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A journey through addiction and
redemption... with a little help
from a four-legged friend
In 2007, Mark Saluke was stuck in the full-blown throes of alcoholism, careening from one dreary drunk to the next, digging his grave one bottle at a time. When his latest arrest presented one more last chance, Mark painfully crawled out of the darkness of his addiction and into the light of sobriety. He realized he was not alone as he found redemption in a recovery community... and in a dog.
LUCY’S WAY is the story of that dog, guiding Mark through his final days of active addiction into the early days of recovery. As he came to realize, Lucy was already living out the concepts he was only beginning to understand in recovery. Slowly, as he began to experience the joys Lucy had always known, Mark recognized how the simple principles of Taoism were illuminating his journey into sobriety, as well as day-to-day life with the Labrador beagle who became his best friend.
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LUCY'S WAY
A Dog, A Drunk, and The Tao
by Mark Saluke
Published by the author in association with Fearless Literary
246 pages, trade paperback • $17.95 print, $9.95 digital • ISBN 979-8-218-64559-5
PRINT, KINDLE & NOOK
MORE DIGITAL FORMATSmore sales outlets to come!
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MARK SALUKE spent fifteen years in active addiction. A Taoist sticking to the premise of Beginner’s Mind to keep himself out of trouble, Mark has been active in mindfulness groups and his recovery community since 2008. As a newspaper journalist over the span of two decades, Mark has written sports, human interest, business and education stories for the Kokomo Tribune and other publications. After semi-retiring from the newspaper business in 2019, he found a calling in the community mental health field, catering to a population of clientele dealing with depression, anxiety and other mental illnesses as well as substance use disorders. He lives in Indiana with the enduring spirits of two life-saving best friends, Lucy and Buddy the cat.
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Chapter 1
From an Acorn“A tree that fills a man’s embrace grows from a single seedling.”
— Tao Te Ching, verse 64 (Jonathan Star translation)
Four days before Christmas, I pick Lucy up at the vet. Within minutes of getting the call that she’s ready, I’m out the door and on my way.
It’s the winter solstice, the shortest day in the Northern Hemisphere, falling this year in the longest week of my life. Seven days like any other week, but the longest I’ve ever spent apart from Lucy, the reddish-blond beagle pup who grew into much more than a best friend over more than fourteen years.
Dr. Ratliff, Lucy’s vet for around eight years now, has always been good to her, and she’s liked him as much as she could considering that he’s her vet. I’ve always trusted him, and this time was no different. But Dr. Ratliff didn’t make this decision. I did. He agreed with me, helped me justify it, followed through with it.
It was a decision Lucy wanted me to make, and told me it was okay to make, for months.
Rhonda, one of the vet techs, brings Lucy out to the car. Reunited, I think how this little beagle pup turned out to be anything but little, much more Labrador than beagle over time. As the old adage goes, “mighty oaks from little acorns grow.”
Before I even start the car and pull out of the parking lot, I’ve opened the box and pulled out the oak urn holding her ashes.
In 1995 I walked through a red door, and everything changed.
Attached to a gray two-story house just a few blocks south of the Ball State University campus in Muncie, Indiana, the door stood out under a porch light as I approached with two friends in the darkness of a warm, mid-August night.
On the other side of this door a party was just starting, one that would last late into the night and, for me, the next several years as I tried to relive it time and again, never quite recapturing the feeling of this night. I walked through that door and into a Grateful Dead song, figuratively and literally. The music and incense, mixed with beer, Valium, and acid, overtook my senses as I watched a hippie in corduroy bell-bottoms dance down a spiral staircase in slow motion, or so it seemed, a beer in one hand and a beach-ball sized balloon of nitrous oxide in the other. Halfway down, he tumbled and fell, spilling down the staircase. He lost his beer along the way but kept hold of the balloon, hopping up smiling to applause at the bottom of the landing.
Later that night, sitting outside on a porch swing and chatting with a college student about what kind of acid I’d dropped a few hours earlier and how hard it was hitting — perfectly normal conversation as people danced past us in the yard huffing bulging balloons of medical grade laughing gas — a chemical and sensory overload dulled the burn of my recent breakup. The feeling of not belonging started to disappear as I made small talk with pretty women and shook hands with smiling strangers.
