But the snow falls, and in the quiet hour, I smell the snow, just like I had for so many many years, as she brought it in with her from outside. Nevermind that I probably am smelling her scent, laughably, mundanely lingering still in the carpets and furniture, I am suddenly haunted with memories, unprotected and raw. As each day follows, and the busyness begins to recede, there is time to feel again, time to remember. And there are so many many days, moments and years that fill me with remembering.
It’s as if a door has been opened. Some judicious ruler who has decided that now is the time to revisit our lives together. Open the box. Recall all those days...
I chose Dallas out of a litter of unbelievably beautiful little blonde beings. She, being the rambunctious one of the group was for me, and I held her in my arms, full of vibrant wonder and possibility, and my mom beside me, looked on as if knowing that a match had been rightly made. I had to wait the long first weeks of her life to bring her home. As I drove her away with me, her painful cries of separation haunting me, I made her a lifetime worth of impossible promises. Things were out of hand by the time we reached home, and I was completely in her power.
She breathed life into me, and I was hurting desperately in those early days. I needed her, and she, having no better, came to rely on me. Our days knit together, each training the other in what we needed, pushing, playing, listening and yielding. She had her ways of telling me when she was displeased, or when she felt she needed more time, more play, or ever more walks and ball-throwing. Her, simply being herself, was all I needed.
Along with maturing in our life together, I had school, then work, people in my life, demands- but everything became secondary to the primary requirement, which was to make sure she was safe, taken care of, not left too long, and happy. She, who I had taken, and taken responsibility for, who had no sense of safety herself, and was born to danger- I bent my life around her. Not slavishly, but decidedly. “What about Dallas” would be my refrain for the next 15 years, as thoughts of travel, parties or long work hours vied for my time.
When my world crumbled and my heart was smashed, Dallas would save me. Her calm eyes meeting mine, her head pushing into me in sorrow, her sheer company and simple needs kept me always moving forward. The sound of her breathing, the smell of her fur, the frigid tight air hitting my lungs as she insisted on a late night walk in winter- it was enough, always to lead the way into a brighter moment. At least- at least we were together. She was my sidekick, and I was hers. Together we met the day, and together we rested, safe, so safe..
I knew what a treasure I had. How absolutely gorgeous she was, how life-inspiring, how each day had her essence infused within it. I was what some would call over-protective, but I could do nothing else. So much play, and sport and laughter- I can’t hope to tell you. When I succumb to missing her, incalculable moments on snow-shoes, roller-blades and mountain bikes, trails, canoes, kayaks, camping, swimming the Freddy beside her, mountains, oceans, Sparks Street, the islands, Christmas morning packages being torn apart by a beautiful, jingling, antler-dressed creature wild with excitement, krazy karpets sporting Dallas dressed in sportsgear careening down a carpeted staircase, thousands of forested walks, with Dallas always ahead on the trail, looking backward to make sure where I was... her splashing into any water, whatever its hue, make-up or danger, looking to fetch whatever ball, stick or object was thrown. I used to just stare at her, drinking in her gorgeousness all lit up in sunlight, or her soulful eyes locked onto me as she swam toward me with hockey ball firmly retrieved.
I recorded everything. From her first day home to her last days. Her painful, slow steps last winter, trying so hard to get to the park before having to be carried home... when she would fall, when we went from having to pick her up to get her in the car to having to pick her up just to stand her up. How the miracle drug came one day, and we had so many extra months with her because the chronic pain subsided, and how neighbours would come to bring her treats, and people would say things like, ‘if that dog were moving any slower, she’d be going backward.’ But still we went on, and we had those months in the garden, and those slow, ever slower walks around the park. Even as she declined, our love grew, and we threw ourselves into caring for her every need.
At the end, I was falling apart, beam by beam, frame by frame, and yet the end was not yet. We wretchedly searched for another treatment, another wonder, while family looked on with terrible knowing, seeing what lay ahead. We denied it, retrenched and carried on. We retreated to ever smaller moments of peace and comforts, with Dallas finally not being able to take the cruel drugs any longer, us strategizing feverishly to find something she would eat, and still the days went on. We cried and pleaded for her to eat. We brought home anything, right up to baby food to try her on. Day by day, her breathing became more ragged, her struggles so much harder, and between muscle atrophy and refusal to eat, she was being taken from us, inch by inch. Her eyes were soft, but more often in pain. She searched for me when I came through the door, indicating her needs, asking for help, and this too went on and on. There was no peace or rest for any of us. We sobbed together at night, fearing what was next, holding onto each other, on the alert for any need in the middle of the night. We hardly slept.
