One Second They’re There

The last picture of Private Charlie Bryan, a.k.a. “Bubbaloo,” a.k.a. “Boobala,” a.k.a. “Bestest boy that ever was.”

***** A gentle warning: This post dives deep into the suffering and loss of a dear fur baby and touches on grief surrounding death in general.*****

My god daughter sent me a letter yesterday. A photo of a letter by text, actually. She wrote it in February, and in the haze of grief following her cousin’s death, she had forgotten to send it but wanted me to have it now. Sending it as a text was easier than getting one of the adults around her to get some stamps.

In her 13-year-old print, because cursive is a relic of the past, she wrote to me eloquently about the pain of losing her 7-year-old cousin suddenly, and she mentioned “The feeling that his body was in the room, but he wasn’t, felt unreal.”

No matter how many deaths I witness, this unreal feeling, this strange emptiness, hits me in the chest.

Three weeks and two days ago at this time I was lying in the floor of the emergency vet curled around Charlie, trying to block out the world and preparing for another one of those hits.

My hunny had called me at work, his version of frantic, asking what to do. He had come home to find our sweet boy in his recliner unable to move without causing himself misery. I could hear that misery in the background, and I had to breathe deep and calm myself not to sound frantic myself. Together we developed a plan of action and went our different ways to enact it.

Every time Charlie moved, he would thrash around as if he had no idea where “up” was and would cry out in pain or fear or frustration. We will never know which or if it was all. He was a big boy—85 pounds—and with the thrashing, he became even more difficult to pick up. That was why James had called, he couldn’t figure out how to get him in the truck without hurting him. When he couldn’t find a neighbor to help lift with a blanket, he just scooped our boy up and went.

Meanwhile, I was pleading with my coworkers for someone to relieve me. Because it was Memorial Day weekend, response after response came in about how they couldn’t. Until my friend Dawn could. She was forty-five minutes away, but she would relieve me as soon as she could get to me. That time stretched for weeks. Then the drive to the emergency vet was equally long for me. I called the hunny on the way, and he filled me in on the doctor’s preliminary diagnosis and prognosis, tried to prepared me for what I was about to see.

Again, he tried as I he met me in the parking lot when I arrived.

We walked together into the consultation room and literally leaned on one another as we waited for the Dr. Dowe to come in. “Old dog vestibular disease” he said. The worst case he’d ever seen he said. Maybe he would get some better, but probably not completely better. Even that bit he might improve would at least take three or four days, and that was in the simplest of cases. His was the worst case he had ever seen. Improvement could take weeks, he said. This was Saturday night. Monday was Memorial Day. On Tuesday we could see specialists, get CT scans or MRI’s. But we had to get to Tuesday. And this was the worst case he had ever seen. They had given him a hefty dose of sedative (8mg of Versed), and he at least wasn’t thrashing around anymore, but he still had impressive nystagmus. Things were better for the moment, he said.

He tried to prepare me to see my boy. Was I ready?

I was past ready, but there was no preparing me.

He walked me through the clinic to the intensive care unit. As I turned the corner around the wall of kennels, the sweetest boy that ever was lay on a small pile of blankets with a vet tech sitting beside him petting his head. I needed to say only one syllable before he was trying to get up and greet me, and just that small effort was heart crushing.

The vet tech (her name tag said “Rosie”) stood and gave me her space, and I lay down in the floor of the intensive care unit of the emergency vet and blocked out the murmur of noise around us and the smell of dog mixed with antiseptic and the thought that the staff might be watching. I curled myself around my boy, and I whispered to him, cuddled him, told him it was okay. It was not okay. Even as he lay still, his eyes were constantly moving. Back and forth, back and forth. Like a metronome over a hundred beats per minute, frantic like his daddy’s voice. Like my heart beating in my ears.

Rosie said that was the calmest he had been.

His eyes, though, were not calm. They were terrified and confused, even with the sedative. His breathing was fast and heaving as it always was when he was nervous, so I cuddled him, and I kissed him, and I told him he was the best boy that ever was. Over and over and over. I thanked him for being ours and for taking care of us. I told him we were unworthy of all he had given us, but we were infinitely grateful for it. I prepared to let him go. This beautiful, precious creature who gave us nothing but all of his love did not deserve to suffer this fate one moment longer, and certainly not for days or weeks, especially with little hope of significant improvement.

It was the worst case the vet had ever seen.

I left Charlie with Rosie just long enough to discuss the path with James. Built of pragmatism and logic, he had reached the conclusion I had before I had ever even arrived at the clinic. A soul unaccustomed to raw vulnerability, he could not bring himself to be present for those last minutes. That path would be one for me and Charlie alone.

When I told Rosie that our choice was to end Charlie’s suffering, she said she would let the doctor know, and I found my place by his side again and started to say good bye. I lay curled behind him. My big spoon to his little, and between the racking sobs, I told him I was sorry for all the ways I had failed him. For how I couldn’t fix this thing that had happened. For all the walks I was too tired or lazy to go on. For the times he was scared and we weren’t there. For not giving him more treats. For putting him through dental surgery three weeks before. For not being… more. I begged him to know in his heart that I loved him more than my humanly mistakes had showed him, and I buried my head in his neck, and I sobbed. As Dr. Dowe administered the medicines that would take him from me, I sang to him the song he had heard over and again during the last 9 years.

“You are my sunshine, my only sunshine. You make me happy when skies are gray. You’ll never know, dear, how much I love you. Please don’t take my sunshine away.”

I like to think he understood it despite the way it was broken with my tears.

Then he was gone. His eyes were still. His chest no longer heaved.

I stroked his beautiful fur, looked at him, and said, “Isn’t it weird how one second they’re there, and the next they’re gone.”

Once again, I was hit in the chest.

We spent our last moments there then gathered ourselves and went home to the most quiet, still house we had been to in 26 years. I changed from my Charlie covered scrubs into clean ones, and then I left the two remaining members of my family to grieve alone, and I went back to work.

Dawn had been up since 5:00 a.m. that morning, and it was after 1:00 a.m. I could not ask her to stay longer.

I worked two more nights before I would have time off to process. No one else would come in to cover for me. They all had plans. Don’t worry. They sent text condolences for the loss of our “pet”. I didn’t even bother to explain to them why that wasn’t enough, didn’t even bother acknowledging them at all which is out of character for me. I’m damn near fifty-years-old; I don’t have time to explain myself to people anymore. I have adjusted my priorities accordingly.

The last three weeks have passed in a blur. Grief has brought with it exhaustion this time around, and I can’t seem to get enough rest. I am heavy. My whole body is heavy. My heart hurts, and there is a Bubbaloo sized chasm in our world. I am grateful for so many things from that terrible night, though. Dawn understood my need, and she dropped everything to give me those last precious moments by Charlie’s side. She gave me the ability to be there to help James make decisions that he is not comfortable making and to comfort him, if only for a little while, in that moment when our family changed forever. I am grateful for Rosie who stayed fast with my boy when James’s heart just wouldn’t allow him to do so, and I am grateful for Dr. Dowe who gave us an honest assessment and showed deep compassion.

I am equally grateful for the outpouring of love we have felt since we lost him. Texts and calls, letters and gifts have come our way to show how much our friends and family care, and what a beautiful reminder that is of how incredibly blessed we are! Certainly that has been a counterweight to the sorrow.

Three weeks, two days, and four hours—give or take a little bit. One second he was there. Then he wasn’t.

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Unless otherwise noted, all material--written, photographic, and artistic--is the original work of Estora Adams. All rights reserved.