Episode Ninety-Three: The Byte-Mara Saulitis

Mara talks about her sister, Eva Saulitis, Alaskan poet and marine biologist. But specifically? In this shorter episode, she talks about the mysterious black dog that shows up again and again whenever people in her family are dying.

Transcript

Welcome back and welcome to episode 93 of Bite-Sized Blessings.

In this episode,

I talk to Mara Salaitis,

And it's a fascinating episode,

One that's perfect for this time of year as the days grow colder,

The leaves start crisping underfoot,

And it's ever so sweet to stay inside,

Get cozy,

And sip a hot chocolate.

Mara's miracle is her sister,

Eva,

And specifically,

The miraculous and mysterious things that happened just before Eva's death in 2016.

A little bit about Eva,

Who was quite a remarkable human being,

And as I like to say,

Lived very close to the soul of the world.

Eva was both a poet and marine biologist,

And she and her partner Craig studied orcas in Prince William Sound for over 30 years,

An experience that informed her memoir,

Into Great Silence,

Discovery and Loss Among Vanishing Orcas.

Eva accomplished many things in her life,

Including founding the North Gulf Oceanic Society and writing volumes of essays,

Including Leaving Resurrection and Becoming Earth,

And poetry collections,

Among which are Many Ways to Say It and Prayer in Wind.

On the website,

Under the episode show notes,

I'll have links to her books,

To her reading some of her poetry,

And other goodies I think will inform you on just what a spectacular human being Eva was.

In this interview,

We get to hear her sister,

Mara,

Talk about what a miracle Eva was.

It is a sweet,

Heartbreaking,

And poignant interview.

So now,

Episode 93 of Bite-Sized Blessings.

We were sitting after she'd gone to sleep,

And we were just hanging out together.

And in their entry,

There was like a slate floor,

And then there was wood floor.

And all of these details are important,

Because we were sitting together,

And we were kind of like,

I think we were just reading,

We were quiet.

And suddenly,

We heard the sound of like,

The sound of a dog's claws on the slate floor.

Like,

You know how the dog,

The clicking,

The clicking of the toenails.

And so we kind of both looked,

And then we realized,

Oh,

Greeny's sleeping at our feet.

We kind of looked at the entry,

And we're like,

Both of us were just sort of like,

And you know,

He did not know the rest of this story.

Like,

He didn't know about the door,

And he did not know about the conversation about the dog,

The black dog.

So we both kind of glanced over,

And I remember it just felt like it was like slow motion.

Like,

We both kind of looked over,

And then we sort of looked at each other.

And then we sort of looked at each other,

And then we heard those same claws going up the stairs behind us.

There were some things that happened at the end of our life that were,

That in that last week,

That were truly unexplainable and miraculous.

So I'm going to go back in time to when my dad was sick and dying,

And he had dementia.

And,

You know,

He was not a,

I'm just going to say,

My dad was not a good person in many ways.

He was,

He had a lot of his own demons,

And he,

There were reasons why he was the way he was.

He was shaped by terrible things that happened throughout his life,

And probably through generations.

But he definitely was a person who had harmed other people.

But when it came to his dementia,

It was really difficult to watch.

I cared for him.

I took care of him.

He lived where I lived,

And was really involved in his care.

And even though that was hard,

Because he had been a very difficult father,

But it was really hard to watch him because he suffered a lot of,

Like,

Paranoia kind of things.

And he was reliving things from the past,

And it was really hard to listen to the things that he would say were happening to him.

But there was this one thing that he would talk about.

He would talk about,

This was really near the end of his life.

He started talking about this black dog,

And he was telling us about the black dog that would come to visit him.

And he was always,

And I'd be like,

He'd be like,

That black dog was here again.

And this is,

He was in like assisted living in the special wing,

And my mom was,

They were in the same room.

And he would just be like,

That dog,

Mada,

And he had an accent,

Mada,

The black dog was here again last night.

The black dog,

He always,

And I was like,

What is this black dog?

And so I started looking up the black dog,

And it turns out the black dog is like a,

It's a,

There's a story about the black dog.

There's a belief that the black dog comes to guide you to the other world,

To transition you to wherever you're going.

And so,

My sister and I would talk about that,

Like,

Oh my God,

That makes sense.

So I wonder if he's going to die soon.

Like he keeps talking about this black dog,

And we believe in a lot of that kind of stuff.

So that was like years ago.

He died in 2007.

So he died a long time ago.

