Wait Until Tomorrow (24 page)

 

I'm scheduled to have an interview with Sadhguru at Cheryl's house. Cheryl is the author of the book that I edited, and we both think that an interview will help get the word out.

On the drive down, Emmy seems so sad and lost.

“Maybe I should just give in,” she says. “I don't want Dad to hate me anymore.”

I don't say anything. I don't want to influence her one way or the other, but if she doesn't follow her dream, I know I will never forgive him.

At precisely ten o'clock, we enter Cheryl's well-appointed new house, overlooking a golf course. Instead of his usual robe, Sadhguru is dressed in jeans.

Still sitting, he bows to me as if he knows me quite well and then reaches for my hand, as I awkwardly drop my purse on her glass coffee table. I've never been starstruck. I wouldn't recognize most celebrities if they came up and kissed me on the cheek. But when he holds my hands for that brief moment I feel lightheaded.

“What have you got in there?” he asks with a laugh as my purse clunks on the table. “Sounds like something heavy.”

“It's a present for you,” I stammer. “Oh, and this is my daughter.”

He smiles at Emmy. I feel completely ill at ease, like someone on a blind date. I hand him the jar of raw honey that I've brought and explain that I was inspired by the story he told in one of the programs, a story about some incredibly healthy beekeepers in India who live almost exclusively on honey. I have decided to start using it myself, because raw honey has antioxidants and (as he already knows) I've just had surgery to remove a cancerous tumor on my appendix.

“The honey is my chemo,” I tell him and sit down on the couch. My oncologist just a week earlier changed her mind about giving me chemo treatments. It seems that my cancer is so rare that they have no data proving that chemo actually helps. So they're going to monitor me and hope for the best. The truth is, I'm not too worried about it.

Sadhguru is intrigued with Emmy, who sits on the other couch. I'm glad I brought her along. For one thing, she exudes a purity of heart that I haven't had since I was four years old. I knew that he would see that. More importantly, I'm hoping he might say something that will help her gain some clarity.

Sadhguru asks Emmy what she does: is she a student?

“What?” she stammers.

“A student? Do you study?”

“I just graduated from high school,” she says. “And I'm going to take a semester to go to Massachusetts . . .”

“A semester?” he asks. He laughs heartily. “I don't think it takes a semester to get to Massachusetts.”

She laughs and blushes. “No, I mean I'm going to spend a semester in Massachusetts, maybe, I'm not sure. But I'm going up there to work with a theater company. I'm very interested in social and political justice, and this company does a lot of plays that have been performed in prisons and battered women's shelters. I'm going to work with them for a while. Then I'm going to college and probably study history.”

“Oh, that's good,” Sadhguru says approvingly. “So many young people, you know, they are only interested in making money. My daughter is going to take four years of dance. Not because she wants to be a dancer but for the discipline.”

Sadhguru hands her a book that he has been reading called
The War of Wealth
.

“You will find out a lot about justice in that book,” he says.

Because I'm drawn to issues of social and political justice myself, I ask Sadhguru about his views on the United States. Sadhguru is careful not to publicly criticize this country or its government, and I can understand why. He is focused on one thing—offering a process to people who want to explore their spiritual potential.

This is not to say that Sadhguru doesn't speak his mind. He is quick to point out that the lives we are leading right now in the US are not sustainable.

“When you can't get what you need, then you have to go to war with someone,” he says. “It's simply not a sustainable life.”

“What about the planet? Are we doomed? Is it hopeless?” I want to know.

“No, the planet will be fine. People may be in trouble but the planet will take care of itself. Nature will correct our mistakes if we don't correct them first. That may become very painful.”

“Do we have the will and the ability to do that?” I ask.

“The ability, yes. The will? Not yet, but when it becomes painful enough, we will have the will,” he says.

No matter how dire his words, amusement plays on his face. His eyes shift from serious to mirthful in a moment. I've never met anyone so clearly authentic. He is the same man—in the book, on the dais, in videos, and sitting on a white sofa in Florida.

I ask him my interview questions. He answers them patiently.

Sadhguru's message is clear: “There is an endless longing to expand. At the same time there is an instinct for self-preservation which is constantly wanting to build walls of safety and comfort. These things seem to be a contradiction. This confusion has arisen in our minds because we are too identified with our physical bodies. The instinct for self-preservation and longing to expand are opposed to each other. They're not really opposed to each other. The boundaries of our body need to be preserved. Everything else within us longs to expand.”

We continue to talk about a range of subjects; his humor and wisdom are playful. When Sadhguru has answered all the questions I have for him, he turns his attention once again to Emmy.

“I like this girl, Pat,” he says, laughing.

“Her father disapproves of her plans. Mightily,” I tell him. Emmy shrugs to indicate she doesn't know what to do about it.

“He's supposed to disapprove!” Sadhguru tells her. “How else will you know that you really want to do it?”

Emmy thinks about it for a moment. Then she smiles that
bright, happy smile. Our visit ends and we're back on the road, heading to our next destination. We're listening to the stereo and singing, “Cruel, Cruel Summer.” The Florida sky arches over us like a big blue tent. The highway unfurls like a decision made a lifetime ago.

A couple of weeks later I put Emmy on a plane for Massachusetts.

AUTUMN 2008

In autumn our dog, Merlyn, who is only seven, becomes suddenly old and feeble. The veterinarian says he has an autoimmune disease. In other words, his immune system has decided to wage war on his body. The vet also says it will eventually go away. He is wrong.

When the dog first gets sick in October, he whimpers in pain and later howls in agony. I never realized a dog could cry, nor did I know that the sound could rip you in two. It comes on quickly though he's acted lethargic for a couple of days. Monday night, after the vet's office is closed, we realize the severity of the condition and that waiting until morning is not an option. We get him into the backseat of the car. I drive to the emergency vet (not daring to calculate the cost) while Hank tries to comfort our frightened pup.

