Lucy in the Stars

Part 1: The Nightmare

I woke up that morning - early, as I always do - with a new feeling of hope having blossomed within me. Beside me, Boo snored loudly. I lay in bed for a moment, rising and falling with the weight of his breath in the darkness.

“We really need to get that sleep apnea test done,” I thought to myself. We should have done it a lot sooner, to be honest.

I rolled over and let my feet hit the floor. The smell of fresh coffee drifted into my nose, and like a baited fish, I waded down the stairs and into the kitchen.

I’ve always loved the early morning time. I poured myself a divine-smelling cup of arabica brew, fixed it with my usual dose of sugar-free, hazelnut, artificial sin, and plopped down on the couch with my MacBook. As I began my daily Pinterest search for wedding inspiration - my eyes bouncing from image to image of brides wearing long flowing dresses - I medicated myself with my sacred, caffeinated drug.

Wedding planning had become an escape for me. It was April of 2020, and my hypochondriac anxiety had been skyrocketing through the roof. I glanced over at the bag of groceries that had been delivered the night before via the new app I’d installed - “Instacart”. That was the first time I’d used it, and I was already in love with it - given I was now too afraid to set foot in a store. There was just one problem: I still had to sanitize everything.

I had already put the perishable items in the refrigerator - grapes that I’d taken out of the plastic, germ-infested container and repackaged safely in my own ziplock bag, a carton of almond milk that I’d hand-washed with dish soap in the sink, and some ground turkey that I'd placed in the crisper drawer - which was now a designated "quarantine" for any foods I couldn’t wash or wipe and that needed to stay cold.

I sighed as I sat there, looking at that bag, and realized I still needed to finish wiping off the rest of my haul. Inside the brown paper sack, items like pasta boxes, cereal, and tomato-sauce cans awaited their bubble bath. Finishing the job the previous night had been too much for my sanity, so I’d left them there to finish later. I regretted the decision deeply now, for there they sat - haunting me - in the wee hours of the morning which were supposed to be my “me” time.

I let out a sigh and got up - pushing my MacBook off my lap and onto the couch. As I walked over to the bag, I remembered I still needed to wipe off the door handle and the bathroom light switches.

Upstairs, I heard Boo snoring. His breathing was laborious as ever, with exceptionally long pauses between inhales and exhales. I shrugged it off. He’d always snored, ever since I'd known him - and I’d been trying to convince him to get that damn overnight sleep exam scheduled for the longest time. I was absolutely convinced he had sleep apnea. He’d finally made the appointment and it was scheduled for the following week. I should have felt relieved, but the truth is that I actually felt anxious. He’d now have to spend the night in a clinic during Covid.

Standing there, looking at the groceries, I took a deep breath. Somehow, I was suddenly able to find focus. “This is just how it’s going to be for a while,” I thought, “I can do this.” I walked over to the washing machine, where I kept a basket of old rags. I grabbed one, along with a spray bottle of diluted Clorox bleach.

Boo’s snores from upstairs filled my ears as I walked back to the grocery bag and sprayed down the remaining boxes and cans. Ugh, I’d need to wash my hands now. I wasn’t sure which I feared more - Covid, or getting cancer from all the disinfectant materials I’d been using lately.

My attention shifted - the laundry. There was a pair of pants and a sweatshirt in my hamper that I’d worn into CVS the previous day when I’d randomly needed to pick up some Advil. Since no one yet knew how long Covid was lingering in the air, I was convinced that the virus was still clinging to my clothes. I needed to wash them in hot, soapy water - and I needed to do it immediately.

I made my way upstairs. Boo was still snoring, and I found myself becoming agitated. It was a frustrating sound that often kept me up at night, and one I wished we’d taken care of sooner. I stopped myself, trying to squash the negativity. “This is just the way it is right now,” I thought to myself again, “we’ll get him tested for sleep apnea, and we’ll soon have a solution to the problem.”

Some things in life are temporary, and I knew that. Just like Covid - just like this new way of life. This was all just temporary. Covid would pass soon, and I wouldn’t have to be weighed down by my hypochondria for much longer - by my obsessive-compulsive urges to wash my hands multiple times and to sanitize the groceries.

Once upstairs, I entered the bathroom and wiped the light switches down. “I’ll just make a habit of doing this every morning,” I thought to myself, “it’s not that bad - wiping down the switches and handles only takes three minutes. As for the groceries, I’ll just work on being better about cleaning them off the minute I get them. That way, they won’t sit around and annoy me. It’s really not that bad. It will all be over soon.”

I managed to convince myself.

