Love Is the Best Medicine (32 page)

Over a year had passed since I wrote to Sandi via her daughter Sonja, who lived on the island of Bermuda. During that time I had received no response. I had suspected that they were not ready to revisit the wounds, had moved on, but surely they would welcome this amazing news.

For over two weeks I waited patiently for a reply, happy to impugn the inadequacies and tardiness of international snail mail until my second letter to the Rasmussens sailed all the way back into my mailbox at work, branded with the discouraging label “Return to Sender, Address Unknown.”

Puzzled and a little perturbed I went back to the computer record and managed to discover Sonja’s work phone number. Calling her during office hours, stirring up what were still likely to be painful memories in the presence of her colleagues, was less than ideal, but remembering my promise to her mother, believing there might be a
measure of comfort in my news and left with no alternative, I dialed the number.

The dial tone gave way to an automated phone system at an insurance company (no surprise there, given Bermuda’s prowess in the business). I was guided to a staff directory based on the first three letters of the last name and I punched in R-A-S.

“I’m sorry. We are unable to locate an employee by that name.”

“Hum,” I thought. “I wonder if she’s using her maiden name or married name.”

Though my disappointment was offset by the charm of the preset British accent, managing to make my dismissal sound polite but authoritative, I dialed again and bided my time until I could speak directly to a company operator, who informed me I should call back on Friday, after four thirty local time, and speak to a supervisor. This I did, only to be informed that Sonja Rasmussen no longer worked for their company and had left no forwarding address.

Running into this brick wall was a double whammy. Not only was I unable to get in touch with Sandi, but now there was an even greater probability that my first letter, fulfilling my promise to report on a deserving case, missed its mark, my silence interpreted as a dismissal. For days, whenever I had a spare moment between cases, I went online, hunting for leads, trying to track down mother or daughter, coming up confused and empty-handed.

In the end I printed out Cleo’s entire medical record. Thankfully it included the paperwork put through our financial department, and there, scratched in curly female cursive, I discovered Sonja had provided an e-mail address.

I didn’t hold out much hope. People change their e-mail addresses all the time. If she was no longer living in Bermuda there was a good chance she had changed her Internet provider. And this was when a troubling thought crossed my mind. What might have
prompted Sonja to leave Bermuda in the first place? Did this have anything to do with the death of Cleo?

I copied and pasted this second letter into the body of an e-mail, added an apology that once again I was directing this communication to Sonja and not her mother, Sandi, and hit “Send.”

I
T ALL
happened so fast—I arrived at work the next morning to find replies in my in-box and messages on my voice mail. There was a time when sadness and trepidation might have given me pause before picking up a phone and calling Sandi Rasmussen, but not now, not with what I wanted to share. And there was something else that made it easier, woven into her written and spoken words, sentiments that touched and pained my heart—delight and gratitude.

“I’ve written you so many letters and never mailed them,” said Sandi. “You have no idea how much impact you had on all our lives.”

“Oh, God,” I thought. “This can’t be good.”

“I will never forget the day I walked out of your hospital, how much I ached for Cleo, how much I appreciated our time together, that you hadn’t rushed me, that you were genuinely interested in what I had to say. You remember Sonja, my daughter?”

“Of course.”

“I love her with all my heart, but she and I have always had a tough relationship.”

Sandi touched on her childhood, her emotional estrangement with her mother, her emotional fulfillment through the animals in her life.

“It’s taken me a long time to realize that Sonja is not like me. She never will be. She never should be. And the only reason I finally came to this understanding was through Cleo. I’m sorry, do you have time to hear this?”

“Please,” I said, and even though she was calling me from thousands of miles away in Canada, I could remember and feel her aura,
the resonance and power of her attitude, her understated, selfless interpretation of life’s vagaries and conceits. I was all ears, hanging on every word.

“Heading home to Canada from Boston I had plenty of time to think. Plenty of time to think about Cleo. And I found myself remembering this one time when we were in Bermuda visiting Sonja, her husband, Dave, and their Min Pin, Odin. I think I told you how Cleo and I were always together, I mean always.”

“She traveled with you on business. Loved airports,” I said.

“That’s right. Good memory.”

I said nothing. Given the sad circumstances and my concern about our confrontation, there wasn’t much about our meeting that I was likely to forget.

“Cleo doted on Odin, loved him to pieces, and during the second week of our stay, she suddenly decided that she would rather spend her nights sleeping with Sonja and Dave and Odin than with me. At the time I was devastated. I couldn’t believe that Cleo would abandon me. Every night for the next two weeks she would say goodnight and trot off down the hall to sleep where she preferred, with someone other than me. All I could do was watch her go. And every morning she and Odin would come bounding onto my bed, happy to wake me up and thinking nothing about it.

“Then it hit me. It wasn’t that Cleo didn’t want to sleep with me. It wasn’t that she was making a conscious choice or demonstrating a preference. She just loved being around Odin. Simple as that. She wanted to spend time with him. And I started to realize where we go so wrong with love. We waste so much time imagining, idealizing how we think love should look and how it should feel. We miss out on all the good stuff, the subtle stuff which is what it’s all about. If it is real love, all we have to do is focus on making the people or animals we love happy, giving them what they need, and you can guarantee it will come full circle. The first time there was a thunderstorm, it was under
my
sweater where Cleo wanted to hide. When
she got a thorn stuck in her pad, she hobbled over to
me
for help and nobody else.”

“Long before I got home that day I came to believe Cleo was trying to teach me a lesson. I think Cleo wanted me to understand that if you really love something, true love, be it for a dog or a daughter, show them by loving them the way
they
need to be loved.”

