Okay

"Are you okay?" She asks me. She's asking me because it's my dog who's dying, and because it's my dog who's dying, she doesn't really need to be asking me at all.

I am not okay.

"Yes," I say. I say it more abrasively than I intend to. I say lots of things more abrasively than I intend to, I think maybe I'm constantly trying to convince myself that my skin is thicker than it really is.

The trouble I have with dying is the "ceasing to be alive" part. The part where something is here in the world and its heart is beating and blood is pulsing through its veins and air is filling its lungs and then it's just not anymore.

I'm having a hard time conceptualizing the finality of death. In the living room, I sit on the hardwood floor, cross-legged like a child during story time. The skirt of my dress is pulled over my knees and I sit my dog on my lap, her chin rests on one of my knees and her hipbone rests on the other. I pet her slowly.

***

We adopted my dog right after my brother went to college. It was my junior year in high school, and she was this scrappy cairn terrier. At the time, she had just been freed from a five year stint as a puppy mill breeder. She'd had a hard life and the repercussions were numerous. When we first got her, she'd eat absolutely everything, and she wouldn't leave the bed we made up for her in the kitchen. She kept living by the survival strategies she'd learned in the clink but without the necessity. But eventually, she started exploring other parts of the house.

Then she started having problems with her eyes, which we got eye drops to rectify. Unbeknownst to us, she was allergic to the eye drops and all of the hair fell out of her face and she stopped eating.

For a while, we were really concerned. But pretty soon she started eating again, and her hair started growing back, and she became the chipper, albeit slightly lazy, dog she usually was once more.

Puppy mills are atrocious places. I don't think you could look at either of our dogs (both of whom were adopted, rescued from puppy mills) and think support puppy mill practices. Jubilee, bless her heart, had been robbed of a lot of the joys of dogs' lives. For the longest time, she didn't enjoy going for walks, she went outside to use the bathroom only, and after we got our second dog she relatively stopped playing. But as she acclimated to her new home, she came out of her shell a little more. 

I have no doubt that we gave her a better, and happier life than before.

***

As I walk out of Principles of Acting, I see a missed call and a text message from my father.

"Vet said Jubilee will have to be put down. Do you want [me] to wait for you to see her or just take her?"

I call him back. "What's wrong with her?" I try not to sob, but I sob. In the middle of campus.

I don't want to get caught crying on campus. I'm not quite sure why. I've cried over the fact that shitty people don't want to be my friends before, but for some reason I don't want to get caught crying over my dog's impending death. I'll chalk this up to an evolutionary theory I learned in literary criticism: stories are told to prepare us for facing similar situations in the real world. Almost every story ever told about a dog ended this way. In the sixth grade, I may have cried at Where the Red Fern Grows but for whatever reason it did not prepare me to lose my dog ten years later.

"I won't be home until this evening," I say. "Don't do it until tomorrow. I don't want you to do it today."

And then I run/waddle my crying self to the bathroom to dry up my face.

***

"Are you okay?" She ask as I walk into the house. It's late. She's asking me because it's my dog who's dying. She doesn't need to ask. I'm not okay.

"Yes." It's less abrasive this time. I walk with purpose. I swoop up a handful of trail mix and take a seat in the chair closest to my dog. I give my dog a couple of peanuts from my trail mix. She gobbles them up happily and then starts breathing heavily.

An impromptu family meeting congregates in the kitchen. Nash thinks we should give her a couple of weeks to respond to the new diet. (The new diet doesn't include peanuts.) The parents both seem to agree--she doesn't look like she's in any pain. I point out that there have already been times when we thought that she was dying, and then she turned out to be fine.

I sit on the floor and pet her. She's happy, but breathing heavily. She's going to get to live a little longer.

***

The next morning, my father tells me that she's doing worse. She ate breakfast out of his hand. She wouldn't stand. When she finally moved, it was to lay down with her head in the water bowl. "We'll see," he says sadly.

I go and sit on the kitchen floor beside her. I pet her, and she rests her chin on my knee. I tell her I love her. She's a good dog. It'll be okay, whatever happens.

What do you say to someone who is dying?

As I leave, I text my father. "Whatever you decide, I'm at peace with it. But if you take her to the vet today, will you take her to get ice cream first?" Jubilee loved getting ice cream. A last meal shouldn't be a handful of diet dog food. It should, if at all possible, be from Dairy Queen.

Throughout the day, I try my best to forget. But every once and awhile, it comes back to me. I lied. I wasn't at peace with it.

I text my father again, "Will you let me know whatever you decide?"

"Yes. She's moved to her bed."

"Is she doing better then?"

"Can't tell. She is breathing hard but not panting, not too labored."

"Okay..." and then I say, "I want to give her the weekend... just to see if she gets better."

***

I go to a coffee shop to work. I do this whenever I have lots of work, or whenever I get out of school at the same time traffic is bad. By the time I get there and get seated, I have three missed messages from my family. My father says, "Okay, maybe she'll just die at home." That's my hope.

My brother says, "I don't know. She just kind of peed on herself like she couldn't get up to do it. Dad's thinking it isn't looking good."

My mother says, "Katrina, are you sure?" Then she calls.

I get audibly upset. (Side note: my sincerest apologies to the man who looked like Patrick Drake from General Hospital who I was sitting by when I started raising my voice and sobbing; also to the man who looked like he belongs in "Frightened Rabbit" who accidentally made eye contact with me twice while I was weeping.)

"Okay, Mom, okay. It's fine. Just, it's fine." I sob into the phone.

"Well, I think that's what we're going to do, then." She says.

"Okay."

***

My parents did get her ice cream before taking her to the vet. They both tell me that it made her very happy. That doesn't surprise me, going downtown and getting ice cream made her ridiculously happy.

***

Well, anyway. Jubilee was a very good dog. She was sweet and funny and got so enthusiastic whenever someone was eating chips. And I'm going to miss her a whole lot. 

The concept of death is weird, because of its finality. And I know that life ends, but it's hard not to want a little bit more time. Just, you know, one more ice cream cone, one more nap in the sun, one more walk downtown, one more embrace. I know that she was pretty sick at the end, but I hope her life ended on as good of a note as she deserved regardless.