Biology Reference
In-Depth Information
Sand, bitter blustery wind, and prickly pear at Kill Devil Hills sounded like a great way to
challenge Solo in a new environment.
Solo learned to find his “hides” at the beach, in the garbage can at the end of the driveway
of our rental house, in the backyard sand, amid a patch of prickly pear. I was elated as I wrote
my training report. On the second night at the beach, I called Oregon to talk with Dad about
our impromptu vacation. I told him I would send him pictures of his Megan, who had been
floating blissfully up and down the beaches, a maroon-colored wraith in the winter fog. Dad
sounded dreadful, his voice thick and slow. His hip had been hurting the last six months,
since shortly after he had visited us in North Carolina. While we thought it was a side effect
of Lipitor, it hadn't improved. Only good Scotch, Dad said, made it feel better. I got of the
phone and cried.
I had never said much to Dad about what I was doing with Solo; I didn't know why, ex-
actly. I couldn't talk to him about bodies and crime—it felt base, rather than biological. Part
of it was that he was an academic. What I was doing with Solo wasn't academic, much as I
might contend that it was about reading winds and understanding decomposition and scent
patterns. Part of it was that he didn't fully understand my odd love of dogs like Solo, rather
than the female setters who draped themselves on him, placing their paws on the sleeves of
his old cardigans, pulling the threads out ever so gently and insistently with their untrimmed
nails.
Perhaps somewhere deep down, I knew. When he called a few days later, we were home
from the beach. I was oddly unsurprised that Dad finally had a diagnosis. I was shocked at
how far along it was. Cancer specialists, I have learned since, always say the same thing to
Stage IV patients: You have six months to a year. Even when you don't.
Training Solo stopped. I could not bear thinking about death all the time. In any case,
there was no time. I left David alone with Solo and Megan and flew back and forth to Ore-
gon to spend a couple of precious remaining weeks with Dad.
He was dead just seven weeks after that phone call. He was cremated in the Pendleton
wool bathrobe he had loved so much. We cast his ashes to the winds in the Cascade Mountain
meadows of Oregon near his home.