Okay, I thought, I liked the sentiment but what about all those lopsided, futile relationships, with one partner doing all the work for little in return. Maybe that was why she used the phrase “true love,” a reciprocal love. Or maybe her conviction was better suited to the unembellished, uncomplicated love of an animal.

“After Cleo died, Sonja flew back to Bermuda, devastated. She felt like she had let me down. She desperately wanted to make my pain go away and she didn’t know where to begin. I didn’t push her or try to get her to open up. To this day I still don’t know exactly how all this happened, how Cleo got injured. And what difference would it make? Would Sonja have been in any less pain? My daughter is an extremely private person. She’s not like me. She keeps her feelings bottled up inside.”

She waited a beat, collecting her thoughts, coming back on track.

“And that was when Cleo’s lesson hit me. I needed to learn to love Sonja the way she needed to be loved. I have wasted too much time expecting her to love me my way. What makes my way right? Just because Sonja uses a different emotional vocabulary doesn’t mean I can’t learn to speak her language.”

I was beginning to wonder where all this was leading. It seemed so personal.

“In the end it was your letter that brought us together, closer than we have ever been before.”

“My first letter?” I asked, thrilled that she actually received it and stunned by its apparent impact.

“Yes. I still carry it with me. It’s all dog-eared, and I’ve folded it so many times it’s held together with Scotch tape.”

“I don’t understand,” I said. “I just wrote to tell you about Helen. To let you know I took my promise to you and Cleo seriously. I didn’t know if it would make any difference, but I did know Helen was a dog who deserved a chance, the perfect underdog, precisely the kind of dog Cleo would have rooted for.”

“I agree,” said Sandi, “but because you didn’t have my address the letter went via Sonja. It was addressed to her and naturally she read it. When she did, your message caused something about her to change.”

I was lost. I didn’t remember being particularly eloquent or poetic. What on earth had I done?

“You wrote so many nice things about me and Cleo, and when Sonja read them, it was as though she was able to see me for the first time through another person’s eyes. Don’t get me wrong, she’s always loved me, but she loved me on her terms. You gave her another, different perspective, as though it had been hidden in plain sight, and now she knew exactly where to look. It has changed everything.”

“For the better, I hope.”

I made the appeal in my voice pretty obvious but she didn’t answer.

“Even before Cleo’s passing, Sonja had been struggling to save her marriage. She wanted me to be angry at her, to blame her, and in turn, she ended up blaming Dave. It was the final straw. She left him, filed for divorce, and moved back to Canada.”

Somehow I kept the “Oh, my God” to myself. This was why I had been unable to reach her in Bermuda. I had created a butterfly effect. Because of me a dog dies under anesthesia, and it ruins a marriage and drives an irreparable wedge between a mother and daughter.

“Don’t worry,” she said, as if divining my anxiety from the static between us, “they’re back together and better than ever. In fact not long ago we had an incredible reunion. It was the first time I had seen Dave since Cleo’s passing. I wanted him to know that this was
nobody’s fault, that there was no blame to assign, but he was so sad and so sorry, the three of us ended up hugging each other and crying.”

And then Sandi returned to the way her daughter had rediscovered the importance of her marriage.

“I’m not saying it wasn’t touch and go for a while, but ultimately Cleo’s death awakened something inside both Sonja and Dave. They both realized they were making a classic mistake, living their lives only appreciating what they had when it was taken from them. This little dog may have been gone, but ultimately her absence alone was powerful enough to salvage a marriage.”

I was already speechless and in need of a handkerchief, but Sandi Rasmussen decided to finish me off with the kind of philosophy and celestial insight guaranteed to pierce the armor of even the most hardhearted cynic.

“So you see everything happens for a reason. Everything is connected. Cleo lived a wonderful life and even in death she reached out and changed lives. She changed your awareness of, and attitude toward, a dog named Helen. She rescued a failing marriage. And she forever changed the relationship between a mother and a daughter. As painful as Cleo’s passing was, I cherished every moment we were together, and when you can see it in this context, the amount of actual time is irrelevant because the intensity of the moment is guaranteed to last. I could have lost a child, a dog, a cat, or an elephant. It doesn’t matter, because what remains, and what can never be lost, is a spirit. And besides, she was never really
my
dog. I just had the privilege of sharing fourteen months of my life with her.”

N
OT
so long ago, over at a friend’s house for dinner, I was introduced to a man who had just celebrated his ninety-first birthday. His name was Jim, and though the years had stolen a few inches from his spine and his tidy white hair had reverted to the fineness of the newborn, he was sharp and witty and full of life. Call me sentimental, but when I get a chance to talk to someone who’s done a whole lot of living you can be sure I’m looking to learn a thing or two.

I made a point of sitting next to him, and over our meal Jim discovered what I did for a living and leaned into me.

“A word of advice,” he whispered, as though this pearl was for my ears only.

I stopped eating, my knife and fork drifting from mouth to plate.

“Never breathe your soul into a dog.”

His milky blue eyes tried hard to focus in on mine as though this was the best way for the old man to give his point extra weight.

I swallowed and began chewing his sentence over in my mind, wondering if I should have heard the phrase before, if it was a quotation, something Jim had picked up along the way or plagiarized to fit his needs.

“What do you mean?” I asked.

For a moment, he worked his cracked lips, taking his thoughts for a test drive, as though he were trying to remember the lines he had rehearsed. Then he said, “A dog is just a dog. You would do well to remember that.”