Thread by @readingkafka

A personal thread.

Ceto came to our home after losing her family in the second wave of Covid-19. She was our pandemic dog. And what a dog! A large, long-limbed black Labrador, slightly deaf, with tranquil red-brown eyes and a greying muzzle.

We discovered that the name Ceto was Greek for a primordial sea goddess in charge of all the dangers of the ocean. In mythology, Ceto was the mother of Echidna, the Gorgons, the Nemean lion, and the Sphinx; Wikipedia said the name could also mean ‘sea monster’.

Well, here was definitely some sort of other-worldly creature. The day we brought her home, she seated herself on the living room dhurrie and gazed around with equanimity at her new family. She was no frisky pup; she was eight years old, which is canine middle age.

But it was as if this had been her house all her life. Our younger son took one look and sat down beside her. From that moment, she became his dog.

That month, we were still getting over the second wave of the pandemic. I had already had Covid in the first wave. I had been in hospital for ten days, with my lungs infected, and acute fatigue for weeks thereafter.

In the second wave, my mother-in-law tested positive. She was eighty, and frail. We arranged for an oxygen concentrator and a video consultation. The first pulmonologist prescribed a cocktail of ivermectin, azithromycin, favipiravir, and more.

We quickly moved on to another doctor, who told us to stay with paracetamol, fluids, and oxygen checks three times a day. She recovered at home.

We already had a dog and a cat. Glitter was our elder son’s dog. As a toddler, he had brought the pup home, sitting with her on the floor of the car. He had named her after his favourite childhood preoccupation: bright, tiny, hexagonal bits of glitter.

As for the cat, the boys had smuggled her home as a nondescript kitten when our neighbour couldn’t keep her. From the first day, she ruled over the house, as cats do.

At first, we didn’t tell the children that Ceto had lost her family. It seemed too hard to talk about it, even at three removes. There was already so much loss in the air. Everyone had lost someone, or someone’s someone - in the extended family; at work; among friends.

This is what the pandemic took. Circles of relationships enclose us through life; they tell us that we are not alone. Like strings of Deepavali lights twinkling from balconies, these are the human connections, big & small, the someone’s someones, in the firmament of existence.

Suddenly, without warning, little bits of light were going out.

Isolation: the word sounds a bit like desolation, and contains an abyss. Its roots are in the Latin insula, meaning island. I read that the first isolation hospital for plague victims was started in the 15th century on an island off Venice.

Isolated; islanded. “The worst thing is not even being able to say goodbye,” said a friend from her hospital bed; she had lost a family member in another ICU.

More than five million people across the world died of Covid. Ceto’s family was among them.

But the pandemic also uncovered what it is to be human. Ways of reconnecting; helping those in need; everyday acts of caring – finding a hospital bed; washing a coffee cup; measuring a breath.

When I was in hospital, my younger son would video-call me every evening, asking for help with his homework. He didn’t need any help. It was his way of checking how I was. Read it, read it, he urged, and tell me if it’s okay.

He was saying: Tell me you’re okay.

The arrival of a large new dog in the house normally means some adjustment. But Ceto didn’t wait for any adjustments. She picked out the most comfortable place in every room and promptly took it over.

The rug, the cushion, the fluffy pillow on the bed – wherever you went in the house, you could be welcomed by the steady thump-thump-thump of a dog’s tail, and Ceto draped over a piece of furniture.

At breakfast, the dogs sit on either side of the table, like Egyptian sculptures, or bookends. At night, they sleep on their dog beds; but after midnight, Ceto slinks off to the living room couch, returning silently at 5 am to pretend that she has been in her dog bed all along.

Dogs teach us how to keep it simple. While watching cricket on tv with the teenager, whenever he sighs, she will sigh; when he yells, she will let out a small yelp;

if the team is playing badly and he does a little angry-dance, she will look up questioningly, wait for him to sit down again, and grunt a little toot of pleasure when he does so. She has not just taken over every room; she has inveigled herself into every heart.

Fin.