by Jane C. Hu
It’s only been an hour since I picked up my dog’s ashes. I got the email yesterday saying that they were ready, but I’d planned the day to the gills and knew I couldn’t come get them right away. Immediately, I felt guilty that I was leaving her at the place she hated the most: the vet’s office. But, I reminded myself, she is dead. She doesn’t know anything.
I was relieved that the receptionist working the desk was not the one with the overly cheerful voice, but the look she gave me when I told her what I was there for broke my heart a little more. I barely got my sentence out, and my voice broke a little; she handed me what looked like a gift bag and told me to have a great day. How great a day can one have after picking up a gift bag of your dead dog’s ashes?
As I walked out the door of the vet’s office — the last time Maeby would do it, maybe the last time I would, too — it felt right to slip into the December twilight and walk around the lake where we’d spent so much time over the years. The darkness provided privacy for me to feel, but soon I felt vulnerable in a different way: usually, I had a dog to protect me. If anyone was going to mug me, I decided I’d tell them the truth: I wasn’t carrying a wallet or phone, just my keys and my dead dog’s ashes. Would that be batshit enough to ward them off?
The walking mostly distracted me from crying, but I’d really started getting going as I was turning off the main path towards my street — and of course that was the moment I ran into my neighbors. They gave me hugs, recommended I put on a record when I got home and turn it up real loud. I’m writing instead.
*
It’s only been a week since Maeby died. In this week, I have learned a lot of euphemisms: ashes are “memorial items,” the dead dog is “at peace.” Died also feels like a euphemism when you euthanize a pet. In fact, “euthanize” is another one. After we called the at-home vet euthanasia service, we both sobbed so hard we couldn’t breathe. Then I turned to Maeby. “Hey, we just made an appointment to kill you,” I said.
We spent the next 48 hours — her last on this earth — holding vigil. The furthest we strayed from her was the twenty feet between the couch and the toilet. We talked about our favorite memories with her; we told her a million times how much we loved her, and what a good dog she is. We took her for a walk, but she didn’t make it all the way around the block; we bought her a bacon hamburger, and it took her two days to finish it. We knew it was her time, but that didn’t make it any easier to let her go. The anticipation was excruciating, and I couldn’t help but think how grief is such a cliche. I couldn’t eat, I couldn’t sleep; I cycled through anger, bargaining (so much bargaining!), sadness, denial. I was on a 30–15 schedule: 30 minutes functioning, then 15 breaking down.
The morning she died, we weren’t sure the sun was coming out. But just before the appointment, it appeared from behind the clouds and bathed her in warm light. If there is such thing as a perfect death, this may have been it: she slipped away in my lap, on her favorite blanket, in the sun.
*
It’s only been a month since Maeby and I got caught in a downpour. We’d gone for an afternoon walk, and the sky threatened rain, but I was overly optimistic. We were still four blocks from the house when it really started coming down; Maeby started sprinting full-speed up the hill and dragged us all the way home. She was 15, but the rain — one of the things she hated most in the world, along with robot vacuums, skateboards, and being alone — had temporarily transformed her back into a much younger dog. She’d had surgery this summer for her third mast cell tumor, and was finally returning to herself; suddenly, she wanted to eat again, to zoom around the yard, to chew on bones, to station herself on the back of the couch to protect us from all the dogs passing by on the street (we call this Borklewatch).
Her recovery came as no surprise. Ole girl had her share of mishaps but she always bounced back. She lost half an ear in a fight, and broke her leg playing with our cousins’ dog. She’d once eaten a pound of chocolate truffles, carefully unwrapping each one first. She was diagnosed with cancer at eight and we feared it was the end, but she got tumors removed from her butt and her neck, which left a gnarly looking scar. This summer, when we were traveling, she escaped our friends’ yard and somehow ended up on the opposite end of town.
The rain sprint? Evidence that she was back, and back for good. Sure, I knew she was old, and the oncologist told us that her tumor was almost sure to grow back within three to four months. But Maeby had always been the exception, so some part of me really believed she’d live forever.
*
It’s only been thirteen years since we first got Maeby. It was the summer of 2010, and I’d been begging Nate for a dog since we moved in together the summer before. He wisely suggested we wait a year; by then, we’d have completed the bulk of grad school coursework requiring us to be out of the house five days a week. It hadn’t quite been a year, but it was close enough, so off we went to the Berkeley Animal Shelter. I thought we were “just looking” — for some reason I’d had it in my head that we’d end up with some kind of beagle mix. The room full of barking dogs overwhelmed me; they were all jumping and clattering against their kennel doors to get our attention. The one dog that caught Nate’s eye was the only one who wasn’t barking. When he walked by her kennel, she pressed her belly up against the bars to get pets, and as soon as he was close enough, began licking his hand.
“This one,” he said.
At first, I wasn’t sure how he knew so quickly, but I know now that he was right.
Thirteen years, and it went too quickly. Once we decided to say goodbye to her, I kept saying I wasn’t ready. “We’ll never be ready,” Nate said. “We could have fifty more years with her and it wouldn’t be enough.”
Every time I try to sum up her presence in our lives, it becomes just a list of everything, big or mundane, from the last thirteen years: the people we’ve met, the places we’ve been, the food we shared (or that she stole), our familect. Our wedding, every apartment and house we’ve lived in, every soft surface in those homes. Her habits were our habits. And I learned a lot from her way of being — as someone once told me, “Dogs are gurus.” She rested when she needed to, no questions asked, no guilt or shame. She unabashedly went after what she wanted: a squirrel, an unattended cheeseburger, snuggles. She lingered around interesting smells and was always eager to explore a new place; sometimes she’d put her head so deep into a rosemary bush she’d come out smelling nice for days. In a group, she always went to the new person and tried to win their affection.
I loved her just because, and she loved us.
