Walking the dog can become exercise in remembering mom
I was walking my greyhound, Olivia, around our quiet neighborhood when I first heard the footsteps close behind me. I stepped aside to let the person pass — except when I turned around, no one was there. OK, so I was hearing things.
I didn’t give it much thought when, a few days later, I again heard the pitter-patter of feet behind me and turned around to find nothing but air. I chalked it up to the wind rustling the leaves or weird sound waves transmitting footsteps from miles away. Whatever. But over subsequent weeks, when I heard the footsteps time and time again, and the hair would stand up on the back of my neck, it dawned on me that perhaps I wasn’t alone.
Before I lost my mother to a pulmonary embolism in 2009, one of our greatest joys and simple pleasures was walking our dogs together. With her two dogs trotting alongside my late greyhound, Elvis, we looked like a local Iditarod team as we strolled throughout her Pleasanton neighborhood. In 2005, when Mom had knee replacement surgery, I assumed her dog-walking duties and was surprised by the number of people — most of them complete strangers — who expressed their concern over her absence. People I’d never met before would run out of their homes or stop their cars to ask, “What happened to the nice lady with the two dogs?” And I’d assure them she was laid up with a bum knee and would be back soon.
And she was, because nothing could keep my mom from walking her beloved dogs. But she was getting older and her gait wasn’t as fast as it used to be. Our 3-mile walks trickled down to 2 miles, then 1, until eventually our treks became loops around the block.
Then one day her greyhound, Lucy, bolted after a cat and knocked Mom to the ground, breaking her wrist, and we agreed that maybe I should do the dog-walking from now on. She could still walk with me, I suggested, and enjoy the exercise and fresh air. And that’s what we did, relishing our mother-daughter time while delighting in the company of our dogs.
For months after Mom’s death, the silence was deafening when I walked Elvis and Lucy, whom I’d adopted. Suddenly there was no one to share my laughter when Lucy would comically peek under cars looking for cats. No one to ease my concern when I noticed that Elvis had developed a limp. No one to chat with, as the dogs nibbled on wild grass, about the newest movies to see or restaurants to try.
At no time was my mother’s absence more piercing than when I walked the dogs.
When sweet Lucy died of an insidious liver disease in 2011 and I lost my precious Elvis to cancer just six months later, I gave up hope: These tears were perennial, this ache etched in stone. My heart would never heal.
But funny, goofy Olivia has helped return the smile to my face and the spring to my step, especially when I observe her giddy delight during our walks. And now, suddenly, I’m hearing these footsteps. I think I know to whom they belong and who’s at the end of her leash.
I suspect the footsteps have been there all this time, guiding me. While my heart was ensconced in the kryptonite of grief, I just wasn’t able to hear them.