First off, let me start by saying I'm not much into public displays of emotion, especially painful ones. I find it, as I'm sure most people do, uncomfortable to observe from the outside. People that aren't on reality TV programs I think generally keep that sort of thing to themselves or in the family at least. Seeing a public display of emotion, I always get the sense that the person is grasping for attention- a sort of clarion "Look at me! Look at me!" call- that at first discomforts and eventually disgusts.
That being said, I'm not sure who will believe this post isn't written with that in mind. But quite frankly, in the state of grief I am currently drowning, I don't really give a flying fig what you think. I'm a writer, for better or worse, and this is what I do, try to make sense of the world and myself through the written word. It's where I come to talk to the world, myself, and unfortunately, at times, it's where I come to hide from my pain.
But this time, I'm pouring out this public display of emotion to advise.
I am a 40 year old Southern born and bred male, and if you're in the know, I don't need to explain all the fucked up emotional shit which is implied by such a statement. For those who don't know, let's just say that Southern male children who display a certain degree of emotion in public (and even in the privacy of their family, sometimes) are pretty much shunned and considered effeminate- a Southern male curse word that means instant social banishment.
That is not melodrama. It is a simple truth.
In those 40 years I’ve lost lots of pets, all of them in the first 12 years of my life. The usual assortment of cats and dogs paraded through my childhood, but because I grew up in the deep woods, we also had pet squirrels, a pet owl, parrots, songbirds, a raccoon once, and even an armadillo. They all died, of course, as all things must. Death by misfortune, hit and run, disease, predators. But not one ever died of old age, if you get my meaning.
The plain simple fact is, until yesterday, I never got a choice in any of those deaths. They happened, and I dealt with their reality, or if unexplained, their mystery, as any child does: I cried a lot, I got over it eventually, and moved on when time erased the heartbreak.
Until Woo-Phat, I hadn’t had a dog for almost 20 years. And that 20 years had created a hell of a disconnect between remembered pain and the sure future pain of loss.
Not that I’d change anything, even if I could. Woo was my best friend for nearly 11 years, and until his terrible physical decline in the last year, he was with me, sitting on my feet as I wrote each and every short story and novel. He was there for every significant event- good or bad- in my adult life. Even as I write this now, I feel the emptiness under my writing desk like a horrible cold blankness that will never come to life again. And I feel like someone has taken a wire scrub pad to my psyche because it hurts so much to think that he’s gone for good.
That last year was torture, watching him first lose the ability to run, then only able to stagger in an ungainly lurching motion, then almost no use of one leg, then two, and finally in the two weeks prior to his death, unable to even hold himself up. He could not stand on his own. If I let him go, he would collapse on his side, staring up at me with the patience of a saint. I had to carry him in his doggy bed from room to room, because if he couldn’t see me for more than a couple of minutes, he would begin to howl as if he was being burned with matches or something. I had to carry him outside to pee and poop, and when I was too late, as I was at least a couple of times a day, I had to clean him and his bed. Towards the last three days or so, I had to hold his food bowl and water up to his mouth so he could eat and drink. All the while he would thump his little curled tail to show his appreciation.
His breathing had been getting worse for the past year as well. He had gotten a nasty nasal infection that no amount of antibiotics ever seemed to completely disperse. Round after round of expensive drugs, and the infection would go into remission for a few days, only to pop up again in the form of labored mouth breathing, blood infused discharge from his nose, and violent sneezing fits that left him exhausted and confused.
The infection finally settled behind his left eye, causing it to distend horribly, as if he were about to lose the eyeball out of his head at times. For the past few months, he hadn’t been able to close the eye all the way, so there was always some nasty discharge to clean from it. I did it several times a day in the hopes that the infection would finally go to sleep and let the eyeball fall back into its natural position, but it was to no avail.
And then there were the strange almost daily convulsions, which we all thought, Vet included, were caused by the persistent infection. It was discovered yesterday that it was instead a neurological condition with no hope of cure. The convulsions would come out of nowhere, as if summoned by some demon, causing him to bend and twist and twitch unnaturally, making him yelp in surprised agony. And each time, I’d grab him, shake him, call his name, until he came back to me with that stunned confused look in his eyes. I’m convinced now that I did him no favors by doing so. I did nothing but prolong his life, which had become a tortured, exhausting, painful existence.
