Ave atque vale, Grendel

Grendel runs in his sleep.  On his bed, on the couch he has labored to ascend, on the floor.  I watch him   His legs move with remembered strength, strength sapped by age  and arthritis and the long ravages of Lab genetics.  I like to think he feels the grass beneath his feet, the breeze kicking up his ears, his now grizzled jowls flapping, as he chews up the distance, flying across the ground.  I watch him twitch, legs pumping, tail in motion, an occasional yip or growl for some imagined prey, a rabbit, perhaps, or a squirrel.

In those moments I remember watching him when he was young, over twelve years ago.  He ran with dedication and limitless energy, as he played with the friends along his walk route—Ralph the Dalmatian, his first friend and first to go, or Gus the German shepherd, his most common playmates.  I remember him before the first twinges of pain in his hips, before the X-ray that showed dysplasia so clearly that no one needed to explain (as well as the furniture tack he had somehow swallowed) just why, after ten minutes of hard play he would draw up short.  At ten months, still a puppy, going under the knife for a bilateral femoral head ostectomy.

Pause, for a moment, to consider that surgery.  In it, the heads of the femurs, the ball of the ball-and-socket hip joint, are removed, the ends of the joint sutured so that, over the years, scar tissue can form a false joint.  After the surgery, I could see why they needed to go.  The surgeon (thank you for making it possible for Grendel to walk another twelve years) showed me the heads and where they had been polished smooth and shiny against the hipbone.  Then pause to wonder that a scant forty-eight hours after returning home, fewer than four days out of surgery, Grendel arose under his own power onto wobbly legs, indomitable.  This is the constant.  No matter what, Grendel will not be defeated.

He recovered quickly, and though he was never as fast as when he was a puppy, he moved confidently, his hips equal to any task he asked of them.  But those hips, I knew, were always going to be the thing, a suspicion confirmed as with advancing age, his arthritis became apparent.  In so many other ways, Grendel has been extremely healthy.  Indeed, the last three years or so have been his healthiest.  He has been largely free of the bothersome ear infections that came so regularly, free of the occasional intestinal parasite.  But at the same time, there was a steady diminution of his ability to get around.  It's been close to two years since he jumped up on the bed.  He struggles to get on the sofa.  Climbing stairs is best attempted with a sling (although there are times when he decides, dammit, he's going to climb the stairs).

I resigned myself to the likelihood that, when the end was upon us, when it was time to give him the last kindness, freedom from pain, that it would be the hips that killed him.  Then, with a new exercise regimen, he began to get stronger.  He would still never jump on the bed, climbing the stairs was still a bad idea, but the muscle he began to build on his backside made getting up easier, made longer walks possible.  I began to dream that, as he approached his thirteenth birthday, I might look forward to a year or two remaining, provided his health held.

Provided…

Then, the diagnosis.  I took him in for a dental cleaning, hoping to cure the vicious halitosis he had developed.  The call came, while he was on the table, and with it the report of the huge tumor in his mouth.  Followed by the oncology report and the diagnosis of cancer, a pigmented malignant melanoma, fast-growing.  

The options: four weeks of radiation, followed by chemo and palliation, with a potential for six months' survival; or, treat the pain until the suffering becomes too much, and have him with me for perhaps two or three months, maybe much less since this was highly aggressive.  

The decision is easy to make once I take myself out of the equation.  Treating him with radiation, having him undergo daily sedation for four weeks, subjecting him to radiation burns in the hope that it would shrink the tumor, would only be for me.  He might live six months, but the first two and probably the last one or two, would be agony.  To gain time for him, at the cost of so much pain, would not be a kindness.  Only by letting him go, by treating the pain, until he no longer enjoys life, until the only thing left is to grant him the release from suffering he cannot ask, can I honor him.

Grendel has been my companion for nearly thirteen years.  I was twenty-eight when he entered my life and I will be forty-one when he leaves it.  He has been my friend, loving me at my very best and at my very worst equally.  All he has asked is food, comfort, love.  When I got the word I dreaded, when I was bawling, wailing, like I hadn't since I was ten and my first dog died, he tried to comfort me.   

He tried to comfort me.

In one of the examination rooms at my vet's office (thanks, guys, for seeing Grendel through his entire life—it can't always have been easy dealing with me) there is a sign.  It reads, "We give dogs time we can spare, space we can spare and love we can spare.  In return they give us their all.  It is the best deal man has ever made."  If we are very lucky, we have this gift for many years, but the price we pay is that at the end we must positively act to end their lives, to put an end to suffering.

This relationship is so finite, and that is what makes it so powerful. 

I will try to make his last days special. I will pamper him with attention and food until he no longer seems to enjoy life. And then, sometime sooner than I ever imagined, I will make a call. I will sedate him so that his last sight is his home and the people who love him, and there are so many, so that the last touch he feels is comforting.  When he is asleep, I will take him to the vet and she will inject a drug cocktail that will stop his heart and he will be gone.  Will Rogers once famously said, "If there are no dogs in heaven, then I want to go where they went."  I don't believe in heaven; I know I'll never see my Grendel again.  But there's something true in the sentiment.  Dogs help make us human and, if we pay attention, humane.  I will treat him at the end as though I'll have to answer for it because it is the last kind thing I can do for him, whether he registers it or not.

