I Planted Murphy in the Garden
Some dogs you bury. Some dogs you plant.
This week’s farm update is the one I didn’t want to write. Murphy—my eleven-year-old farm dog, the one who chased foxes off the chicken coop with the kind of dutiful gusto his breed was built for—is under the nannyberry tree at the back of the garden. My sister came up to help. We brought salt-and-vinegar chips and a square of chocolate, because every dog should get to eat chocolate at least once in his life, and we had ourselves a picnic while the vet got everything ready.
Then I dug the hole myself. I carried him the length of the garden in my own arms because I refused to move him any other way. His body will feed the soil. The nannyberry will pull the birds in, the birds will keep the pest pressure down in the garden, and that’s how a working farm holds a death—it folds it back into the work.
This piece is partly an argument with the way our culture has outsourced dying. There’s a checkbox on the release form at the vet’s now that lets you not be present when your pet is euthanized. We’ve done the same thing to death that we’ve done to food—handed it to strangers and called the distance progress.
And then, because that’s how this life works, I get into the rest of the week. Furnace out of fuel Monday morning. Sheep finally on grass. Lambs coming. May in Maine doesn’t pause for grief, and that isn’t cruelty. It’s the deal you make when you choose this life.
Pour a cup of coffee. Sit down with me.
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