So now we fast forward to the last week of my sister's life,

And people are coming to visit in that week while I'm there with her and her partner.

And,

You know,

A lot of people were spending a lot of time with her and trying to,

You know,

Say goodbye and all that.

And then towards the end of the week,

We started limiting visitors because she really,

Her energy was low,

And we wanted to kind of let her be,

You know,

Kind of quietly present with us.

But her friend was visiting from Anchorage,

Margaret,

And Margaret and I were kneeling at her bedside.

So she had moved her bedroom downstairs to her daughter's room,

And she was kind of,

She would go in and out of sleeping.

And so we had been hanging out with her,

And we were just together kneeling by the bed.

And she had those kind of wood core doors.

They had built this house in Homer,

Alaska,

She and her partner.

And they had those,

The doors,

Like I remember them from childhood,

Like when you,

Like,

You know,

If the door would,

When it would open,

I don't know if you knew these kinds of doors,

But they wouldn't always close all the way.

Like they would kind of catch,

They wouldn't completely latch.

And then if somebody opened it,

It kind of makes like this sound.

So the door was like that behind us.

And we were,

The door is pretty close to us,

And we're small.

So we were kneeling,

And the door is closed behind us.

And she's sleeping.

And suddenly that happens,

The door goes,

And it opens.

And we both turn around and we're looking and like,

There's nobody there.

And I'm thinking,

It must be Grigri,

Her dog must be trying to get in the room.

So I walk out into the main room,

And I'm,

I said,

Grigri,

And I'm looking around,

And Grigri's not there.

And then I look out,

And Grigri's out on the porch.

So the doors are closed,

It's winter in Alaska.

So Grigri's sleeping on the porch.

And I'm like,

Well,

That was really weird.

So I kind of like thought about it,

But you know,

Whatever.

So like,

Maybe it was a wind.

I mean,

I don't know where the wind would be coming from,

But we were like,

Whatever.

So,

So then later on that,

It might have even been later on that day,

But it was sometime soon after that.

Margaret had left and I was sitting with,

With my sister and,

And she says to me,

You know,

Mara,

Do you remember when dad used to talk about that,

That black dog,

Remember the black dog?

And I'm like,

Yeah,

Sure.

I remember the black dog.

And she said,

That black dog is coming in here.

It comes in here and it lays on the bed.

I mean,

It was really like,

I was like,

Do I tell her?

Like,

I didn't,

I didn't tell her about that thing that had happened.

Like the,

The weird,

How the door had opened,

But it was really like,

I was like,

Really?

And she,

And I said,

Is it,

Is it friendly?

She doesn't.

Oh yeah.

It just,

It just curls up on the bed.

Just,

It just lays with me.

And she was really peaceful about it.

And she was really like,

It was,

You know,

It was,

It was like a nice thing,

Right?

Like it was,

She welcomed it.

And so then,

You know,

We would,

We had kind of a pattern.

It was,

We called it our cocoon.

It was our,

The little,

It was the three of us.

It was my sister and Craig and myself.

And,

And we just had this,

This little,

It seems like it was years,

But it was like a,

This week that we were together and,

And we would have our routines that we would do during the day.

And then every evening we would,

We would have dinner.

Craig would make dinner.

I would make dinner.

And my sister really,

She couldn't really eat,

But she would,

We would put her in,

In mini Winnie,

Which was the wheel.

She named,

She named everything.

So she named the wheelchair mini Winnie.

And we'd get her into mini Winnie and we wheel her out to the table,

To the table where they had all,

Had always had all of these meals and she had written at that table and it was like this place.

And,

And we would sit together and she might taste the food and,

And,

And then,

You know,

We would watch an episode of,

Of the two,

The psychiatrist and his brother.

I always forget the name,

But anyway,

It was,

I'll think of it.

Frazier?

Yeah.

Frazier.

We would watch an episode of Frazier.

She loved Frazier.

So we would sit and watch an episode of Frazier.

And then we would wheel her back to her bed and she would go to sleep.

And then Craig and I would sit together in the living room and,

And just read or just,

You know,

Chat or just kind of decompress while she was sleeping.

And,

And they,

They built,

Like I said,

They built this house and,

And the house is just the most beautiful place ever.

Most is cozy and just full of her and him and their life.

And,

And they have these,

These kind of old like vintage couches and,

And they had their friend,

Sean McGuire had built this beautiful spiral staircase that was in the house to the upstairs.

