Explaining Death to the Dog

EXPLAINING DEATH TO THE DOG / Susan Perabo AFTER THE BABY DIED I found it imperative that my German shepherd Stu understand and accept the concept of death. The first week wasn't so bad, what with all our friends and relatives around, smothering Stu with affection. And Todd was home from work that week, dumping well-meaning casseroles accidentally-onpurpose onto the kitchen floor for Stu to indulge in. So Stu didn't notice the absence so much, didn't seem to. He trotted around the house happily, oblivious to the fact that the baby, who he had had a big hand in raising, was missing. Then the party ended. Guests cried the last of their tears at my front door, said "what a waste" for the thousandth and final time, and made their separate ways back to their separate lives, lives that sailed along quite smoothly despite the absence of the infant who they had been mourning for a good seven or eight days. Todd went back to work; packed up his briefcase and kissed me goodbye. He nearly tripped over Stu in his rush to get out of the house. He wanted away, wanted to get busy again. Stu and I stood at the window and watched him drive away. Stu looked up at me and then back at the empty driveway. He laid down on the floor in front of the window. I sat next to him and rubbed his stomach. He sighed. What to do with the baby dead? No diapers, no screaming, no feeding. What had I done before the baby? I had been pregnant. Pregnant for longer than she had lived. And what had I done before I got pregnant? I tried to remember. I supposed I had cleaned the house. Cooked. Taken Stu to the park. It didn't seem like it could have been nearly enough to take up a whole day. In the afternoon I made myself a sandwich from one of the two whole hams that were still in the refrigerator and sat in front of the television. I waited for Stu, waited for him to emerge from wherever he was sleeping, jingling and jangling his way to a possible meal. The house was quiet. Still, very still. The morning the baby died Todd shook me awake to the stillness and said, "Listen, she's sleeping ..." The Missouri Review I set my sandwich on the coffee table and got up to look for Stu. I called him a few times. Nothing. I walked through the house, from room to room. I found him upstairs, in the baby's room. The room was empty, except for one chair. Todd and the relatives had cleaned it out the day of the funeral because they said it was just too sad to look at. They stashed the crib in the back of a stranger's car and carted it away, hid the dolls and mobiles behind cobwebs in the basement. Then Todd's mother said the room looked so bare, so she had taken a chair from our bedroom and set it by the window. It looked unnatural by itself in the baby's room. Worse than bare. Just awkward. Stu was lying in the middle of the empty room. His ears were back and his eyes open. He didn't raise his head when I came in. His eyes just followed me. "Stu," I said. "Stu, what the hell are you doing?" He looked like he had eaten too much casserole, was what it was, looked like he might toss his canine cookies at any moment. He stood up lazily. He walked in circles around the room. You could tell he was looking for the baby. "No," I said. I called him to me and patted his head. "No more baby," I said. "Baby's gone." He looked at me with the universal blank dog look. He had no idea what I was talking about. "No baby," I said again. It was then that I realized the impossibility of the situation. It wasn't even like trying to explain death to a child. The dog simply couldn't understand the language. He...