I made every excuse to be with her, I worked from home or I hurried home, and I would get her outside, and comfortable, though really that word had no more room for her. I did less and less for her, though my efforts and anxiety to do so increased. All that was left for Dallas were fewer and briefer moments outside of the pain which was now her constant companion, a few moments when we’d return home, and her eyes would light up, but then you could see her remember her pain. She would struggle to move, even to prop herself up on one shoulder, but these were done in, joints pushing too roughly on each other, bed sores too cruel- she could not move unaided more than to raise her head and then let it rest softly again. And we got there so suddenly. She’d been on so many different drugs, with varying doses, and we kept searching for the one that she could do better on, without the sickness that too often came with the pain relief. We believed there was always another drug, another treatment around the corner if we could just get her there, she could have another few months. This was the terrible thing- if she could just be nursed through a bad bout- she might have months more, out of pain and back to walks and days of sunshine and happiness. It had happened dramatically before, and her pain lifted. We just could not know.
Dallas knew, I am convinced, long before we did. She knew the drugs were making her sick, and she would refuse food with a drug in it. We, desperate to get her relief, did everything to get drugs down her, to calm her system, to just get her through it, but the drugs were increasingly impossible for her to keep down, or if they did stay down, they would cause her even greater sickness and harm. Rice, noodles, eggs, chicken, liver, baby-foods of every flavour, bread, ... special formulas to help her digestion... we tried it all. We hand-fed her, we coaxed, we praised, we just kept trying.
In the meantime, Dallas shrank within herself, consumed by pain, by sickness and discomfort, and eventually by starving herself. We watched in panic and horror and futility as she got weaker and yet more resolute not to eat. She would sometimes fail herself, and eat something, or perhaps she would taste real rest and we would hope that it marked a turn. But nothing worked, and nothing lasted, and we were tortured between whether we could turn this corner like so many others, or if the end must be now.
Her sleep was constantly disturbed. She would try to move to change positions, but she could hardly move, and there was no position of relief once she was off the drugs, and finally she refused to eat almost at all, and then I’m convinced- only to please us... the pain grew to become her whole reality and her only company, and I begging and pleading her to take any food, saw finally that she would go, and that she had to go, and she could not take any more for us. And then of course we had to realize that it was just for us that this went on. For so long I strove and argued against that idea, and Kate was firm that Dallas wasn’t going anywhere soon... But Dallas’s daily reality belied that assertion, and though I wanted to believe, I saw her day by day getting worse, and sat with her through the long hours of those days while Kate did not have that option. I saw. Sat watch with her. I couldn’t leave her, and I had to see.
My humanity was beyond me, and reality was demanding some strength and love and pity and generosity, and I- having wailed in terror, begging, denial and fear - I had to take stark hold of myself, and find something inside that I didn’t want to hear from to meet a last promise to my love, my friend, and my poor babe who I had brought home and held in her earliest hours, and who I now sat beside in her darkest hours.
So there she was, slowly dying, in pain I can’t fathom, labouring with each breath, and I was having a conversation between God and myself, marked by sobs, denial, unwillingness to let go, and the knowing that it was time. It came to me like a judgement that I needed to be strong for her, and that it was only going to be me that could and would give her a merciful goodbye. There, in a moment, beside the lake, on a path we walked together, the knowing settled hatefully into my unwilling breast, and I carried it with me back to her. From then on, I cried, and we said some words together that I know crossed the boundaries of understanding, and for the next two days, we rarely left her side, even in sleep. We spent those hours closer than 3 beings often achieve, and in those hours, counting down, we shared with each other. We “loved her up,” is what I would say out loud, and she was with us in that circle, taking part, and being comforted.
On the morning, Dianne came to say goodbye, and to hold us up, and Dallas generously ate a few final tiny morsels of steak, and my parents came, and we spent those final few hours together, with my beautiful girl surrounded by love. We marked each minute, and we had at one point to take Dal outside to relieve herself one final time. She just managed this, and for those who knew her in life- she stood afterward, stock-still, unable to take even one step toward us. In her last hour, that is where it stood for her. She had not one more step to give on this earth. She personified a live well and truly lived.
We laid her back down, on her bed and propped up with pillows, and we held her and comforted her until the vet’s car came in the drive. Dallas’ soft brown eyes kept finding mine, and I did somehow summon the strength to keep calm, and give her reassurance, and tell her soft things and murmur promises that needed to be said. And Dianne was gone, and my Dad went outside, and so it was just Dallas, me, Kate and my mom with her hand on my shoulder the whole time, me with Dallas’ head resting on me, full of knowing and peace, saying impossible goodbyes in all our ways.
