When Ivy buries Moe in the backyard, his small, stiff body joins those of her other old friends, and she cries. Not because he’s dead. She knows his great soul will return in some shape and form, even more beautiful than his canine self. No, she cries because she is saying goodbye to the last friend she’ll have in this life.

When she was young, Ivy never imagined that someday there would be a Last Dog.

Now, at eighty-four, she knows Moe was the end of the line. And what a long and loving line it’s been. More and more, as Ivy rests in her armchair looking out at the wilderness of her back garden, she remembers them. Their fur, their gleaming eyes, the way they played and trotted by her side. Buddy and Muffet, Stranger and Mitzy, Ginger, Chester and Jack. And finally Moe. All of them foundlings and runaways just like she’d once been. Some big, some small, but each one stout-hearted and true, the only friends she’d ever needed — or had.

She hadn’t counted on Flinty. One rainy day in late spring, he shows up on her back porch. A bat-eared little fellow whose black fur is dappled with white and grey. He is collarless, drenched and shivering, but his shining black eyes and wagging tail show his determination to come in and get to know her better.

Ivy welcomes him in, towels him dry and scrambles him some eggs. When she thumps down in her armchair, tuckered out from all the excitement, the dog leaps into her lap, nestles into her soft old belly and falls asleep. A familiar rush of love sweeps through her aged veins, the falling-in-love sensation other women have for newborn babies, handsome men or beautiful women, but which she’d only ever felt for furred and feathered creatures and perhaps, sometimes, for trees.

Ivy’s nose rarely works these days, but now the comforting, slightly metallic, oily, earthy scent of freshly dried dog rises up to meet her. She feels the warmth of the dog’s belly against her aching legs and admires the gleam of his shining black nose and the outrageous size of his pointed black ears. So this is it then — one last love before she goes. A love she knows will break her heart because she’s leaving soon; she knows it in her bones.

Flinty and Ivy spend a beautiful summer and fall together — the summer more lushly green and filled with birdsong and beauty than any she’s known since her childhood. The autumn shimmering with gold dust, as if her dear old friend, Mother Earth, is offering her the best of farewell gifts.

Ivy’s eighty-fifth birthday, which she celebrates by sharing a meat pie with Flinty, is the last of those golden days. When the first cold rain of autumn comes the next day, the familiar old pain flares up in her bones and the troublesome old wheeze returns to her chest. It’s time to find Flinty his next home. Right away, while she still has enough strength left. She doesn’t want to leave it too late. Can’t risk him ending up in a gas chamber at the shelter.

She has no friends. No family to call on for help. No one answers the notices she tapes up in the community center or the grocery store. Days and nights grow colder but the phone doesn’t ring in answer to the ad she’s put in the community paper. What to do?

Aside from cashiers at the grocery store and tellers at the bank, Ivy rarely speaks to anyone. Now she forces herself to ask if they know anyone who would like a loving little dog. Though they’re sympathetic, nothing comes of it.

It’s Flinty himself who solves the problem. On their slow daily walk to the grocery store, he makes friends with a homeless man who panhandles nearby. Each time they pass the man, they stop, Ivy to catch her breath, Flinty to exchange ear scratches for enthusiastic kisses.

On the morning of their last walk together, Flinty sits down next to the man and refuses to get back up. The dog looks at her with his steely gaze and even as her heart aches, she knows what to say. “Would you be able to care for this dog? I can’t keep him anymore.”

The man smiles a wide gap-toothed smile and agrees. “I need a friend, and it looks like Flinty here does too. Sure, I’ll keep him.”

“What about food?”

“The Lord will provide. He always does.”

Ivy isn’t so sure about that; the Lord failed to provide her with many things, including parents and a family. Still. What choice does she have? Better this man, surely, than the shelter? Flinty looks up at Ivy, tail thumping. He licks the man’s grimy hand. So. It’s decided.

Ivy reaches into her pocket and draws out her battered red wallet. The man stares at her hands, and she sees them through his eyes: so old, so swollen, veins bulging and twisting like tree roots. Can he imagine her ghost-hand underneath: young, firm, strong, with flesh like a firm peach? How did it come to this?

She hands him Flinty’s leash and the money she has left from her old age pension. “The Lord’s first contribution to Flinty’s food bowl. Take good care of each other.”

Cheeks wet, she walks away as quickly as she can, hesitating only a little when she hears, or thinks she hears, Flinty whine.

Now the beginning of her end is truly here. There will be no more final chances at love.

After two days of resting in her armchair, toasting the last of her bread, and savoring the last of her butter and honey, she gets ready. By early afternoon, her small bag is packed. Despite the chilly, damp weather, she wears her favorite dress, cream-colored cotton with a marigold print. For once, her long white hair is unbraided. She tucks it under an aged red beret and buttons her old green wool coat. Umbrella and gumboots and then she is ready. Her birth certificate is in her pocket in case she is found. She hopes she won’t be.

