The Wind Chime House
For Lilly, with Love
I don’t recall exactly when we first discovered the ‘wind chime’ house. I do know it was in the months before lockdown, when the world foolishly felt somewhat predictable in its uncertainty. We used to walk our dog Lilly every day, either my husband or myself, or both of us together, handing her leash off between us like a tag team. Lilly’s favorite sojourn was a dusty hike in the Santa Monica mountains, but on other days we set off around our neighbourhood, weaving our way within a grid bordered by Olympic and Santa Monica. Lilly was always game for a walk. Even at eleven years old she never flagged, never hesitated… in fact she used to vigorously lick my fingers every time I tied the laces of my sneakers in a ceremonial act of gratitude. Everywhere we went people asked us if she was a puppy, beguiled by her infectious energy. I landed on some stock answers — ‘She thinks she is’ or ‘You wouldn’t know it but she’s actually a wise old lady’. She liked the attention, though she never went searching for it unless food was involved. She was a self contained and confident soul… caramel colored curls you could lose your fingers in and brown love soaked eyes.
One day the three of us were walking when my husband announced, “I want to show you something”. We had wandered further afield than I usually walked on my own, and when we rounded the corner he motioned triumphantly to the house in front of us. It wasn’t the house he was pointing at but the sculpture in the front garden… an elongated silver spiral, shape shifting in slow breeze blown circles. I was mesmerized. I could literally feel my nervous system exhaling. My husband was pleased. This pause was an unspoken declaration from him to me: ‘I may not always say the right thing but I know how to walk you to magic…’
‘It’s beautiful!’ I said, entranced by the dance of the metal in the wind, one moment substantial and weighty, the next fluid and free. The inhabitants of the house had created an enclave for this piece of art, planted in a gravel lined clearing, a pink blossomed magnolia tree watching over it and fragrant lavender plants growing untamed all around. I liked these people immediately. I could see by a sign outside their door that they shared my politics, but they also shared my whimsy.
From that moment on, the wind chime house became a destination. The sculpture was silent when it twirled in the wind, but it chimed with my heart, so the name stuck. On walks with my husband he found it easily, he forever the navigator, me the eternal dreamer. Each visit offered a different dance depending on the time of day, the angle of the wind, the glint of the sun.
The first time Lilly and I set off to find it alone, we took a wrong turn and missed it completely. The second time, I followed the silence and was delighted to stumble upon it, the wind chime appearing like a welcome mirage in the desert. Sometimes we lingered, watching the metal pirouette with ease. Sometimes the air was still and so was the sculpture. It was in those moments, Lilly stood patiently at my feet waiting for the walk to continue. For eleven years she had been beside me, the softest sweetest landing when the journey felt hard edged. She knew when to be still and she also knew how to wiggle with abandon when life required wild wiggling.
We belonged to each other.
I don’t remember exactly when we discovered the wind chime house, but I do remember that when the world grew dark with worry and the invisible virus threw us into a constant state of mistrust and fear, the walks to that whimsy became our solace. In early lockdown, we were one of those families who walked the dog so frequently to break the monotony, that even the dog began to put the brakes on. Lilly had never declined a walk, but after a few weeks she was giving us side eye and occasionally even skidding to a complete halt in protest. Looking back, I wonder if her body had started to ail in ways I couldn’t see, not unlike how cancer had grown in my breast five years previously like a stealth intruder, noiselessly slipping through an open door.
We eventually eased up on the multiple walks, but when it was just the two if us, I always walked her to the wind chime house; it was like visiting a dear friend. Ritual suddenly took on whole new meanings during lockdown and we charted our route and stuck to it. One morning Lilly and I woke up before sunrise and by the time we had arrived at the house, I had listened to every version of Here Comes the Sun I could find. The vaccine was on the horizon, maybe we were about to reclaim something lost? Everyone was saying there was no going back, only forward to a new normal, but even new normals hold the echo of the original song — the exact same lyrics, but each version a reinvention. That morning Lilly and I stood in the empty intersection and watched the sun rise behind the wind chime house, the sculpture like a bright beacon of hope, glinting and gliding in the morning light.
The walks continued and never once did I see anyone come or go from the house. I often considered writing them a thank you note and sometimes I fantasized about bringing a cushion and meditating on the sidewalk, a vain attempt to create some order in the chaos. Sometimes the wind blew with more intention and the sculpture spun into silver liquid air, transparent and slippery. And sometimes nothing changes, but suddenly everything does, and this can happen easily in a moment, a held breath, a conversation frozen in time at the end of a long day.