The vet was so gentle, and so kind, and Dallas had no fear, and no upset. She was the most peaceful and relaxed I had seen in weeks. She kept finding me with her eyes, and they were so full of trust. It broke my heart. She was telling me goodbye, and thank-you I love you, and she was comforting me even as I was comforting her... I held her in my arms, and when we were all ready, the first needle went in to relax her and let her drift into unknowing and peace. I watched her body relax and her eyes start to drift toward sleep, I couldn’t even tell for sure the exact moment, but I knew she would never waken again. I whispered my last promises to her, and kept myself in a calming place, determined that she should not feel my own mess of feelings. The time came again, and when we were really ready, the vet poised the second needle which would take her away completely. For all that time had been collapsing about us for months, this moment opened like a great chasm before me, and my mind was in a thousand places across all time I’ve ever known, every possibility, every mistake, every good thing coursing through me like a wild thing. The needle was poised, waiting- she would not descend until we were ready.
Dallas lay sleeping and warm under my arms and head, where I was now holding her with every fibre of love that I had. Her body was relaxed, and she was waiting. I was so full, so empty of everything, and her whole life had been mine to share, and she had given me only love. In the final moment, I knew with world-weary clarity that there is only love in this world for us. And as the needle went in, and I could very much feel it going through her, like a hot terrible knife, and her closed eyes flickered and after so many moments - she was no longer mine. And we cried, and we wailed, and I held onto her and held on, and I could almost believe it was a dream. It was not possible that this moment had happened. I didn’t want them to take her, and I would not leave her, and I was afraid she would wake later and I would not be there, and I was afraid of what cruel things might happen to her body, and I was afraid.... I was in surreal pain of disbelief, and I was alone.
I still could not let go, though I was crying, though I hated it, though I believed I had to be the one to do this, and to let her go when we did, and that nothing else would do, but it was such a wretched burden to carry the knowledge, the weight, and the daily judgment of being the one who must make it happen, and to have to say goodbye forever.
I held her in my arms, and time now stood still and everything fell away but the feeling of her body in my arms, my face against her fur, seeing her closed eyes and slackening face through tears. I felt the fever in her cool, and I held on lest there be some movement, some second chance, some something - to quell the reality, and to stop what must happen next.
I held on and I held on, feeling no time and not bearing to be forever apart. One last moment, one final imprint of her on my being, one last breath beside her, one last...
And I did carry her out, her body lifeless, shockingly unattended, and though I had been picking her up and carrying her for months, here was a shock. Like an empty being myself, I with Kate carried her down to the waiting car (I can’t let them take her away!), the doors were opened, (I can’t put her in there!), and I know I stood teetering with shock and heartache and indecision (no, why should they have her body), and our kind vet, seeing what I was not, repeated to me twice that I needed to give Dallas to her now, and I relinquished her. They laid her down, and her eyes, unseeing and half open beckoned to me. I was breaking down now. I couldn’t bear that her eyes be open, and covered her, leaning in to whisper to her and stroke her head a final time. I wanted to get in the car and go with her and stay with her. I felt I hadn’t thought this part through thoroughly, and it couldn’t be that they would take her after all.
I stood there, as the door was closed, as the vets hugged us all, obviously empathizing even crying with us, and I could see her through the glass, lying all alone and then she was being carried away from me... an impossibility that she should go and I should not. A crack in my reality
We were all crushed, smashed, and in a state of shock. Dallas was wherever Dallas was, but we had just been through a devastating event, and while we returned to the room we had just killed(?!) freed(?!) Dallas in, the feelings were careening like unguided sparks with nowhere to go. I was spent, I was reliving every grieving moment I had had, or had envisioned, and there was nothing to do but be in that room where her bed, and her pillows lay, but not her. And I had done it. I had made that emptiness and that empty space happen, and it would take days and weeks of second-guessing and hot guilt and self-recrimination and unspeakable grief before I could calm back down to a moderately functioning grieving state.
We had to get out of that space, and we four finally went for a walk, all arm-in-arm, searching for touch with something anchored. It truly seemed as if Dallas walked before us around the turns of the road, not walking but jogging, her old self, free again in a functioning body. My mother said it first. This feeling amplified the empty road before us further, but still we had need to speak of her, though this caused fresh breaks. It was irresistible to speak of her and to feel her, but it was too surreal and much too irreconcilable.
For weeks, any time I was alone in our home, grief would sneak up on me and overcome me, and I would sob piteously. Neighbours would find me thus, and often as not join in. I faced people asking over Dallas, and having to utter the terrible news, with the speaking it aloud causing the physical tear each and every time. We closed ourselves in and went out less.
