For Castro and canines alike, time marches on

Time is funny. It creeps up on you when you’re not looking and changes the whole nature of your universe. Revolutions grow cold and old dogs die as the years whistle by, and you’re left sitting and wondering whatever became of yesterday.

You grow aware of time’s passage in different ways. Suddenly you realize that you don’t know who most of today’s movie stars are, or you mention Adlai Stevenson to a kid and he’s never heard of him, or you’re told flat-out that no one says “okey-dokey” anymore.

The relentless nature of passing events dawned on me as I was watching “Looking for Fidel” on HBO the other night and saw how old Castro was looking and how the heat of his revolution had faded into glowing coals and pointless babble.

He was a big deal at one time, a revolutionary of note, who rattled us to the point of nuclear war, and now he’s just another codger waiting for his clock to tick down, still repeating a warrior’s chant but, at 79, without the evangelistic fire of his youth. Time does that to you.

As I was watching the film, an often-awkward documentary put together by Oliver Stone, my attention was diverted to our old dog Sharmy. He was bumping into walls and trying to find his way around the house with some difficulty. I think he was looking for time, but it was hiding in a corner and he couldn’t see it. He’s blind.

Sharmy’s a mutt that we agreed to watch for a few days six years ago and eventually ended up owning. He’s 16 human years old. At first edgy, mistrusting and hostile toward our own dog, Barkley, he mellowed after a while and only growled at strangers, if they were foolish enough to touch him.

We used to hold conversations, Sharmy and I, barking at each other when it was time for the dogs to eat. Sharmy would come in through the dog door, rear his head and bark, right at 4 o’clock every day. I could have set the clock by him. I’d bark back, and he’d bark again, and before long we’d be barking out a kind of canine madrigal. Barkley would stare at us like we were both nuts. He knew I couldn’t speak dog.

A few days ago we noticed that Sharmy was bumping into things and decided to take him down to our vet (well, his vet, actually) for a checkup. She suspected he might be blind and suggested we take him to a dog ophthalmologist who, after a lot of tests, said he had suddenly acquired retinal degeneration syndrome, or SARDS.

I can’t keep up with most human diseases, much less animal afflictions, and maybe that’s an element of time’s encroachment too. I also don’t know most of the songs kids are listening to, and the ones I do know I don’t like a lot. I’m not sure if that’s good taste or time shoving me gently to the sidelines of a changing culture.

Not a lot is known about SARDS, other than it comes on abruptly and is irreversible. It’s in the DNA, the eye vet said, and can affect dogs of any age. One night Sharmy was walking around, sniffing out life, and the next he was trying to find his way around in a world that had gone suddenly black.

He’s not in any danger, because we have a large fenced-in yard that keeps both dogs off the street, and he’s pretty familiar with the interior of our house, which hasn’t changed since we began keeping him. Even so, it can’t be easy for the old dog.

I remember as a kid trying to keep my eyes shut for a whole day to see what it was like to be blind. There was a boy in our neighborhood who was without sight, and I liked him a lot, and keeping my eyes shut for a day was intended to empathize with his condition. I couldn’t do it. Sometime after breakfast, I opened my eyes and was grateful for the blue sky and green hills.

Sharmy doesn’t bark at 4 o’clock anymore. I guess it’s the new confusion in his life that’s changing old ways. I’ve tried retraining him to bark, and he kind of throws his head back the way he used to, but only a very small sound comes out. One thing he does remember is how to find Barkley’s food. After he’s finished his dinner, he tries to shove Bark out of the way to eat his. I used to keep them separated while they ate, but I thought blindness had eliminated the problem. It hadn’t. So now they’re separated again.

I’m not sure what my point was in all these words, except to acknowledge, through old dogs and old revolutionaries, how relentless time is in its forward march.

The Athenian writer Sophocles observed that “time is a kindly god,” and I hope that’s true in Sharmy’s case. He’ll keep looking for it in the shadows and some day, even blind, find it waiting for him. We all will.

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Al Martinez’s column appears Mondays and Fridays. He’s at [email protected].