My dog, Brutus, is dying. He has an enlarged heart and bad kidneys. Back at the end of July I found out about his heart. In mid-December, he stayed three nights in the hospital because his kidneys were failing.
It doesn’t seem fair. He’s only seven and I’ve had only had him for two years. Well, it will be two years twenty days from now. And he’s already dying. For the past three nights he has coughed and gasped through the night. The sounds would quiet and I would have hope and then they’d start again.
A couple of days ago he started coughing and gasping through his days as well. It breaks my heart to have him come to me and touch me with his paw as though he is asking me to do something. Why not? I am the one who feeds his hunger, who gives affection, and takes him for walks. I am his caregiver, but now I am helpless to give him what he needs.
Part of the problem is, I don’t know what he needs, and I mean that in the worst possible way. Right now he’s eating and he wants to go out, but he is clearly suffering as well. It seems as though he can’t rest because when he tries to rest he can’t breathe. That can’t go on for long. When I see him coughing through the night, looking at me as though begging me to make him feel better, I think I should put him to sleep and end his suffering. Then he eats a bit of chicken and wants to go for a walk and I think I shouldn’t end his life while it is still viable.
It is a terrible dilemma, an unanswerable question. Once he is put to sleep there’s no going back. It is a final decision. I can think that I should wait, but that is to watch him suffering without relief. When does the scale tip? Do I wait for him to stop eating or moving entirely so his last hours are absolute misery or do I send him on while he can still have a final good meal, a final walk?
This is the point where I stopped writing yesterday. Brutus was sitting beside me, panting hard. Writing had clarified the situation. I called the vet and made an appointment for this morning. Then last night around seven he jumped up and ran out to bark at the neighbor dogs again. When he came back, he was breathing really heavily. He sat in front of me and his eyes kept closing and opening again as though he was very, very sleepy. This is it, I thought and called the vet.
They were able to take him. I stayed in the room until the final injection. I sat with him afterwards and said good-bye. There was comfort in the fact that the vet told me he probably wouldn’t have made it through the night in his condition.
Today I miss him and I cry a bit, but I also reflect on the lessons I have learned. Buddhism teaches that life has duality. There is no happiness if there is no suffering. Neither can exist without the other. I loved Brutus deeply and I believe he bonded to me just as strongly in his doggy way. We all die. To love deeply will eventually end in deep pain for the one remaining. Would I refuse the love because of the pain? The love was worth this pain, as fleeting as the time that he and I shared was.
And that’s another lesson. I am a procrastinator. There’s always tomorrow, only there isn’t. I didn’t want to write this because I said, no, it’s too soon, but I have learned the lesson and told myself, do it. Why wait?
I have wanted to take Brutus on a trip to a pet friendly place for a while now. I finally booked the room and was going there January 17. As it turns out, January 17 will be the first day I can pick up Brutus’s ashes from the vet. He loved the beach and he loved to ride in the car, but I thought I had plenty of time to take him. Obviously, I never did.
I made a promise to myself that I wouldn’t drink in 2018. My childhood was rough. I was very fat because once upon a time I used food to block the pain. Eventually, I found liquor and other drugs work equally well. They have the same power to numb so that the pain recedes. Food lost its allure some time ago. Without that promise, perhaps I would have turned to alcohol again. Instead I am stuck with feeling this pain.
I don’t want it, I don’t like it, but allowing myself to feel it shows me that I can bear it. I can face it and I can learn from it and I can let it make me a better person instead of running away.
When I was very young, I heard the story of King Solomon. God offered him any gift and he asked for wisdom, which pleased God greatly. He could have had riches, power, anything he desired and he asked for wisdom. ‘That is what I would ask for’, I thought, as a child. ‘I would ask for wisdom’.
It is the law of life that wisdom comes far more frequently from pain than from pleasure. So often we think that we should avoid pain and seek pleasure, but so often the lessons are in the pain and our pleasures keep us from being who we might otherwise be. I have lived this truth. Today I do not like the pain but I let myself feel it. Today I choose wisdom. He was only a dog, but his life meant something and I’m going to make sure that it does.
defattedcalfblog 