One last goodbye to her house, her home of fifty-five years. Goodbye to her garden. To the bones of her dogs, goodbye. In her chest, her raddled old heart thuds. Fear?

Excitement? Hard to say.

She picks up the backpack containing her gardening shovel and the seeds and walks out of her house for the last time. She leaves the door unlocked.

The temperature is dropping by the time Ivy gets off the bus at the edge of the park. She thanks the driver and makes her way up the path. If Moe or Flinty had been by her side, they would have lingered at the pond to watch the ducks, but today, alone, Ivy plods on, stiffly, step by slow step into the forest. How many times has she walked this path with her dogs? How odd it feels to walk it alone.

She’s half-way up the path now, panting but determined. She was worried this morning about whether she’d have the life-force left to make it to the right spot, but as it turns out today is a good day. Her heart is light.

There it is, the fallen cedar that looks like a reclining dragon. Her signal to turn off the path. Two hundred steps deeper into the woods she goes, arriving at the spot she’d been preparing all summer. Flinty digging by her side, thinking it was some kind of game.

She pulls her trusty foldable shovel from her pack and sets about removing the leaves she’s used to hide the hole. Four feet long (because, try as she might, she couldn’t quite imagine putting her head down there too), eighteen inches deep and wide. It had taken her all summer to dig, and on bad days she wondered if she was crazy, fearing she’d never be able to make it as deep and long as she needed. On good days though — days like today — she knew that her final bed was going to be just like Baby Bear’s: just right.

From childhood, Ivy has been fascinated by stories of old Inuit ladies choosing an ice floe for their final place of rest. Of course, they called them Eskimos back in her day, and the stories, it turned out, weren’t even mostly true. When she heard about the mountaineer who kissed his wife adieu, climbed his favorite mountain and lay down to die, she knew. She too wanted to decide the time and place of her departure. And what better final bed than one in the forest she so loves, breathing her last while watched over by trees and owls?

The sun is setting now. Silvery autumn light illuminates the mist rising off the ground, making it shimmer. The branches of the trees whisper “last, last”. Her last sunset, at least for this incarnation. How had it come so quickly? So many beautiful moments, so many sad and lonely ones too. All gone so soon.

Somewhere close by a raven caws.

Almost dark now and Ivy shivers. It is starting, it is time. Hard to make herself lie down in her damp, cold little bed, but Ivy has a great deal of experience at enduring, at soldiering on. She lowers herself to the ground and stretches out her legs. Now she uses the shovel to cover her legs with leaves and soil. Now she tosses the shovel to one side and lies back with her head raised. Now the tricky part — getting the soil over her torso and casting the wildflower seeds over her grave. She will need to leave her arms unburied. She throws handfuls of seeds toward her lower self and hopes for the best. She rests her head on her leafy pillow, breathing in the rich organic scent of the earth.

Colder now. She is shaking in earnest. Being so cold hurts more than she expected but she soldiers on, accepting it all. Above her an owl hoots then glides away for the nightly hunt. Branches crack and leaves rustle. She wishes she could see the night sky for one last time, clear and bright as it had been in her youth on the farm where she was fostered. Never mind. Her soul will be there soon enough.

Her limbs are ice now, and her jaw trembles. She imagines her body as it will be in spring, all flesh gone and wildflowers growing through her rib cage. How beautiful it will be. She wonders if she will be allowed to come and see it. See her body return to the earth she loves.

And then, whoosh! The heat arrives and with it the love of the universe floods her veins, reaching deeply into every cell. All around her spirits dance, colors whirl. Now she is a baby and she is the mother and the father who loved that baby but couldn’t keep her and now she is every dog she’s ever loved and she is the people who loved her and had always loved her. If only she had known.

Now she is part of the earth, part of the owl above and the beetle burrowing through the soil below. Now she is flying, the air drenched with flowers and colors, a celestial spring meadow. She moves faster and farther now and yet there is no time and there is no her and she laughs to see the beauty of the earth below her. She sees elephant families and flocks of birds, the jewel-like beauty of the creatures of the sea. She sees the smoky dust of the deserts and the joyous perfume of a million flowers and trees fills her nose. In her ears, the glorious music of the spheres. In her mouth, the taste of the sun.

And now, no more Ivy, no more self, no more separation. As the breath leaves Ivy’s body, she knows she is all the feelings, all the understanding and misunderstanding, all the peace and all the wars, all the faults and virtues and actions that exist and have ever existed and they are her.

^^^

Tracy Urban is a forest-loving writer in Vancouver, Canada. She is the author of .
 The Secret Life of Isabel May.