It was about midnight on a Tuesday. After a few fitful hours of sleep, I awoke to my heart racing, feeling like it was about to flutter right out of my chest. I glanced at my Garmin and saw 100 for my heart rate. It’s usually around 60 when I sleep. I checked the monitor to see if the puppies were still asleep and they were, curled up tight against each other into one little fur ball. We adopted them five days ago from a local rescue and my body has been in full rebellion since the second day. That night, I was up running to the bathroom every few hours with what I thought was a digestive bug, but by Monday it was apparent something more sinister was at play. I couldn’t eat and my gut was still a wreck. Add in the periodic episodes of tachycardia waking me up at night and something was clearly amiss. I worry the puppies are too much, and text M as much in the middle of the night.
We talked for almost an hour, with me being as quiet as possible as I didn’t want to wake the puppies. Being so young, they’d soon be up to go outside and I wanted to put that off as long as I could. I don’t understand what’s happening to my body and am worried about what’s going to happen in the three+ days until M gets home. He’s only been out for a day and it’s already a shit show. I wonder if we should contact the rescue, but he thinks he can get home early. He will make some calls first thing in the morning and I will do my best to keep my head above water until then. As someone who’s always prided herself on having her shit together, I hate that I need help. I hate that this is too much. I hate that my body is rebelling in such an obvious way that it cannot be ignored. I deeply resent that after everything that’s happened in the last three months, that now my body is like a wildfire raging out of control.
It’s June 11, 2019. Just over three months after my dad died from pancreatic cancer. Not yet three weeks since my old-lady dog Abby died unexpectedly. Adopting the puppies was supposed to be a bright spot in what has been an incredibly shitty year so far. We’ve lived with at least one dog since we got Sadey, our Lab, in September 2001. She was with us until August 2016. We rescued Abby in October in 2004, and with her passing that chapter of our life officially came to a close. Sadey and Abby brought so much life and joy to our home. Sadey with her love of naps in front of the fan and Abby with her gentle scolding when the popcorn I tossed her didn’t land to her liking. With them gone, M wanted to take a break from having pets. But with him away for work as much as he is, a quiet house in the midst of this dreadful year seemed like a miserable idea. So one adult dog became two puppies after our dog sitter reached out when these two came into the shelter. It’s one of those moments that when I look back on it, replays in slow motion as I scream at the woman to stop and pay attention.
I navigated my dad’s passing fairly well, all things considered. He lived with pancreatic cancer for 3-1/2 years, which is practically an eternity for that particular cancer. As with a lot of terminal cancers, there were warning signs those last few months that suggested we were running out of time. Which is to say that while his passing was tragic, he was only 65 and we should have had much more time with him, it was not unexpected. What was unexpected was how much time we had following his diagnosis. When you expect someone to be gone in less than a year and one year turns into 3-1/2, the extra time feels like a tremendous gift, even as the ending is the same shitty ending. Three and a half years is a lot of time to acclimate to what’s about to happen. I started grieving the minute we got confirmation of his diagnosis. Which isn’t to say that a tsunami of despair didn’t accompany his passing, but I was prepared for it.
When my dad was diagnosed in the summer of 2015, I did the math and realized I was going to be the girl who lost her dog and her dad in the same year. I assumed that dog would be Sadey, as she was 14 years old at the time. Abby was 11. But then my dad and his treatment team found a groove, and when we lost Sadey the following summer, my dad was humming a long just fine. I thought I’d dodged a bullet.
The years clicked by with my dad holding his own, even as we knew it wouldn’t last. By late 2018, it was clear the cancer was getting the upper had. He looked as though he’d aged ten years since the summer and he was sleeping more. Other troubling symptoms started to pop up. The clock spun faster. We had our last lunch together on Monday, February 4th. Exactly four weeks before he died. And I knew it was our last lunch. Just as I knew he had pancreatic cancer when my mom mentioned his symptoms on that July evening in 2015. So when he passed just after midnight on Monday, March 4, I was as prepared as one can be.