I passed through the door that connected our bathroom to the bedroom, and as I approached my laundry hamper, I felt the same sense of hope I’d woken up with wash over me. Everything was going to be ok. I felt it. If I had to create rituals to get through it all, it was ok, because it was all just temporary.

I began taking the contents of the hamper out when suddenly, I smelled something. It was….vomit.

"Boo?" I asked; looking over to where he lay on his side, facing away from me.

He didn’t answer.

The smell was definitely vomit. His breaths were very slow - few and far between. "Boo?" I asked again.

No answer.

I ran over to the other side of him and noticed a dark, coffee-ground-looking vomit leaking out of his mouth; spewed all across the pillow. He was still sleeping. “Boo?!”

Still, no response.

I panicked and tried to shake him awake. "Boo?!" I repeated over and over, becoming more hysterical with each try.

Completely unresponsive, he wouldn’t wake up. My heart dropped to the floor, and I felt my soul step out of my body. I watched my shaking hands search frantically for my cell phone and stumble clumsily over the touchpad.

“911, what’s your emergency?”

Part 2: Dreamworlds

“I wonder if anyone else has ever been to the edge of the galaxy with their dog,” I said to Lucy as I finished fastening the large, leftover Christmas bow around her collar. Her ginormous smile lit up the room. All around her white, fluffy, shamefully unkept feet, twinkle lights blinked and glowed in the lifeless shadows of my otherwise poorly illuminated dining room.

It was August of 2020, and a trip to another universe is exactly what Lu and I needed. The road had been dark and bumpy since April, and the premise of sitting alongside Orion’s Belt seemed like a promising surge for our spirits. We needed the electricity revived in our souls.

I had already packed everything we’d be taking - water bottles, blankets, and my trusty (although seriously outdated) iPhone 8. I held up a bag of treats to show Lu. “Look, girl,” I said to her, “it’s going to be a long trip through the atmosphere, but you’ll get one of these when we stop at the moon, and another as soon as we reach the stars, I promise.”

Lu’s eyes sparkled, and she let out one of her famous barks.

I smiled. “Poems with dog pictures,” I thought to myself, securing the last knot of ribbon around her neck. I grinned giddily, with just a hint of embarrassment. My Instagram account really was the stupidest thing ever - and I'm pretty sure everyone I knew thought I was crazy - but it was fun!

And oh, how we both needed to have fun right now. The thin point of my stiletto heel suddenly caught on something, and I looked down to see the large dent that the gurney had left in the linoleum floor just four months ago when the paramedics had rolled Boo out of our apartment. I froze for a second - reliving the sound of Boo’s snores and the scent of his vomit in my mind - but I was able (at least, I was able this time) to keep my PTSD from taking over.

I let out a stiff huff and wiped some of Lu’s fallen fur from my face. “That’s it, girl," I said, “we’re off! To infinity, and beyond.”

***

Lu and I allowed our weightless hands, feet, and paws to float freely in the open, timeless space of the sky. All around us, spiderwebs of lights flickered and gleamed in the black foreverness.

“This really is a sight to see,” I thought to myself, wading my arms and legs - like breaststroke - through the stillness as I followed Lu’s lead. I was already beginning to feel alive with the inspiration I needed to create something especially beautiful.

I’ve heard truly impressive stories of hikes people have taken with their dogs up the sides of the highest mountains, and tales of human and canine adventures alongside relentless rivers and through treacherous, snow-packed terrain. I’ve watched documentaries on pups that have pulled people from caves and who’ve fought off wolves, but all I know is the following:

Our adventure this day was genuinely remarkable - and even if we never really left our living room - Lucy saved me that day.

I unleashed my Lulu from her collar and watched her bounce happily around the comets and free-floating fragments of the universe. Her tail shook like a pompom in a crowd of bright shining faces, and I swear the stars I was seeing were born from the glimmer in her eyes.

She was curious as ever, and she sniffed every atom and molecule of energy as it came drifting by. Formations of birds, rabbits, and squirrels appeared in connect-the-dot fashion before us, and as they did, her high-pitched bark echoed through the vastness of the wonderfully mysterious void.

I know what you’re probably thinking - I must have been on something, for certain. In all honesty, I’d probably think that as well. The truth, however, is that there were no questionable substances involved in this journey. The simple reality is this: something about forming poetry in my mind as I created beautiful, whimsical pictures with Lu allowed me to enter a daydream-like trance, and a trance - along with Lu's companionship - was exactly what I needed during this time in order to escape the grip of the severely traumatic incident from my very recent past.

