I sit at home more alone, now, than in a long time, or at least alone in a new and different way. It was a blustery, threatening, tempestuous afternoon when I scooped her halfway into a pillowcase and snuggled her on my lap for the short drive to the veterinary hospital. I would never have thought it possible to drive with her on my lap, navigating the steering, the clutch and gas, the turn signals, and the stick shift, all while holding onto her carefully so her old bones didn't get roughly jarred. But she was content to lay against me, trusting, and seeming still curious about the world around her even as she labored to breathe and her shoulder blades angled painfully together, having joined the past few days like friends clasping hands to close the usual space between them.
The vet was kind and gentle. His eyes reddened and moistened perceptably when I said I thought she was "just done." I said it with a strength in my voice that surprised me, maybe surprised him too, given my tears. No wavering or cracking, just pure conviction about my beloved who I've known so well and for so long.
I had arrived early and used the time to snuggle with her in my car, whispering to her of my gratitude for her life's spirit co-mingled with mine these many years. It was harder there because she seemed so alert, her soul still eager for engaging the world despite her body's weariness. Entering the treatment room, though, we were both changed. There was a soft blanket spread on the examination table, and a box of tissues. I was sobbing by the time I walked through the door with her in my arms, struck to near shattering with the memories of that same room a year and a half earlier when I let my sweet Sheltie girl, Naomi, go. Somewhere in my mind wandered the thought that the blanket looked like the same one from that desperately sorrowful day from the past.
The staff was good to me and let me stay alone with her for a long time to cry into her soft and still beautiful fur and kiss and nuzzle her sweet forehead. And from her I felt new signs of readiness to be let go of her suffering. She seemed suddenly much skinnier and more frail than she had only an hour before, and I wondered with sudden guilt and shame how I could have been so blind as to let her suffer over the weekend -- how could I not have seen how far gone she already was, that I didn't let her go on Friday or Saturday?
But I think the timing was all okay. When we arrived at the vet hospital, I think she maybe perceived relief and thus stopped trying to be strong, because even her breathing was perceptably different. I had laid beside her all of last night, sleeping with my hand touching her to bring her calm and comfort, and then I had napped with her this afternoon. It was only as we snuggled in the car in the parking lot before going in that I had suddenly noticed a small strangeness to the sound of her breathing, and that became much more pronounced as we waited for the doctor. So, it felt to me like a sign, another way of her letting me know she was ready, that it was the right time to let her go.
I held her close on my lap after the doctor gave her a sedative injection to calm her. We sat that way for a long time and I said my goodbyes. I knew she was leaving me even then, even though the "official" injection hadn't been administered.
I had learned with Naomi that I didn't want to be holding her at the moment life left her body. Feeling her relaxed and soft from the sedative was enough. To still feel her warmth, her pliability, to have her ear twitch when my hair accidentally tickled it.
I put her on the table for the final injecton. I wish maybe that I had left the room then. She was already gone, even if her heart and lungs were still quietly operational. The vet struggled with the injection site. Using a rubberband as a tourniquet around a hind leg, he couldn't seem to get a good vein in her narrow, thin, tired legs, so he had to turn her over and then I had to see into her jaundiced eyes, formerly a deep blue but now strangely a mix with yellow. Even that, I hadn't been able to see so clearly until that moment.
The final injection was very quick, but she was already gone and I wish that maybe I had been, too. The doctor offered me time with her but I didn't want it. She was lifeless and I remember those were the worst moments with Naomi. There is something so very real, tangible, immortal, unfathomable about the life force within God's creatures. And when it is gone, truly what is left is just a shell. It is a mystery I hope to one day comprehend with more than the human understanding I have now.
I rushed out of the treatment room after giving her head one last kiss goodbye, and glanced back to see the doctor gently scooping her up in the blanket. The reception area was full of people who glanced quickly at my red and sodden face with nervous compassion. Thankfully one of the staff said I didn't have to settle the bill right then, so I hurried to my car and let the tears flow freely.
I came home and sat on the floor and hugged the dog, and as I sobbed and he licked the tears from my face and neck, I thought about that phrase, "God giveth and He taketh away," but I put it in reverse, "He taketh away but He also giveth." He took Naomi from me and then almost exactly a year later He gifted me with Beau-of-the-sweet-temperament. He let Beau and Mikayah bond, and Beau and I bond, and then He said it was time to let Mikayah go. But he didn't leave me bereft. And in that I find gratitude and a strange joy in the sorrow.
I went out to the store and bought a bottle of champagne, some barbecued ribs (that I probably won't end up eating tonight), and a little thing of chocolate cheesecake. I will raise a toast (at least in my heart) to Mikayah and to the beauty of her life and the great gift she has been to me.
As I left the grocery store, I couldn't help notice the change in the weather. The threatening storm had blown through, replaced by brief sunshine, a sky the brightest blue -- blue like Mikayah's eyes on the best of brightest days of her sweet life -- and wisps of clouds with the sun glimmering off of them in that way that reminds me of something celestial or heavenly. The wind buffetted colorful orange/red trees which stood in contrast against the blue, white, and gold in the sky and I stopped in my tracks for a moment to marvel at the wonder of it, to soak in the image and the feeling.
I drove home pondering my own self. A year and a half ago I went through nearly the same thing, with Naomi, but that evening I was much less strong. There was something to going through it all by myself tonight. I had thought it might make me feel more lonely, more sorry for myself, but instead I felt my strength and fortitude. Last year I had to have my Father and my dopey ex-fiance (who was already an "ex" at that point, just a week or two in, after the first time I left him) go with me through it all. And the fact was that, though sweet, they were nearly useless. Granted, when we walked into my house and I saw Naomi's bed and started to freak, they jumped to my rescue to quickly remove it to the trash bin. But other than that, they were awkward and uncertain and I had to hold my grief in so as not to "burden" them. Sadly in some ways it was they who, though trying to help, were the burden.
Tonight, instead, I've done my own thing, taken care of myself my own way, without any dumb men (no offense, Dad, if you ever happen to read this - love you to pieces!) who are not yet open enough in themselves to know how to be open to truly comfort and be strength for me. So I am strength for myself tonight.
Aftre I got home, I spent an hour or so looking through photos and videos from the last couple of years with her (thank God for digital cameras!). It reconfirms how much it was the right, though difficult, decision to let her go tonight. Here she is in so much better days, only a year or more ago (I have a couple of videos I'll hopefully be able to add later):
I will miss Mikayah greatly. Facing that grief will be another kind of strength that I will need to muster. But today I got through the hardest part. I faced up to reality and did right by her, did what I needed to do for her. It was a hard hard thing, a responsibility I would much rather have shirked. But I owed it to her. She was my Beloved. My last living tie to my years in Florida. She was my faithful companion and most constant friend for sixteen years.
Goodbye, my Sweet Pea Girl, Bug, Buggers, Blue-Eyed Girl, Mikayah. "Two Bits." You weren't never "two bits" 'o nothing--you were the real deal, the whole dang thing. I love you, Sweetest. Forever.
