Yates-Doerr, E.

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International Migration, Integration and Social Cohesion online publications

UvA-DARE is a service provided by the library of the University of Amsterdam (https://dare.uva.nl)UvA-DARE (Digital Academic Repository)George, the dogYates-Doerr, E.Publication date2018Document VersionFinal published versionLicenseCC BY-NC-NDLink to publicationCitation for published version (APA):Yates-Doerr, E. (Author). (2018). George, the dog. Web publication or website,Somatosphere. http://somatosphere.net/2018/09/george-the-dog.htmlGeneral rightsIt is not permitted to download or to forward/distribute the text or part of it without the consent of the author(s)and/or copyright holder(s), other than for strictly personal, individual use, unless the work is under an opencontent license (like Creative Commons).Disclaimer/Complaints regulationsIf you believe that digital publication of certain material infringes any of your rights or (privacy) interests, pleaselet the Library know, stating your reasons. In case of a legitimate complaint, the Library will make the materialinaccessible and/or remove it from the website. Please Ask the Library: https://uba.uva.nl/en/contact, or a letterto: Library of the University of Amsterdam, Secretariat, Singel 425, 1012 WP Amsterdam, The Netherlands. Youwill be contacted as soon as possible.Download date:10 Mar 2023George, the dog | Somatospherehttp://somatosphere.net/2018/09/george-the-dog.html[30-10-2018 11:12:22]A collaborative websitecovering the intersections ofmedical anthropology,science and technologystudies, cultural psychiatry,psychology and bioethics.HomeAboutMastheadResourcesTagsSelect Tag~Stories about time shifted, folded and shared, the extraordinary ordinary, and keeping separate and being a-part. September 24, 2018George, the dogBy Emily Yates-DoerrBabe, my grandpa, was born on the kitchen tiles of a small Seattle home. Hisdad, whose own grandpa had run a seedy downtown brothel, would disappearand reappear throughout his life. But Babe was not like the men who camebefore him. He spent his youth delivering newspapers and parking cars tosupport his mother, went to war when he was called to go, returned, gotmarried, started a business selling auto-parts, had children and grew old. Asquiet as he was responsible, he never did anything unexpected. At least that’swhat I was always told.I spent enough time with my Grandpa when I was young that I neverquestioned whether I knew him. Only much later did I think to ask. He wasalways there, though never like my grandma Donna, who was talkative and fullof opinions. I cannot remember a single meaningful conversation he and I everhad. But then I was also a kid – a girl, even – and he was from anothergeneration.My uncle sounded the first warning something was wrong. He had found hisfather sleeping in his Lincoln Continental outside the family store. Babe didn’tknow where he was or why he was there. Just a few weeks later, he left thehouse to drive his brother to the doctor, but never arrived to pick him up. Hereturned home to Donna late at night, having been lost for hours. He never saidanything, but my grandma thought he must have been terrified. Cars had beenhis life and he never drove again.Not long afterward, the electricity went out. Donna found a drawer filled withunpaid bills. Babe had always handled their finances, but in her late 70s, thisbecame her job. The difficulty was obvious and we heard about it often. AsThinking with DementiaEdited by Krause, Kristine;Pols, Jeannette;Driessen, Anneliekeand Yates-Doerr, EmilyContributorsSusanne van den BuuseFrancesco ColonaAnnelieke DriessenAlessandro DurantiSilke HoppeKristine KrauseNatashe Lemos DekkerIngunn MoserElinor OchsJeannette PolsAnnekatrin SkeideLaura VermeulenHenrik VighMaarten van WestenEmily Yates-DoerrOverviewIntroductionTimeDaily lifeParticipationLicense: Log inScience,Medicine, andAnthropologyFollow us: 2 CommentsAging, Alzheimer, Animals,anthropology, body, care,Care/caregiving, daily life,Dementia, ethnography, Family,fieldwork, Memory,remembering, sedimentation,sociality, United States   George, the dog | Somatospherehttp://somatosphere.net/2018/09/george-the-dog.html[30-10-2018 11:12:22]Babe withdrew into the protection offered by silence, she became louder. “Isurvived the Depression at the start of my life only to end up with my owndepression in the end.” It wasn’t meant as a joke. “Nothing about it is funny,frankly”, Donna said when I started to laugh. But then she laughed too.+++They took in a middle-aged dachshund from a neighbour who was moving.Years earlier Babe had issued a command, a rare thing for him to do: “No moredogs”. But things were so lonely for Donna, with Babe just sitting there,rocking in his chair. George, the dog, moved in, and then up – establishing ahome on Babe’s lap.The grandpa of my childhood smelled of aftershave and had a handshake thatcould break your hand. He woke up early, drove carefully, never overate. Hewaited until 5 o’clock to start with gin and tonics. After he was pushed intoretirement he began to sleep in. Hair grew from all parts of his body. He onlystopped eating when someone took away his food. His nails grew long and hedeveloped diabetes. Still, he often seemed happy, whistling away, holdingGeorge gently, lovingly, petting the dog over and over again. A lifelongRepublican, he developed a tic of repeating the name of the 44th U.S.President: Barack Obama. Whistle, whistle, Barack Obama, whistle, whistle.Donna suffered. George yipped when anyone approached Babe, guarding mygrandpa ferociously with his small body. “That damn dog”, she said with a hintof jealousy. My mom didn’t even hint: “He pays more attention to that dogthan he ever paid to me”.Then George died suddenly, a heart attack it seems. One moment he wasliving, the next his body was