And it was a small house,

Two rooms upstairs in the bathroom,

But,

And then mainly a kind of an open area in the two bedrooms downstairs.

So we were sitting on the couch together.

It was either that same night or the next couple nights later,

We were sitting in after she'd gone to sleep and we were just hanging out together.

And in their entry,

There was like a slate floor and then there was wood floor.

And all of these details are important because we were sitting together and we were kind of like,

I think we were just reading.

We were quiet.

And suddenly we heard the sound of like the sound of a dog's claws on the,

On the slate floor.

Like,

You know how the dog,

The clicking,

The clicking of the toenails.

And so we kind of both looked and then we realized,

Oh,

Gregory's sleeping at our feet.

We kind of looked at the entry and we're like,

Both of us were just sort of like,

And,

You know,

He did not know the rest of this story.

Like he didn't know about the door and he did not know about the conversation about the dog.

The black dog.

So we both kind of glanced over and I remember it just felt like it was like slow motion.

Like we both kind of looked over and then we sort of looked at each other and then we heard those same claws going up the stairs behind us,

Like right at our heads.

And Craig says,

There's a dog in the house.

And,

And he just literally got up and he went running up the stairs.

He's like,

What is this?

Why,

How?

There's a dog in that.

And he's,

And I just sat there like,

Like what?

And they came down and I told him,

I said,

Craig,

There's a dog that's visiting.

It's coming for,

It's coming to help Eva.

So her daughter was there with us when,

When Eva died,

Her daughter,

Ellie and Ellie had been doing,

Had been in Boulder doing a rolfing course.

So Ellie went back to Boulder and Ellie was,

Ellie's a swimmer.

So she swam all through high school and college and,

And she's a swimmer.

And so after she returned to Boulder after the death and she and Eva were super,

Super close,

Eva was actually her stepmother,

But everybody felt like it was almost like Ellie came out of Eva,

Even though she,

Cause she was so much like Eva.

She was like her mom too,

But she was very much like,

It was just an interesting thing about them.

So Ellie returns to Boulder and she goes to swim at the UC Boulder.

She would swim in their pool in the mornings.

And I guess I've never been there,

But she said that it has,

It's like a beautiful pool.

It has this big glass windows.

So the sunlight will come in,

In the mornings.

And she was alone.

She was swimming at laps.

And it was a few days after she had returned to Boulder and she,

And she was grieving,

Really heavily grieving.

And,

And she,

As she was swimming and she turned,

Did her flip and she was swimming back,

She raised her head out of the water and sitting at the side of the pool was a black dog and there's nobody else in the place.

And she just,

The dog was there.

And,

And she,

She's like,

Started swimming towards it and it turned and it went,

Walked away into the changing rooms.

And so,

So what about the black dog?

There's our little miracle.

I believe in the black dog.

I believe,

I mean,

It was all of us.

You can't explain it except to say that it was,

There was a spirit guide for my sister.

The spirit guide came and we all got to,

The spirit guide came to all of us,

Not just to her.

So,

And then the final miracle that I'll share is that in the last 24 hours of my sister's life,

My sister really wanted to have what she called,

She called it a conscious death.

She talked a lot about wanting a conscious death.

She wanted to,

To be present all the way through as much as she could.

She didn't know.

I mean,

Like none of us,

We don't know what is,

You know,

We're going to have to face death and,

And none of us know what it's going to be like.

And we hope that when we face it,

We're,

We face it openly and consciously and welcome it in a welcome,

Some kind of welcoming way.

But that doesn't happen for everybody.

Clearly.

I mean,

People just die suddenly and have no,

No chance.

You know,

She was grateful that she had a chance to say goodbye and do all this.

She was,

She was grateful for her cancer because it gave her,

Gave her this,

These opportunities.

She had this thing about conscious death and I never quit.

It was kind of like,

Well,

What is it going to mean?

What does it,

You know,

She,

But she planned everything.

She,

She was a planner and she was a list maker.

And she,

I have her last,

The journal,

Her journal,

Her date book from the last year of her life.

And so I have all the lists with the things crossed off and the phone,

You know,

Everything she wanted to do.

And,

And then the few things that aren't crossed off and stuff.

And in the last,

You know,

Hours of her life,

She was,

She was awake.

And she was kind,

She was like really quite clear.

There were times when she wasn't totally clear,

But she called,

We called people she wanted,

She,

She was a writer.

So she was writing on her computer all the time.

She would write answering emails.