And so, Lu traveled to other times and dimensions with me the entire duration of that summer - in the time since welcoming Boo back from the hospital in early May. It’d been a long road to recovery - for both Boo and I - and Lucy was there with me every step of the way. A truly faithful companion, she accompanied me on these creative, therapeutic explorations of the many distant empires and enchanted regimes that made up the hidden realms of our very own apartment. Together - in that tiny, poorly-lit room - we experienced many breathtakingly magnificent quests - all of which aided my healing. However, there was something about this particular adventure to the galaxies that was distinctly essential to my recovery.

As I continued to watch my happy girl frolic through the lights of the sky, dark flashbacks of the absolute terror I’d lived through while Boo spent two weeks in a medically induced coma flooded back to me. However, I managed to quickly push them away. I smiled as Lucy sniffed little nebula acorns and pawed at delicate, swirling clouds made of stardust and leftover ash from the sun.

“Lucy!” I called her, and when she looked at me, I threw her a savory bone I’d secretly brought along with me in my backpack. Surprised and excited, her fat little body waddled between space flowers, trees, and rocks - determined to fetch it and bring it back to me. I giggled to myself. Even when she was weightless, she wobbled and swayed as she moved. “Good girl!” I exclaimed when she approached me - her big, ecstatic smile curving around her delicious prize. Pure joy she was, my Lucy. I reached my arms out, and - as if soaking in the warm rays of the sun - I beckoned her happiness to sink through my skin.

It was then that a comet appeared from the left of our vantage point. It approached us swiftly, streaming sparks of infant stars into our surroundings from all angles. They danced around us for a moment like little sugarplum fairies from the Nutcracker ballet, then formed around us in such a way that both Lucy and I were lifted effortlessly onto the comet’s surface. Lu wined and whimpered nervously, and - with our ethereal new sense of weightlessness - I was able to pick her up by her plump little belly and comfort her in my arms.

We rode the comet around the vastness of space for what seemed like hours, enjoying a tour of the galaxy via our private magic carpet ride. I raised my arms high above me as we dipped and turned on the invisible roller coaster curves and sways. Lu eventually calmed down, and - jumping from my arms - took a seat at the head of our comet tour guide; her big, floppy ears flying outward from the force of our momentum. She was a captivating ball of pure jubilance - an animated pup in the passenger seat window as we raced forward on the intergalactic highway.

The faster we went and the more joyous Lu became, the more successful I was at pushing the nightmare back into the smallest corner of my mind. Slowly, I began to achieve the highest degree of organic euphoria that I could possibly fill the depths of my soul with; absorbing the high-noted vibrations of Lu’s blissfully elevated aura. I crawled to the ground, and - pushing myself against the waves of the wind tides - managed to make it over to where Lu sat at the front of our ship. She turned and looked at me gleefully, and then a softness appeared in her eyes as she licked my cheek. She sensed something.

“Are you ok, Mom?” she asked.

I lay my head in the small of her back and closed my eyes. I was ok. Yes, I was ok in this moment. I felt safe enough to try something new.

Cautiously, I allowed tiny waves of unnerving moments to creep into my mind and attempted to neutralize them with the abundant surges of positive ions surrounding us - of those that radiated from the stars and from Lu. It was a risky trick and one I’d never tried before, but the confidence of Lu’s smile was allowing me to feel particularly brave.

And so, I let them in:

The first wave was the most gut-wrenching fear that is humanly possible - the feeling as I prepared to call the hospital to find out if Boo had survived the ambulance trip. I remembered the absolute, unspeakable terror that consumed me as I waited for the nurse on the other end of the line to read the chart to me, as I wasn’t allowed to be there due to current Covid restrictions.

“He’s home now,” I whispered assuredly to myself and into the night. I sighed out a breath that carried a small bit of residual anguish away from my body.

The second wave was a flashback of my broken soul hunched over the staircase a couple of days later - crying the rivers of my heartstrings into my hands. I’d just learned that Boo’s pneumonia-infested lungs had struggled to breathe on their own when they’d optimistically tried to wean him off of the ventilator.

“He’s breathing on his own now,” I mouthed out silently. I let the memory consume me, and by doing so, it then gradually faded away and into the darkness.

The third wave was a bomb of life-shattering sadness. I remembered thinking about Boo being all alone in the ICU - picturing his chest rising and falling with the assistance of a machine - his life being completely dependent on a robot.

“We’re together again now." I gripped my chest with the strength of my fist, for my soul was still bleeding within me.

The fourth wave was the unimaginable way my heart dropped to the depths of the Earth when Boo had finally woken up. All that relief and joy - instantly crushed when the Doctor then said he wasn’t sure how much mobility he’d ever gain back - or what his cognitive abilities would be like after having been induced for so long.

“He walks now, he talks now, he’s the same Boo I’ve always known." As I confirmed this reality in my mind, some of the lingering trauma lost, for the moment, just a little of its power over me.