That long day happened for us in February of 2021. My lovely girl had uncharacteristically gone off her food. The vets were packed because of all the newly acquired lockdown pups. I was advised to bring her to the emergency vet as that might be the only route to being seen. I had psychically negotiated with Lilly that she would live out her longest life, and in my reckoning we had at least three more years together. She had always been healthy and vibrant and I wasn’t too concerned. The ER vet’s voice on the phone was distant and clinical. I guessed he was swamped, barely able to distinguish one dog from the next. He knew nothing of our history: the too long plane flight from London to LA when she was only one, the way she followed me with devotion throughout the day, the cuddles on the couch, the habit she had of pushing her body as close to mine as she could get, her steadfastness as I navigated cancer treatment, her tear licking love when our daughter cried, her boundless joy when she played football with our son, her lunatic leaps into swimming pools over the years, her tenacious counter surfing, her smile, that wiggle, her happy grunts, her puppy nightmares, her cheese face, her lying on her back with her legs splayed in glorious indifference… known in our family as a classic pork roast… the ultimate sign of life is good. He didn’t know any of these stories. All he knew was that the bloodwork in front of him showed that the dog he had barely seen for a few minutes was likely dying. “Her kidneys aren’t functioning properly, “ he said matter of factly, “But all indications are that she also has lymphoma. She might only have six to eight weeks to live…treatment rarely improves things for long…”
It turned out with some treatment she actually lived for four months. I could write into the details of those months but I won’t. We lurched from hope to despair on any given day. We sustained her on small bite sized morsels of chicken sausage and fluid pumped under the scruff of her neck with a thick needle. I lost perspective, and she eventually grew weary but not until right at the end. We kept throwing her ball and she kept summoning the energy to chase it. We took her to the beach. We let her stick her head out of the window of the car so the wind could rush at her with a force and she could forget all the ways she was withering. And I kept walking her to the wind chime house and tracking the elegant choreography of the metallic tree, until one day she told me with her eyes that she could no longer walk, not to the wind chime house, not down the block, not past our front gate, only beside me as I moved around our home searching for all the ways I couldn’t save her.
Lilly died on the morning of July 6th 2021 assisted by some kind and caring souls who came to our home to help her cross. I used to say she was like the Dali Lama of dogs — she brought that much unfiltered joy and equanimity to the world. I discovered after she had crossed the veil, that July 6th is the Dali Lama’s birthday.
It’s accurate to say that life became a trance of grief in the months following her death. Hiking in the mountains or walking through the neighbourhood came with a fresh agony unlike any I had felt before. That dog, that precious girl, that curly creature had been my companion and my teacher for almost twelve years. The empty spaces were palpable, and the silence was loud… the gaps where her beds or bowls used to be, the absence of her breath, her bark, the pitter patter of her paws on the wooden floor, the jangle of her collar, my hands empty of her leash, reaching for the invisible. I’ve experienced profound loss before, but this loss came with an added layer of pain because like the sculpture and the wind, Lilly and I were in a seamless dance together… a constant call and response. When I moved, she moved too… when I stopped, she stopped beside me. We were a river of rhythm.
It’s been six months now and throughout that time I have still intended to write to the owners of the wind chime house to let them know how their garden installation had become a touchstone for us throughout the tumultuous days. I recall writing a poem in my twenties after my father died where I wrote we are all mourning, all waiting to be mourned. We truly never comprehend how much we will miss something until it/he/she/they have gone. Whether that be life prior to Covid, the loss of our beloveds or the void where a whimsical, spiralling wind sculpture used to be. Last week I decided to walk past the wind chime house and the sculpture was gone. In its place, a short metal post … a bare marker, a makeshift grave.
Somehow without Lilly sitting patiently beside me as I gazed at the space, this vanishing act felt strangely comforting. I felt she had been taken from me too early, robbed of more time. I thought of all the people who were grieving loved ones during this pandemic, here one minute but gone the next, many without so much as a kiss farewell. I wondered who would have absconded with the sculpture in the thick of the night, or perhaps the occupants of the house have moved and the wind chime moved with them. Either way, tomorrow I will print this story and slip it through their mailbox — the completion of an unfinished sentence.
Life of course goes on, even when we fumble to press pause and rewind. My friend’s daughter says that when pets die they return to magic, so maybe Lilly has waved her wand and summoned the wind chime to her. I don’t need answers, I just need to close my eyes, feel my girl’s warm tongue on my skin or the soft thatch of ringlets on the top of her head. I just need to take one breath at a time and imagine the breeze blowing, the wind chime spinning silver in the sun, an endless prayer of appreciation.
You can also read and share this reflection on medium.com
For Lilly… with all my love xoxo
Writing Prompt
Some suggestions... Write an 'endless prayer of appreciation' for something or someone in your life. Write about how gratitude and grief live closely together in your heart. Write about loss. Write about love. Write about a 'moment' when everything changed...