After that I will never look into his brown and inquiring eyes, eyes that always seemed to understand more than they should, again.  I will never stroke his muzzle, now grown white from its original jet black. I will never feel the rise and fall of his ribcage or hear him snore as he naps on the couch beside me.  I will never be lashed by his tail.  I will never have my feet bathed by his spotted tongue or have my nose nibbled in his excitement at greeting me.  I will never come home to see him lift his head, perk up his ears, and the joy of our reunion spread across his body.  I will never be offered the tribute of a slain stuffed animal. I will never be exasperated by his incorrigible begging.  I will never see him chase (and I hope capture) prey in his sleep.

He will not even be a furry memory, a dimly-known black shape, to the unborn child I await with his step-mom (thanks, Serena, for helping us through).

This, ultimately, is the cost of the exquisite companionship, the unconditional love, I received for almost thirteen years.  The bill is coming soon.

It is a bargain at many times the price.

The Atheist Religions

I've been doing a bit of reading, hopefully as a prelude to doing a bit of writing, about the millennial strand in certain Atheist movements, especially among the so-called "New Atheists."  This isn't about that, but I guess a slight explanation is in order.  In my study of medieval religion, there is a constant argument over how much, or to what extent, medieval religious movements, both heretical and orthodox, were millennial.  This is to say, how many of them sought to create conditions sufficient for the return of Jesus and the establishment of the heavenly kingdom on earth?  The answers range from pretty much all of them to almost none.  The arguments, however, revolve around a general definition of the millennial.  Millennial movements share the following characteristics (borrowing from Norman Cohn):

• They are collective in that all the faithful will benefit from them;
• They are terrestrial in that they will occur in this world, not in some spiritual realm;
• They are immanent in that the redemption of the world is coming suddenly and soon;
• They are total, in that all life on earth will be changed; and
• They are miraculous, in that supernatural agents are required for their completion.

With the exception of miraculous, claims of collective, terrestrial, immanent, and total transformation are akin to those made by the so-called "New Atheists," a claim that I hope to flesh out at a later point.

My immediate impetus to writing today, though, is a question that has been popping up a good bit lately--whether atheism ought properly to be considered a religion.  The latest version of it popped on to my Twitter feed this morning, but it has been asked elsewhere, with interesting ideas such as "serial dogmatism" presenting themselves as explanations for why some atheists behave as they do.  I would like to attempt a preliminary response to this question inspired by the thoughts of others, but also through my own consideration of atheist millennarianism, and of the possibility of interfaith cooperation between believers and non-believers.

Part of the problem is, of course, definitional.  Atheism, properly, is the belief in no god or gods.  That's it, as some of the above writers have rightly pointed out.  It has no content beyond that.  In a sense, it is the antithesis (though not necessarily the enemy) of Judaism or Islam, whose important content is solely the belief in a god.  If Jews and Muslims only believed in their god, I would argue, then neither Judaism nor Islam would properly be religions.  They would simply be different names for theism.  Both atheism and theism, then, are opinions concerning the existence of a deity or deities.

If, as I have suggested, atheism is in a sense an antithesis to Judaism and Islam, what is it that separates the latter two from simply being merely religious opinions?  What makes them into religions?  In a word--and one familiar to Internet users--content.  Judaism and Islam present adherents with a set of rules for living.  Through following these rules, through the embrace of orthopraxy (this is, perhaps, an oversimplification, but I think it justifiable), one shows one's religious bona fides.  Christianity, to address the remaining Abrahamic faith, has content, too, but this content is expressed in a series of beliefs (the Trinity, the Resurrection, the ascension, the Second Coming, etc.), showing an interest in right belief, or orthodoxy, alongside various practices.

Neither orthopraxy or orthodoxy are immanent in the religious opinions of theism or atheism.  However, they are immanent in certain movements that are atheistic at their core.  Communism, for instance, is based on the notion that through class struggle, a society run by the workers will emerge.  Will emerge; Marx said it was inevitable after history had run its course.  In Cohn's terms, the Communist millennium is collective, terrestrial, immanent, and total (no supernatural agents need apply).  Most utopian ideologies that aren't based in a pre-existing religious tradition, fall into this category.  Buddhism, at its core, is also atheistic, though one can argue whether the liberated self and the primordial unity it joins to are supernatural, and enjoins upon its users a mode of living, the Eightfold Path.

The New Atheists follow the same well-worn track.  There is a set of beliefs one must subscribe to, for instance, the adequacy of modern science to explain all phenomena; that religion is a simple illusion that deludes the gullible; that engagement with the religious is accommodating the irrational; that the world would be better without religion.  Sounds a lot like millennarian thinking to me.  There is also the evangelical bent, that we atheists must work towards bringing others to our view.  It is confrontational, and as I have suggested elsewhere, counterproductive.  You don't need me to tell you that; the boys at South Park, vile parody of Richard Dawkins aside, nailed it years ago.

So, is atheism a religion? No.  As we have seen, it is a religious opinion, like theism.  But there are atheistic religions.  More traditionally, we can refer to the various philosophical strands of Buddhism or of Taoism that have as their basis a monistic totality from which we have been separated and to which we can return.  We can refer to "secular" philosophies such as Communism.  And to that number we can add the various groups of evangelical atheists, most notably the New Atheists.  As for me, I like to think I subscribe to humanistic atheism, something I need to explore more later.  Whatever the case, as atheists we need to understand that our work, though important, is essentially religious work, and not delude ourselves otherwise.