stiff. Refusing the fate of death, my mom and hersiblings scoured the internet for another. They came across an ad for adachshund an hour’s drive away. This one was a few years younger, with a bitof terrier ancestry, and female. But it was close enough, they decided. Theystarted calling the dog George on the ride home.Do you think the punch line of the story will be that my vacant grandfatherknew right away that this dog was different? It’s not, because he either didn’tnotice or didn’t care. He held this new George on his lap lovingly, all the whilekeeping up the hum of Barack Obama. The new George took over the oldGeorge’s life, looking out for my grandpa until the end.Long after my grandpa died, the rest of us maintained the George charade,though now the dog’s attention has shifted to my grandma, lunging and barkingat anyone who comes near her. George, onetime companion of her dyinghusband, sleeps dutifully at Donna’s side every night, in the spot where Babehad always been. Nearly all my grandma’s friends, her eyesight, and herhearing are gone. Death, whether quick or slow, has left her with heartache.But she has George. They take their Prozac together.My grandma now lives in a retirement home near Pioneer Square, not far fromwhere Babe’s great-grandfather ran his brothel. Settlers’ whorehouses,originally built atop Duwamish rhododendrons, have transformed into glassskyscrapers in all directions.George needs exercise, so one of Donna’s children comes every morning towalk the dog, passing rows of people sleeping on cardboard boxes. TheGeorge, the dog | Somatospherehttp://somatosphere.net/2018/09/george-the-dog.html[30-10-2018 11:12:22]neighborhood is dystopic and historic all at once, the epicentre of Seattle’shomelessness located at the heart of the city’s oldest unresolved pain. Everyday George pulls them through it.“That damn dog,” they say, though no one really means it anymore. It isGeorge who keeps my grandma alive.+++I call my grandma to ask where the name George came from, but she can’trecall. Time is no longer sharp for her. After a pause, she tells me: “I remembermy mother getting so mad. She thought we weren’t telling her if there wassomething wrong with him. She thought we were keeping something fromher”.Her mother, Emily, died just before I was born – decades before Georgeentered our lives. As I am trying to figure out how to respond, she catchesherself. Recognizing something is off, she goes quiet. “Truthfully, I’veforgotten everything. I’m not much help to you”, she says next. Then she adds,“He was a nice guy. I could have taken care of him a lot longer”. I understandthat we’re talking about my grandpa now.Before we hang up she asks me to send pictures of my sons. “Everyone doeseverything remotely, on their phones, these days. But I want real pictures tohang on my fridge for the staff to see”. She tries to say their names. As I waitfor her to speak, I have the same feeling as when watching my children climbhigh at the playground: uncertain if it’s better to help or stay away. It takes hera while to remember, but finally she does. She tells me that every night whilewaiting for sleep to come she goes through all of our names. She starts with herchildren. And then their children, and then the names of her greats – thoughusually by then her mind has gone quiet.“I’ll try to think of some memories”, she tells me. “Call me again soon.”+++The phenomenologists have argued over whether a person has an illness or isill, but something seems wrong to me about the premise of the debate. What isthe word for when experience and memory fail to locate themselves within aperson? It might be something like phenomenology’s twin: embodiment. ButI’d want a word for when the sedimentation of sociality happens upon a familyor a community – and not a person or a body at all.Thinking with the every day of dementia is this puzzle of thinking at the curlededges of thought; thinking with words I do not have (Did I once? Will Isomeday find them?). Thinking with dementia is the double-gendered dog, thesuffering felt by those who are supposedly well, the ends that are beginningsthat are also ends, and all the names that are ours that also belong to others. It’snot-remembering that living is another name for dying. It’s all the tendernessmixed up in the fear. It’s knowing people as well as we know ourselves – thevery same people who we do not know at all.Afterward: George developed cancer and died at the start of this summer. Mygrandmother followed her beloved dog at the end of August.Emily Yates-Doerr is an anthropologist who studies how nutrition scienceGeorge, the dog | Somatospherehttp://somatosphere.net/2018/09/george-the-dog.html[30-10-2018 11:12:22]shapes food systems and health care in Guatemala. She is an assistant professorat Oregon State University and the University of Amsterdam. She is the authorof the book “The Weight of Obesity: Hunger and Global Health in PostwarGuatemala” (UC Press, 2015) and a co-editor of the book, “The EthnographicCase” (Mattering Press, 2018, 2019) which experiments with a novel form ofpeer-review and which initially ran as a Somatosphere series. Follow her onTwitter at @eyatesdThis post is a contribution to ‘Daily life’ in the Somatosphere series ‘Thinkingwith dementia.’Read the next story in the series here. Read the refraction of the theme here.[view academic citations]2 Responses to George, the dogPingback: Refraction of daily life | SomatospherePingback: Burning down the house: When crisis becomes daily life in early-onset dementia |SomatosphereOther stories from Daily life:The HouseThe final stationBurning down the houseStrangers in unfamiliar environmentsThinking with spiritsRefraction of daily lifeLeave a ReplyYour email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *CommentName *Email *Website

George, the dog

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