If this was a Grateful Dead song, I was about to embark on the entire tour. Over the next few months, my training wheels would come off in an electrifying blur of classes and countless parties, navigating a tight rope of alcohol poisoning, bad acid trips, and high academic achievements as I perfected the balance of great grades and greater parties.
In this prelude, a moment where time stood still and the room spun around me, everything was at one in my universe. Still two weeks from walking onto campus or stepping foot into my first class, I had officially arrived at college, and I was already passing with psychedelically flying colors.
Five days before picking up Lucy in her urn, the first real snow of December falls on me. I’m standing at the edge of the Mississinewa river, eyes closed, listening to the water flow from a storm outfall, a steady stream rippling down a manmade creek bed of concrete and rocks, trickling into the river.
On the short walk over, I leave a single set of tracks behind in the fresh snow. White flakes, light and airy, dance past me in their descent to the ground. Three days ago, there would have been a second set of tracks to my left, a weaving pattern of paws that rarely followed straight lines.
I open my eyes, tears trailing down my cheeks and spotting my coat. The wet patterns of the tears are different from the marks left by the snowflakes.
Two days earlier, I said goodbye to Lucy. I had seen it coming for the past year, had been trying to prepare for an earthly farewell to a wonderful soul who changed me in ways I never thought a canine companion could. In her last week, even though she could barely walk, this is the spot she led me to each day, a small park along the river about three blocks from our home.
I’d have to lift her off the bed and carry her down two flights of stairs to get her outside, but once there, she somehow found the strength to make this walk. With purpose and intent, her frail frame pulled me out of the back yard and into the alley to head toward this river, often multiple times a day. That last week with her was unseasonably warm, before this current cold front moved in; maybe nature left that brief window open for us to make those final walks.
On our last walk, like the ones before, she went straight to this same spot, standing in the stream flowing from this storm outfall and hungrily lapping water to her heart’s content, long strings still dripping from each side of her mouth after she was fully satisfied. I often wondered if that water was the best for her to drink, but there was no reason to fight something that gave her such great pleasure. After all, she’d lived a mostly healthy and happy life for more than fourteen years.
That last walk was around 11 a.m. on December 13, just 24 hours before the appointment with the vet.
The following day, after saying goodbye to Lucy, I shared the news — along with the first and last pictures I’d ever taken of her — on Facebook, where I had shared many other memories of our life together over the years:
Said goodbye to my best friend today. Lucy… Lou Dog… Lou Poo… Lucy Lou… went so far above and beyond her purpose in this world. Countless car rides, endless walks in the park and a best pal waiting loyally at the top of the stairs — tail wagging and barking before I even walked in the door most days — barely scratch the surface of what this journey has meant to me.
For 14½ years, she taught me the most important lessons of this life that no human could over and over again, saved me from myself too many times to count and unconditionally loved me whether I deserved it or not. You were the greatest blessing I’ve ever known in this life, Lou Dog. Thank you for everything. Every single moment of it. May your spirit play hard and rest well, good girl.
4/1/2006 — 12/14/2020
Well wishes poured in from friends and acquaintances. Some were animal lovers in their own right. Several had met Lucy. Many knew the bond I shared with her.
And yet those words, straight from my emotional heart in those first hours without her, didn’t seem to scratch the surface of the impact she had on me. But they were a seed.I’ve been through plenty of pain and heartache in life, but nothing quite like this. And right now, it’s hard to wrap my head around the lesson I’m supposed to gain, the silver lining of this loss, as I stand here at the river, a grown man, weeping.
It’s the end of 2020, a year when Covid ravaged the planet. Lucy was a shining light in a world too often filled with darkness. She was something good to look forward to, a presence of unconditional love among all the overwhelming negativity that pollutes day-to-day life. She offered hope in hopeless situations. She lent a joy and happiness to life that I’ve never known, one that allowed me to change and reshape my thoughts on people.
She knew no enemies, even among an unpleasant stranger or two over the years — including a Chihuahua she towered over in greeting once, only to be nipped on the nose and left shaking and confused.In Lucy’s world, everything was in harmony.
As I entered the first hours of life without her, I felt lost and alone despite knowing that I was surrounded by love. Because life with Lucy was full, brimming with unconditional love no human can express. She had given me a sense of purpose. At the end of her life, Lucy wasn’t just a dog. She was my best pal, my companion, the best thing that ever happened to me. The question I asked myself as I cried at the river that morning, two days after saying goodbye, was how I was going to remember that there is goodness in this world without her....