At the emergency vet they tell us to sit and wait in one of the examination rooms. Hank doesn't like to sit in doctors' offices. He prefers to stand or pace. That's what he did during my cancer ordeal. When my follow-up CAT scan, three months after the removal of my appendix, came back clear of any malignancies, I thought we could get back to the complicated business of dismantling our marriage, but now October has arrived and our dog has begun shrieking.

A day after our first trip to the emergency vet, Hank and I are hopping around him in panic as the pain pills and antibiotics apparently provide little or no relief. He whimpers and whines, and we are beside ourselves.

For the first time in months Hank and I cleave to each other while we weep, sure that we are going to have to put him down. We make five trips to the emergency vet in two weeks, spending hours on top of hours, waiting for some kind of information. After one of those trips, we leave him there for tests and an MRI. For the cost of the MRI, we could get and maintain ten healthy dogs from the pound, I'm thinking. But Merlyn is not a dog in the abstract. He is a being in the concrete—a dog whose face I know, a dog whose eyes have looked into mine with total understanding, a dog with whom communication has become second nature. Besides, Hank will not be deterred.

The MRI shows a mysterious inflammation of the muscle. Not deadly, we are told. And yet even after we know what's wrong, we still have to bring him back again and again. The pain is not being managed.

I spend my days downstairs with my computer on my lap, working and watching over the dog. We give him pain pills and sleeping pills along with a variety of antibiotics and high doses of steroids. He wears a narcotic patch; we consider using it ourselves. Hank spends his nights with the dog. One night he stays on the living-room floor holding the whimpering, shaking dog. Hank often carries all seventy pounds of the dog outside several times a day.

After two weeks, we can take it no longer. Nothing seems to help him. This is no way for an animal or a human to live. Every time the dog cries, we want to puncture our own eardrums.

“We have to do it,” I tell Hank. “He's not getting better.”

“He has to get the shot,” Hank agrees.

We are numb as I back the car to the front door and Hank carries Merlyn out and places him on the comforter that is now a permanent fixture of my car. We drive in silence up to the freeway.

“Hank,” I ask, “what is that dog doing?” I am looking in the rearview mirror at Merlyn sitting up, gazing out the window, his pink tongue hanging like a bell from his black mouth.

“He seems to be enjoying the ride,” Hank says.

“That's weird.”

We pull up in front of the emergency vet; we're old hands at this by now and Hank goes to get the rolling crib. I step out of the car and open the back door. Merlyn rolls his head to the side, smiles, and thumps his tail.

When Hank comes back out, I tell him, “Put him on the ground and see if he'll walk.”

“He won't walk,” Hank says.

“Let's just see.”

So Hank puts Merlyn on the ground, and the dog stands up and begins tracking the pee of other dogs with his noisy snuffling nose. He looks just like any other dog wandering around a yard full of dog smells.

“I don't think this is the day,” I say.

“No,” Hank answers, “today is definitely not the day.”

The vet tells us the steroids must have finally kicked in.

“Give him some time,” he says.

 

We bring the dog home and for a month or so we pretend to be okay. We work on the house, replacing an old moldy shower with a gigantic whirlpool bath, which we both land in when it's finished, bubbles bursting over the sides, our slick legs rubbing together like happy fish. And wouldn't this be a nice place to roll credits? The theme of the story would be that the trials and trauma of our sick dog somehow repaired our sick relationship, that Merlyn had
lived up to his name and created some Hollywood-movie magic. Sometimes it really does work out that way. But not for us, not this time.

Soon our words are tiny missiles as we hide behind a stockpile of accusations: the car I had bought without consulting him, his last name that I had never taken as my own, his refusal to allow overnight visits from my friends and family, the abortion twenty years earlier. We are no longer screaming about Emmy and my support of her decision to go away for three months to study with an experimental theater company. We have worn that issue to a rag.

Finally, as Christmas and Emmy's inevitable return approach, Hank decides to go stay with his family in California for a while.

I drive him to the train station. As he leaves we're somehow back to being friendly with each other. I figure that when he comes back, we'll continue to work on the house. As much work as it needs, we may never split up. He and Emmy will eventually reconcile. Of this, I am sure.

Emmy comes home from her adventures, and the two of us spend the Christmas break feeding pills to a feeble old dog, who pees on the carpet and hobbles from one resting spot to another. My mother and my friend Darryl join us for dinner on Christmas Eve. Emmy and I miss Hank, but even if we're not getting “peace on earth,” at least we have “peace at home.”

Merlyn gets worse.

 

We have a houseguest for a week in January. We take her to the train station early on January 14. As the train pulls away, a darkness infects our mood. We go to the Original Pancake House for breakfast but the food sits like cement in our bellies.

“Today is the day,” I say.

I call the veterinarian's office and make the appointment for two o'clock.

That afternoon I drive the car across the lawn to the front steps. Emmy gets Merlyn into the backseat. She has been his extra set of legs for a week now, picking him up when he fell in his own pee, bathing him, carrying him when he couldn't make it up the steps. He is a heavy dog, and he growls in pain, but the two of them work together with his failing body as best they can.

We drive to the vet's office where they are waiting for him.

Emmy waits outside, sobbing. I call Hank and put him on the phone with her. “Comfort her,” I tell him. He manages to squeeze out a few civil words—the first words he's spoken to her in eight months.

I go into the little room with Merlyn. As I wait for the veterinarian to come with his shot, Merlyn licks my hand thoughtfully, gently, lovingly. He is too young to die, but he seems grateful to be going. My arms encircle his neck as she gives him the shot. Then slowly his head drops between his forepaws, eyes closed. He looks like a sleeping puppy.