And then that morning,

That Friday morning,

She died on Saturday and Friday morning,

She could not,

It would hurt to type.

So she couldn't,

She couldn't write the email.

So I wrote the email.

So she would dictate to me and I would answer,

I was answering people's emails for her.

And,

And then she was,

She wanted to call people to say goodbye.

So she,

So she was,

You know,

You're calling whoever she wanted to call,

Talk to everybody.

And then my brother,

I got my brother there.

He flew in from,

From New York.

He wanted to be there and he flew in.

He got in there really late,

But,

But he was there and we were all together and it was me and my brother and,

And Craig and Ellie.

And we,

We had a window open because she,

She wanted a place for her spirit to be able to leave.

And we had this Buddha candle burning and we had this,

All this music playing and we had all these albums of photographs that we were all looking at.

When she would sleep,

We would look at albums of photographs.

And then when she would wake up,

We would share memories and talk about,

Just talk and talk to talk to talk.

And then around four in the morning,

She got really like physically agitated,

Like,

And that happens a lot for people when they're in the final stages of passing.

And she had this just restlessness,

It's called terminal restlessness.

And so she couldn't stop moving.

She kept stretching her legs and moving her arms.

And I could just tell she was really suffering.

And I said,

Do you,

Do you want me to give you something to try to take the edge off?

And she said,

Please,

I just,

I just need to relax.

And,

And I knew that when I gave her the medicine that she was probably not going to talk anymore.

Um,

But I knew that I had to do it.

Like I had to give her that because she was really,

She just couldn't relax.

And so I gave her the Ativan.

She went into really,

Really deep sleep.

Like almost,

You'd have to say like,

So not like,

Like almost coma,

Coma,

Like,

Like coma,

Like,

But she was really peaceful.

So she was just sleeping.

And,

And we just,

The morning came and,

And we baked,

She loved to make Latvian bread.

It's a tradition from our mom.

And so her daughter started,

Started baking Latvian bread.

We sat in the room on the floor and we were kneading this crazy bread,

Taking turns kneading this just thick Latvian rye dough that like,

You feel like you're going to die trying to knead it.

But we passed the bowl around,

Kneaded it.

And,

And we just looked at those pictures and she just slept.

And,

And her friend,

Her neighbor came over and sat with us and we ate our breakfast in the room where she was.

We just stayed,

You know,

We just kept staying with her.

And then,

Um,

Right around noon,

Her breathing started to change.

And I,

I realized that cause it had happened with my mom and mom and dad a year and a day earlier.

And the same thing had happened.

Like all of a sudden my mother's breathing was going super fast.

And I was like,

You guys,

You got all,

Everyone needs to come in here because something is different.

Something's happened.

And she had been literally like in the state for about six and a half hours.

She had not moved.

She had not literally her body had not moved.

And we all gathered and Craig was on one on her right side.

And I was on her left side on the bed.

And we were kind of like looking at her and,

And then her daughter and my brother and her friend Asia were on the,

Or on the bed.

And suddenly she opened her eyes and she sat up.

She sat in the bed and she put out her hands to Craig and I,

And we each took her hands and she turned to Craig and she just smiled at full smiles,

Locked eyes,

Just smiling at it.

And then she turned to me,

She didn't say anything.

She turned to me and she gave me what we called the mom's smile,

Which was a half smile.

I've always gave the half like,

But you know,

And it was that complete.

Utter love,

Like,

Like I'll never forget.

And then she just lay back and she never breathed again.

And I call it the final,

Thank you.

The ultimate gratitude.

She came back to tell Craig not to tell me,

Thank you.

We did it.

We did this.

All of us.

We did it.

Thank you so much for listening to this episode of Bite Size Blessings.

If you want more information about the symbolism and the myth of the black dog,

All you got to do is go to your computer or your phone,

Type in black,

And there's more than enough information on this powerful canine.

I need to thank my guests today who shared the beautiful story of her sister,

Their friendship and her legacy.

I need to thank the creators of the music used for this episode,

Sasha End,

Alexander Nagarada,

Rafael Crux,

Floss Appel,

And Music Elle Files.

For complete attribution,

Please see the Bite Size Blessings website at bitesizedblessings.

Com.

Website,

You'll find links to books,

Music,

Artists,

And of course,

Eva's books and poetry,

All of which I hope lighten your day.

Thank you for listening.

And here's my one request.

Be like Mara.

Believe in the mystery,

Believe in miracles,

And most of all,

Believe in that little black