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First Person  |  By Lynda V. Mapes

For Pete's Sake

Mourning the loss of joy, pure and simple

EACH NIGHT it was the same.

Returning from work, I would open the door of my car and, before even getting my legs out, I'd hear it: the clamor of Pete and Molly, my two black Labradors, barreling to greet me, boiling over with joy.

Down on my knees, my nose buried in their fur, salty from Puget Sound or fresh-scented from the woods, all my cares would drop from my shoulders like a heavy coat.

It's not that I didn't have someone inside waiting for me — with dinner, too, a fire in the woodstove, even a hot bath. All this after 20 years of marriage, no less!

But it's different with dogs.

You don't talk with Pete about whether it's time to visit a financial planner. He doesn't ask you to stop at the store on the way home.

Pete wags his tail no matter what happened today, to me or to him. When I hold him, warm, and wiggling with happiness, it is the simplest, purest joy in the world.

I am lucky enough to have loved deeply and well, and be loved, all of my life. But with dogs, that love is uncomplicated by the inevitable disappointments and limits humans know.

Like everyone, I have suffered losses in my life. My mother, a few years ago, my twin brother, when we were just 19. Deep, terrible wounds, both.

But when Pete fell down a well last January and drowned, it was in some ways even worse. His death was like a spear I carried stabbed clear through my chest, wagging up and down as I walked, goring me as I sat at my desk, skewering my heart as I tossed and turned without sleep night after night.

How could this be? I eventually figured it out, as I walked the rooms of my grief, one by one, helpless to lock the door against the onrushing power of it.

It is the way dogs live so deeply in our lives, in our most unguarded recesses of trust. They are so innocent, and their love so pure and unconditional, we offer love we haven't felt since we were newborns in return.

Pete slept on our bed every night. He spent every day I worked at home curled at my feet, his chin on my toes. In the garden, he would become covered with plants and soil as he lounged beside me while I weeded. In the kitchen, I learned long ago to watch where I stepped because Pete would always be right next to me. I never realized how much I talked to him, all day long.

The day I lost him, I knew something dire had to have happened; he simply never left my side.

We searched for Pete for 12 long, horrible days, during some of the worst weather of the year. It was a parks department employee who finally found him, in an abandoned cistern, where he had followed the scent of a deer that crashed through its rotted roof and perished.

I brought Pete home, and washed him all over. I used my bare hands and best soap, and rinsed him with water poured from a bowl, not sprayed from a hose. Then I wrapped him in my Pendleton blanket from the bed we shared.

My husband dug his grave in a spot Molly chose, tears running down his face as he shoveled.

We lined Pete's grave with cedar boughs, and laid him down with his dish, an apple, a pig ear, his favorite stuffed rabbit, and stick. We covered him with more cedar boughs, then said good-bye and filled Pete's grave together.

Weeks later, Molly still often lies on top of it, her nose aligned with his. How does she know?

Since Pete's death, the outpouring of compassion from friends, family, colleagues at work, people I don't even know has been remarkable. Cards, candles, flowers, chocolates. An offer to frame my favorite picture of Pete. A rosebush, an apple tree, a hydrangea and a marker for his grave. Poems, hugs, tears. A Pendleton to replace the one Pete has now.

As much as these are for me, and for Pete, I know they are also something else: tributes to the love in every dog owner's life that is never too good to be true.

It wasn't like this when my mother died, or even my twin. People were very kind, but a little uneasy, worried they didn't know the "right" thing to say. It's not like that when you've lost your dog. Everyone knows what that means. The love of a dog is one of our few universal languages.

In a world ever more complicated, more abstract and divided, dogs connect us to each other, and even to our long-forgotten animal selves.

It's our dogs that get us away from the keyboard, out of the house, the office. They must be walked, even if we won't take a walk for ourselves. And so we experience the primal pleasures in life, from deep breaths of fresh air to the slow, reassuring gyre of the seasons.

Pete loved a warm fire at night, food in his belly, and a loving touch. Really, do we need much more?

His loyalty was never in question, his happiness to see me never in doubt. He would forbear my mistakes and overlook my shortcomings.

For him, it was always enough for me just to be.

And every morning, the garage band of Pete's tail whacking the radiators as he woke us for his breakfast brought a smile, even on the darkest Northwest days.

As he grew older, Pete's infirmities grew, too. He was 11, and I know we didn't have much more time together.

But losing him so suddenly, and the way we did, isn't anything I'll ever get over. I'll never forget him.

Pete was our mentor; I'm a better person for having known him. How many people can we say that about?

Pete gifted us with a kindness, an ability to be present in the moment, and a fearless, unqualified love any of us would be proud to achieve.

So here's to the Petes in our lives. Let us hope to be worthy of them.

Lynda V. Mapes is a Seattle Times staff writer.