What I was not prepared for was Abby’s quick decline two months later. She was so spunky, so full of life for being 14 years old. We knew we were on the short end of her time with us, but it wasn’t until 36 hours before we said goodbye that we knew anything was amiss. And with her passing, a small little fire that had burning in my body since the death of my dad, grew into a bonfire, but a fire I could still ignore. With the adoption of the puppies a few weeks later, I poured gasoline on the fire and it quickly over took my life.
It would take months for me to recover from the aftermath of that June. M did the heavy lifting on so many fronts, most especially in caring for the babies. Part of me resented them, thinking they were responsible for what happened to me. Which of course they weren’t. They were a catalyst, but they weren’t the cause. The cause was my own inability to see what was happening. When the dust finally settled from that terrible time, my takeaway was that when a fire is burning, pull up a chair and watch. Don’t ignore it. And for the love of god, don’t add more fuel.
It wasn’t until last fall when I started my coach training that I had language beyond metaphor for what I experienced that summer. One of the first concepts we learned about was the change cycle. Life transformation follows a cyclical course with four phases, a course that we navigate many times in many aspects of our life. We can be in different phases of the change cycle in different aspects of our lives – Square One in our career, Square Four in our relationship with our significant other for example.
The cycle kicks off with a catalytic event. Catalytic events are a shock, an opportunity, or a transition, and can be good or bad events. The catalytic event sends us into the first phase of the change cycle – Square One. Square One is a time of fundamental death and rebirth. Old identities, old patterns, old versions of the self are shed to make way for the new. It is a deeply uncomfortable stretch of time. Martha Beck’s mantra for Square One is “I don’t know what the hell is going on, and that’s okay.” (For reference, Square Two is for dreaming and scheming, the motto is “there are no rules and that’s okay”; Square Three is the hero’s saga, the motto is “this is much harder than I expected and that’s okay”; Square Four is the promise land and the motto is “everything is changing and that’s okay”. For more information, Martha Beck goes in to detail on the change cycle in her book Finding Your Own North Star.)
As it turned out, I had two catalytic events right on top of each other – my dad’s death and Abby’s death. Then, because apparently that wasn’t enough, I added in a third for good measure by adopting two young dogs. Looking back now with the context of what I know about Square One, it feels like a foregone conclusion that the summer of 2019 was going to be a fucking disaster. There was no other way for it to go. Two of the most important steps for navigating Square One are to stay present and make small moves. Stay present and make small moves = pull up a chair and watch the fire burn, maybe make some s’mores and read a good book. In other words, don’t adopt two young dogs after the death of your father and beloved old lady dog.
For better or worse, holding still goes against our cultural narrative of what it means to be a worthwhile human. We worship productivity culture and resist pausing for any reason at nearly all costs. It didn’t occur to me when everything was going wrong in the first half of 2019 that it was a warning sign, a caution light encouraging me to slow down. In fact, slowing down was the exact opposite of what I wanted do. So I ran head long into a situation that would be my undoing. It took about four months to crawl out of the hole I dug for myself in June 2019, an incredibly high price to pay.
But the next time I land in Square One, I’ll recognize it and know what to do. I’ll know to stand still and wait. To pause as long as it takes for the dust to settle. To let the fire burn itself out. To not make any big decisions, even if big decisions seem like wonderful distractions. They are not. They are fuel on the fire and I know how spectacularly that can blow up.
And while that summer was traumatic (not an exaggeration), we made it thanks to a lot of help from other people. My sister watched the puppies while I showered those first few days. Our dog sitter, the local doggie daycare, and Bob the trainer, who helped us teach the puppies not to be assholes (Jack is still working on this), saved our butts time and time again. I still need a lot of help with the babies, but we’re managing. And when one or both of them curl up on me in the middle of the night, I am so deeply grateful to have not missed out on this. They’ve been my greatest teachers, it turns out.