I’ve been laid up at home for the last six months because of a previously mentioned Achilles tendon rupture, the subsequent life-altering surgery and ongoing recovery, so I’ve been here everyday with Woo, watching him get worse and worse, knowing deep down that there was nothing I could do but make him comfortable. Woo was with me everyday in the bed when I was unable to move, laying next to me, while I contemplated my life without martial arts, maybe a shortened life because of the diabetes, and maybe even being crippled for the rest of my life because of it. When the days were really bad for me, he knew and he would snuggle closer and gaze up at me, as if to say “It’s not all that bad, man. You’ll make it through this. You’ve got me, don’t you?”
But as the weeks turned into months, I could see he was getting worse. We both knew it. He seemed chagrined when he was unable to climb into the bed any longer and had to instead sleep next to me in his doggy bed. Within reach, of course; always within reach. The damned convulsions were getting worse, too. He was in pain most of the time, and I knew that, too. Damn it, I could see it in his eyes, couldn’t I?
You know, I always hoped I would be a better person under such circumstances. That I would make use of the compassion and wisdom my great grandmother tried to instill in me as a kid. I always hoped I would do the right thing and act unselfishly.
But, God help me, I didn’t.
Instead I willfully deluded myself that it would get better, even while the reality before my eyes told me the truth. He was dying. He was in pain, breaking down like a busted machine everyday, more and more. He wanted to die. And I wasn’t letting him go.
I’ve cried off and on for the past week now, knowing what I should do, and yet, still unwilling to show him the same loyalty he was showing me, even up to the end. I was still clinging to my selfish need for my best friend to live, to never leave me. I won’t get into the memories of him as a puppy, and how he would always sleep between me and my wife, how he would run with me in the backyard as I worked out, or how much he loved ice cream and cookies. There’s too much going on inside my heart right now to get into all that, and somehow words tend to diminish things that mean a great deal to a single person. Talking about those memories in depth feels wrong. Those are mine and his to have forever.
Yesterday, my wife and I carried Woo Phat to our vet, Dr. Lee, and after a brief exam, he told us it was time to let him go, that there was no medicine, no cure, no operation for what he had that was killing him from the inside. Not even the max daily dose of pain killers was cutting it anymore. It was obvious the poor baby was in agony and just wanted to get away from the pain. He had to die. It was the right thing to do. For his sake.
So we agreed.
Dr. Lee put a catheter in his right front paw and I held his trembling head to my chest while the doc administered a sedative to relax him. But because he was unable to breath through his nose, thanks to that goddamned lingering nasal infection, he could only do so through his mouth. He stopped doing that a couple of minutes after the injection and so he was already dying by the time Dr. Lee injected the final shot to get him beyond the pain forever.
His heart slowed, his body relaxed completely, and his eyes rolled forward one last time to see me sobbing uncontrollably as my best friend finally fled the pain he’d been living with for the past year. His tail twitched one last time, a final attempt to show his appreciation.
Like I said: I’ve done nothing but cry like a heart broken child for days. But what hurt more than seeing him go away from me forever was the knowledge that I had chosen selfishness instead of the pity he deserved. I chose to keep Woo in pain, than to deal with my own pain of losing him.
And this is why I’m sharing this public display of emotion: Don’t do what I did. Do the right thing, no matter how much it hurts you. Because a living thing you love as much as I loved my Woo Phat deserves more compassion than I displayed.
I’ll have to live for a long time knowing what I did was wrong, even if I did it out of the most loyal and loving of reasons. I’ll have to live with knowing I could have done the right thing long before I was finally left with almost no choice. For that I will always be sorry.
Because of that, yesterday will be the worst day of my life for a long time to come.
This isn’t written to say don’t love your pet to distraction. Not at all. Spoil ‘em. Treat them like your babies. Just remember to leaven that love with more wisdom than I. Know when to give the last and best gift to an animal who needs it, a soul that loves you more unconditionally than any human being ever will.
We had Woo cremated. His ashes will be home again in a couple of weeks. When they arrive, I will place them on my desk next to me when I write, so he knows I will always miss his loving and forgiving presence. And who knows? Maybe someday we’ll even be together again somewhere beyond the pain.
