the PDF of her book - National Aphasia Association

112 Ruth Codier Resch Without Utterance:
her, “We will get training together so that you will have ways to tell me what
you know. I will find someone to help us teach you to be a service dog for
me… I adore you, and it’s time to get you all the way well!”
We’re downstairs together for the day and she sleeps there for the night.
I come down the next morning, waiting for her little noises of getting up and
moving to greet me with her eager face. The house feels empty; I don’t hear
her. “Sahaya!” I call. There is barren silence. I run out to the garden, expecting
to find her there, but there is only stillness. My eyes scan the yard until I see
her white back serenely stretched out on the ground near the porch. I call
out, “Sahaya!” but she doesn’t move. She lies facing an old door I found in
the rafters of the garage. I attached it to the fence, and called it The Door to
Other Worlds. She is cold when I lay my head on her body. She has gone
through The Door and left me.
Ruth’s husband comes, helps me carry her heavy body into the house,
lays her on a soft yellow blanket on my painting table. I’m in a daze. First I
clean her carefully. I act without plan or consciousness, find cloth and crow
feathers around my studio, make streamers from the cloth. I tie the red cloth
strips and black feathers gently on each of her paws, murmuring the little
achings of my heart for her to hear. I find a rope of cowry shells, put them
around her neck and add a red string of little bells. I want her beautiful when
we take her for cremation.
Grief floods everything, and my daughter comes to take care of me. As
we come home with the little white box of ashes in my lap, she softly sings
a niggun, a wordless, melancholy, sweet tune, in the darkened car. I caress
the little white box as though petting a big dog in my lap.
Sahaya lived her name. In Sanskrit her name means beautiful, golden
companion. In our time together we radically changed one another. She filled
my haven with her articulate silence, yet she was not silent. She spoke to me
with sounds, attitude, movement, and intention. She came to understand
the languages of my mouth and my energy, and I understood her ways of
language. She blossomed into a dog beyond dog. Seeing that, I take courage