come over to the couch and get me, or - if it was a rare time that both Wifey and I had gone to bed upstairs - she'd "woo" quietly up the stairs to get our attention. (Note: "Woo" and "quietly" don't normally go together in a sentence.) She took her "job" and responsibilities for safeguarding her family very seriously.
Mumsie knew how much Missy loved her, and adored her all the more in return. Even though she had always hated the cold and her advancing deterioration made her even more susceptible, she would don a jacket and a hat in cold weather to go out onto the porch so that Missy could get some sunlight and fresh air and have someone to talk to.
And they'd talk.
They'd talk, and sit, and visit with each other -- Missy, enjoying the sun and the company of her friend with the understanding of how difficult it was for her to endure the cold, and Mumsie, warmed by her capacity to comfort her aging friend in a time of need in a way that nobody else could.
When Missy's time came, we made the heartbreaking decision to say good-bye that night, in spite of our selfish desire to hold onto her until the morning. Everyone was sad, but all of us -- Wifey, Mumsie and I -- stayed with the big girl until she'd passed.
We all felt her loss. The absence of the large furry head nudging us to say "it's alright" or the "Woo woo" calls that announced dinner times, the soft brown eyes watching us or twinkling whenever she'd be playing a joke...we all missed her.
Mumsie's depth of attachment and loss was greater than either my wife or I anticipated. From her surreptitiously stealing away Missy's ashes to her constant mention of her furry friend's passing, Mumsie conveyed that she'd lost a friend and companion who had bonded more closely with her than we'd previously realized.
On March 30th of this year, Mumsie had to go into the hospital for a little over a week for some special testing. While she was there, she had a small stuffed dog that she constantly called "Missy" and took with her everywhere; "Missy" was her constant companion, and I never heard Mumsie complain or want to go home the entire time. The nurses all found Mumsie's recollections of "the real Missy" to be amazing.
Now that Mumsie is in a nursing home, she has three stuff animals upon her dresser -- one is a little brown down named Ember, another is a kinda-Husky-looking dog named Jack and the final one is a soft, light-colored dog with sad eyes that Mumsie calls "Missy." It's the same stuffed animal she'd taken around in her previous hospital stay.
Even now, Mumsie still loves to see old pictures of Missy, and she finds comfort in them as well as the stuffed representation of her former companion and my co-caretaker.
It's both comforting to know that Missy made such an indelible impression as well as sad to realize that Mumsie is now carrying on without her most recent best friend. Mumsie lost her parents, then her husband, then her brothers, then a close family friend -- each loss saddened her and left her feeling a little more abandoned. Then she found a new friend, in Missy, and then she too was lost.
She now has her memories, her daughter and me -- her favorite (and only) son-in-law. Soon enough, as the ravages of the dementia spawned by Alzheimer's Disease progress, she won't even have her memories.
In spite of all that, however, I still believe that she'll have some knowledge of, some memory of, and some comfort from her warm and fuzzy companion -- the co-matriarch with whom she shared such an important part of her life.
They are both quite stubborn. I can easily believe that neither death nor disease will interfere with their ability to maintain the tie that binds them so strongly.
The friendship they formed, the bond they forged and the memories they've created and shared with all of us are an inspiration and a testament to the power of love and friendship to overcome any challenge that life can dish out.
We need more examples of such love and dedication, and in the spirit of that observation I gladly share the above tale with all of you.
Namaste. Peace.
Crossposted on ePluribus Media, DailyKos and StreetProphets.