Sister Mother Husband Dog: (Etc.) by Delia Ephron Page B

what happened to them. Most likely my parents had a hand in it, or possibly a roving dog, which is what we were told. We didn’t mourn them. Also I had two very small turtles, Sunshine and Moonglow (possibly also won at a carnival), and it pains me to confess I let the water dry up in their bowl. In other words, I killed them.
    Twelve or so years later, when I was taking a required science class in college, I had to cut a planaria in half. A planaria is a flatworm and, if you cut it in half, it regenerates, grows another head and tail. I cut mine in half, went off to Yale for the weekend, and when I returned my planaria was dead. There was a note from my professor.
I didn’t think you were the sort of person to let a planaria die.
But he was wrong. Because of Sunshine and Moonglow, I knew that I was exactly the sort of person to let a planaria die.
    I got a dog because my friend Deena got a dog. That’s one of the best things about friends. Because they do something, you do something—something wonderful that you would never do. At the time I was married and living in Los Angeles with my two stepchildren. (Andjust as an aside, if you are a stepparent, rush right out and get yourself a dog. Because it’s very nice to have someone in the house that loves you.)
    We had Daisy, a rescue, for thirteen years. She was part Tibetan Terrier, which probably means nothing to you, but she had a coat of white and brown fur so soft and beautiful, you could wear it to a ball. She was about twenty-five pounds (not too big, not too small). Truly gorgeous.
    Like gorgeous people, she knew she didn’t have to work hard to get attention. People on the street fell all over her, drivers shouted out of car windows, “What is she?” “A mutt,” I would shout back, knowing I had the most beautiful mutt in the world. Whenever I walked her, she would bark at the wind. This never failed to enchant me. In truth, however, she was a bit of a withholding dog, not one for a cuddle or a kiss.
    We lived in Los Angeles longer than we should have because I couldn’t bear to put Daisy in the cargo hold of an airplane. Then the Northridge quake happened.
    I had never been in a big earthquake. Only a small one where the ground trembled in a soft roll and you might even ask someone, “Was that an earthquake?” and then call a friend and say, “I was just in an earthquake,” as if something titillating had happened. When thisquake, 6.7 on the Richter scale, struck at 4:31 a.m., we were jolted awake by violent shaking. We lived twenty miles away from the epicenter. Still, it was fearsome.
    While we were sitting around in the dark afterward (all the lights had blown) waiting for aftershocks and listening to the relentless blare of car alarms set off by the tremors, I said to my husband, “If I die tomorrow, I want to die in New York.” No more “Daisy doesn’t get on a plane.” She had a tranquilizer and survived. Back she moved with us to New York City and she preferred it as we did if you don’t count the time a huge, hideous dog living in the apartment next door tried to murder her in the elevator.
    Then she got old and sick and died.
    That’s what dogs do. They die on you.
    Which is why I avoid reading most dog memoirs, because the dog always dies. And I weep buckets, which I did when Daisy died. I wept and wept and wept and wept.
    After that I moped over dog adoption websites. Then I compulsively watched
Crossing Over
. This show had a popular run on cable in 2000 or so, around the time I was grieving for Daisy. Psychic John Edward (not to be confused with political John Edwards) stood in front of a live studio audience and connected with their “loved ones” who had “passed.”
    John Edward really did know remarkable things about people who had passed. About hydrangeas they loved or a miniature Christmas tree in a box, or that a woman met her husband on a tennis court, or that a death was violent, a knife involved. He made peace for