I continued this cycle for a few moments until I felt confident I’d managed to gather enough strength from the stars and from Lu’s comforting, radiant aura.

I looked at Lucy’s sweet face as she watched the array of celestial bodies expanding and opening themselves up to us graciously in the distance. A halo of glimmering lights circled her head - little winged ballerinas twirling in unison with the beat of our hearts. They stopped suddenly, gracefully, and extended their arms and legs into picturesque arabesques that formed, in their togetherness, a star-lit crown on Lu’s head.

The comet began to slow, and the thousands of stars that had been racing past us, like emojis, outlined expressions of joy in the sky - a magnificent celebration of love and light.

Without warning, a humanlike figure appeared before us, made solely from the pin dots of stars. It didn’t speak a word, but somehow it communicated with both of us. Lucy ran up to it, and it signaled for her to lie on the star-dusty floor. I, too, was beckoned. I walked over and when I'd approached its enigmatic existence, it handed me each of the following: a single seed from which I somehow understood was meant to grow gardens of strength - the same strength I’d somehow managed to cultivate here in the galaxies - and a golden lasso of gleaming, flickering lights.

Part 3: Realms of Rebirth and Resilience

Lucy and I suddenly found ourselves back in our apartment. It always happened this same, exact way. I looked up and saw Boo smiling at me from the couch. It was his spot now, where he sat and rested these days as he was slowly recovering and gaining his strength back. He didn’t say anything as I held the twinkle lights in my hands. He just watched me peacefully - knowing exactly what I was doing, and why.

I’d been given a vision. As the daughter of a man who is an avid Beatles fan, I would later tell people I was trying to recreate “Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds." The truth, however, is that the inspiration had come from the adventure Lucy and I had had in the galaxies that day. I thoughtfully twisted the flickering vine of lights in an abstract figure-eight form on the dusty, un-vacuumed linoleum - creating a miniature star-lit galaxy just inches away from Lu’s dirty feet.

Like the perfectionist I am, I took numerous pictures of Lulu - my half-Papillon, half-Terror princess - lying daintily in front of those tangled cheap Dollar Store Christmas lights. In the end, I somehow managed to capture the essence of our journey all with my trusty (and again, seriously outdated) iPhone 8.

Lucy, being the good girl she is, kept glancing up at me with those big, patient eyes, as if to ask: “What kind of poem are you going to write for this one, Mom?”

I looked at her and answered, “One about love, light, and destiny”. I then glanced across the room at Boo, who was truly my miracle soulmate. I began stringing together the poem in my mind:

“In a dream I think I saw you

in a spiderweb of lights across the sky,

as I stared into the darkness,

remembering the promise of July.

I am not clairvoyant,

though to intuition, I’m not blind:

I’ve walked down paths I’ve felt were safe in life,

and also those I knew to be more risky be design.

In the end,

two hearts of weightless helium,

floating randomly through time,

came upon a tiny keyhole in the medium -

(and that’s when)

your star and mine aligned.”

My recount of our adventure in the stars ended up being a whimsical lullaby - both in lyrical and photographic expression. I put the following caption on my Instagram post: “If Lu was a constellation...Or a cow jumping over the moon?” and followed that thought with the poem.

The post forever stands out to me on my Instagram page, as it marks the pinnacle turning point on my road to recovering from my PTSD. Lu accompanied me on many similar adventures that summer - adventures in which we visited other vastly different worlds. Sometimes, when we were feeling particularly courageous, we would even walk around the grounds of the apartment complex, pretending to be queens of our kingdom. No matter how remarkable our journeys, however, our trip to the galaxies was truly the most significant, for it was the one in which I’d managed to bring back a seed of hope - and to grow from that seed a garden of light for my future. It was the epicenter of strength from which I learned to center myself when those feelings of terror made their occasional way back to me.

And they did, occasionally, try to make their way back.

Each of the adventures Lu and I have taken together have allowed us to momentarily escape this broken, pandemic-ridden world - the world in which Boo also almost didn’t return to. And while I still suffered with severe fear of the virus - continuing to wash down and wipe off my groceries - I was finally equipped with the tool I needed to pull myself out of the dark memories of Boo’s accident.

I’d been gifted the seed of resilience.

And, at least Boo and I were together - for after all, that was all that truly mattered.

I am so grateful for Lucy's eternal sense of joy, and for our trip to the stars - as I was once again able to sit down with my coffee in the early morning, with a sense of hope, and look at wedding gowns on Pinterest without the added weight of the memories from the nightmare.

Boo and I ended up putting the poem on the back of our wedding invitation.

We got married on June 18th, 2021.