Loss of a pet

She left this world yesterday while in my arms.  I carried her warm lifeless body to the waiting hearse.  No muscle function, she moved with each step, unsettling me. 

Our time together now feels like a dream.  It started anxious, was filled with happiness, and ended sadly.  But dreams don’t leave tangible evidence of their presence.  We are packaging up the pieces necessitated by her illness.  We are putting aside the 2 of everything that we have (her sister and litter mate is still with us).  We are finding her hiding places for her toys. 

We are not sure how to package up the memories that are invisible to everyone but us in the corners, under the dinner table, in the places she slept during the day.  Her smell is still on her blanket, and I am loathe to wash it, even if it was her death shroud. 

She became my shadow and we both loved the attention.  I am looking down to not step on her, and she isn’t there.

We changed our lives on receipt of her diagnosis.  For 9 months we limited our group outdoor activities, our travel, and our schedules to accommodate her medication needs, which increased over time.  We increased our “together” times knowing the end of the runway of our time together was approaching.  There was no guidance on time as “everyone is different”.  Now, we no longer face the continual emotional ups and downs following the cycles of her illness, never knowing if each event was “it”.  Maybe we should have become fatigued from the uncertainty and welcome the relief.  But she never cried out from the pain or faltered in her happiness with life.  That is until her last release from the ICU, when she refused further food and medication.  She knew, she let us know.

Our emptiness is magnified by the time we now have on our hands.  Our service to her is now complete, and we are freed from her strict medication schedule.  What do we do, we are not accustomed to being released from her limitations?  

I wonder if her enthusiasm and sweetness was a function of her knowing her life was going to be short?  My wife thinks not, that we were just lucky. 

We 3 survivors are emotionally unavailable moody brooders.  Her role in our family life provided that missing spark of lightness and always available love.  That loss will challenge we survivors to adjust our relationships to fill that void.  Today we are lost in our own thoughts, conversations short, unsure about topics that don’t result in more tears.  I’ve seen losses of loved ones split couples apart.  We still love each other, but as we both walk through our own zombie lands of remorse, there is a translucent curtain around our worlds broken only temporarily by shared tears.  If our grieving brings us closer, and not apart, it would be her final gift to the pack.  I need to be aware everyone grieves differently.

Her sister perhaps accepted the ending sooner than we can.  On our walk today in the woods the Athena of the litter seemed happy, being released from 4 months of captivity.  On the other hand, she the runt, howled for 2 hours in loneliness when I once took her sister to the doctor without her.  The books warned us about dachshund sisters from the same litter. 

Parents are mostly lucky, rarely do your children predecease you.  You expect to survive your pets but wander through the dream expecting that day to be far in the future, the natural course of aging.  Her early departure in midlife so disrupts that dream.  I am not sure which is harder, the interruption of the dream midstream with the loss of future expectations, or the passing of an older friend with a bigger data bank of memories.

She was my first, does it get easier with the next one?  As strongly as I believe bringing her home for one last night together, and carrying her around the yard one last time, was better for her than her pass at the hospital, will her crying out when the doctor administered the first shot be forever embedded in my memory of the pain I caused her?  I have one more to go. Her sister, can I do more?  Others have told me they couldn’t stand the pain another time after their “first”.

I look for demands on my attention outside her sphere of influence, to distract me.  To force a return to normalcy.  I took so much pleasure, and felt so much purpose, having her as the center of my priorities.  Now I am empty of goals. 

For 7 years we were the pack of 4, sharing everything that made us happy.  The numbers don’t work with 3.

How do you keep the memories of something you loved alive, when their fate is to fade like our health with time?   

11.10.2023