As spring pushed on, the little picket fence was taken down, Dallas’ balls were scooted under the deck, her leash was put away out of sight, and piece by piece, she started to disappear from us. Our work lives grew to encompass every hour, every moment, and to leave us with no time to be alone, to be alone with our grief, and the distraction and demands were welcomed, to be honest, because the upset was so physically diminishing. The least thought of her brought me back to those last months and excruciating weeks with her. I would see her again, lying in her own mess, distraught, but paralyzed and unable to move- her eyes pleading with me to understand, to help, as I came through the door. I would recall the hours spent coaxing pills and an incredible array of food offerings into her, trying to get her past that bout with sickness, and then the next and the next. I would hear her breathing, her struggles, I would return to the beseeching in her eyes to mine, again and again, and I would be thrown down again in the wake of it. I would see the needle going in. I would feel her dead body in my arms and I walked her to the car. I would watch her eyes, full of pain and pleading.
I would at last go outside to walk it off, but she was here too- on every trail, around every corner, I had walked everywhere with her, seen every season and time of day and place through her eyes, and beside her spirit. One day I saw two dogs in the lake, retrieving balls- I was instantly sick with grief.
I was out walking the other day as the snow started to fall, and my spirit doubled over in remembering her... like a chime rang, and 15 winters of snowballs, tobogganing and frozen fun crystallized into view and would not be denied my heart. I was paralyzed by the onslaught, and tears coursed down as I retraced our steps. This will be our first winter, our first Christmas apart. I will soon have my first snowshoe without her steady, ever ready presence beside me, and then my second and third, and she will become ever further away from me in time and physical place. It’s as if I am starting life on a new planet, walking and taking these steps alone, a different person. I can only see her. I just want to see her.
I so desperately wish for her back, as I did when I lost my Granny as a teen... How I would cherish one more day.. because I did cherish our days, and what is cherishing but to love greatly and hold on to the memories, even while these beautiful spirits are walking with you?
I have longed for her so many times, and I’ve longed too to fill the emptiness with another dog, who I do and don’t foolishly imagine will be Dallas... the futility of it sometimes fills me with upset and an almost rage. I will not have her back, and I will not share those times with her again, and she cannot be reached or replaced, and our long history of knowing each other, seeing, relying on, and growing older together can never ever be seconded. Dallas was not just with me all those years, she formed a part of who I was. She is knit into the memory and time of each friendship, each summer, the university years.. She and I became we, and now we are separated again, and I can’t reconcile it. Those 15 years we walked together were fairly tumultuous, full of changes, and a fair share of sorrows. I felt many times that as long as I had Dallas, I could, and would carry on, and I could not afford to sink down or be beaten. She was there through it all. Through dozens of moves, cities, relationships, friendships, jobs, even my debilitating car accident. I used to joke to her that, “it’s just me, you and the green furniture” that passed for continuity, and so when we left Vancouver and sold the last piece of green furniture, I knew an era was passing.
Dallas is gone, and I cannot stop grieving her.
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PostScript
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It is one year later. March 20th. I have walked numbly through this year, feeling her absence, and for the main part, unable to deal directly with my grief.
Yesterday, I walked a part of the James Street trail in Guelph, and it did seem as if my friend ran before me, excited that we were home. I couldn’t walk it without seeing her, since whether on foot, snowshoe, skiis or bike, we had run that trail together with abandon and joy so many times. I still feel it’s surreal to not have her- it hasn’t yet even been fully accepted in my deepest heart. In some way, she still walks beside me, and it’s the young Dallas, full of speed, thrill and joy in our adventures. Just so happy to be outside, and to be adventuring together.
As the anniversary of this date closed in on me, I’ve been talking more about Dallas. I’ve been sharing stories of our storied lives together, and there are 15 years worth of extraordinary times to draw from. Yes, I still cry too easily, and I have to walk gingerly, but it is a sign that my heart is mending. I had the best friend and best dog you could imagine in your wildest dreams. We shared a whole life together, knit and bound up together in the rarest fashion, like two innocents granted the most beautiful days of an endless summer.
For my part, I know these last years have cost me. As Dallas lost mobility so did I slow. It felt treasonous to have bright adventures she could not, and I had the ready excuse of learning and work to keep me inside. I know better than this, but couldn’t do otherwise. As the quote runs, “...the bright day is done / and we are for the dark.” Darkness it has been for the last year, and the life I’ve been living is such a sorry shadow of who I am, was with Dallas, and should be. Dallas would have never stood for this, would have saved me from myself... and having felt the joy of old walks yesterday, felt it under my feet on the pebbled dirt path, seemingly infused and indelible on that Guelph trail- I know that I have let myself be unwell. I am going to honour and celebrate her memory today and every day hence, by being the better person she helped me to become, and remembering to live and love life every day, to its fullest, as she so gloriously showed me the way.
