That Spot on the Floor Is Where You Died

This memory is not the one dog lovers want to read.

It's the kind we avoid until we cannot possibly avoid it anymore. But, it's the reality all dog caretakers will face one day.

Our dog died less than one year ago. This is my memory of that day.

The Most Difficult Decision

Another sleepless night. Your pain, so obvious to you, was denied by us. We saw your good days as little offerings of a better future. Any slight improvement felt like a giant leap backward in time, like you would spring into puppy phase again at any moment. You kept holding on while we refused to make the hardest decision in the world.

We wanted you to decide when you left this earth, not us.

Why couldn't you just pass peacefully in your sleep like we were led to believe old dogs did? Instead, you hung on, like the trooper you always were. And we didn't give up on you, either: we never would. We carried you upstairs and helped you move around to get more comfortable. We made it easier for you to eat and assisted you outside. We woke up multiple times a night to tend to your needs. Our desperate attempts to make your life better blinded our sleep-weary brains from the obvious: you were ready to go.

The morning of the day you died, I lay on the floor with you. It was cold and hard, like the truth you held in your eyes. I had been waiting for the cliche moment when you told me you were ready to go. Wasn't that how this was supposed to happen? How could we be sure of this decision if we didn't have that moment; how terrible would it be if I misjudged?

That morning it happened: the look in your eyes changed. I felt it, like a light bulb that was lit and then went off: a stark difference in the way you looked at me, pleading with me to make it stop, to make it different.

I sobbed. Wet, salty sheets covered my face, covered the front of my shirt. I cried out to you, "I am so sorry! I can't do anything else. I can't, I can't make it different." But that was a lie. And we both knew it. We knew I could: I just didn't want to.

I wasn't ready to let you go. I was selfish.

I couldn't imagine not holding your black and brown body in my arms. I never wanted the day to come when I swept the floors and did not see your fur floating through the air. Remember how those precious pieces of you were made visible: as the afternoon sunlight struck them, frozen in time, like an insect caught in amber and preserved for eternity?

But that look in your eyes told me to stop. Stop being so selfish! You were ready to go.

Frozen with Denial

The weeks leading up to this fateful day had been filled with sleepless nights, anxiety over what to do, panicked calls to the vet. But what lingered in the air the most those last few days was my pain's best friend: denial.

That morning, as I looked into your eyes, my stomach filled with dread, I could not continue my denial. The inevitable had come. It was your time to go: we had to do it.

I called the vet. I mustered up strength in my voice that I didn't actually have. I asked if she could come over to our home that afternoon. She said yes. She and I knew this day was coming, maybe more she than I. We had talked about palliative care just days before, but now it was clear to me that you'd been in palliative care these past few months.

Time seemed to both standstill and speed along.

Several hours passed after my moment with you on the floor, before the vet arrived, supplies in her bag, in our driveway. You were the calmest you had been in days.

You laid on your special memory foam bed, the fuzzy brown and white one that had been delivered to us tightly rolled up in a small cardboard box. Remember how we laughed as it puffed out and swelled up before our eyes, rising like a bread dough ready for the oven? It was supposed to help support your old joints, to provide a buffer from the hard uncarpeted floor. I imagined it felt like our memory foam bed, as though you were sleeping on a cloud. But you didn't like it. Until just a few months ago, you'd still chosen the hard floor where you'd lived for years.

Now I'm glad I bought it. I would have spent a thousand dollars on this stupid slice of memory foam if it had meant you were comfortable in your last moments here on earth.

Whispering Love

The beginning of the procedure was a blur. We only knew we had a few precious moments before you went unconscious and never returned.

We spoke softly to you. We pet you. Our hands stroked your fur to remind you that we were with you until you were gone, that you would be with us forever in our memories. Even after your body was paralyzed, your eye wandered the room. It desperately sought your one, true person: my partner, your best friend. It was crystal clear, like seeing to the bottom of the ocean, that you wanted him to be the last image in your memory. I know you saw him, but the moment was brief. Too brief.

Soon your eyes closed. We'd never again see those perfect, adorable, brown, perpetually puppy dog eyes.

I laid on the ground above your head and whispered to you.

I know you heard me, as I told you how much we loved you. How much we would always love you. Your heart kept beating and beating, even after the first dose of a harsh chemical meant to steal your life away from you. A moment of regret fluttered into my mind as I hoped we hadn't made the wrong decision. But maybe you were like us: you knew it was your time to go but wished things could be different.

The vet gave you a second dose. It was too much for your strong little body to fight. I watched as your chest rose and fell, slower and slower. You took your last breath exactly when I felt a pang deep in my chest. It was a mix between a warm glow and a soft tear like someone had pried a throbbing piece of my heart from between my rib cage and left a burning void in its place.

That void would prove almost unbearable in the morning as I awoke to a completely silent house. From a night of sleep that hadn't been broken by caring for an aging body's needs. To an empty dog bed beside my own. To the deepest desire to hold you that would never be fulfilled.

Reflections of the Hardest Memory With You

When we first talked about putting you down, I hadn't wanted to do it at home. How strange would it be to wake up and know that your body left our house that day, so limp and heavy, while your spirit wandered somewhere I can't even fathom?

Now I'm grateful to have that space in our home. I sometimes imagine that circle, where you laid on the ground for your final hours, is sacred; that it carries with it a magical portal to connect with you. I've prostrated my body in it several times since you left, yearning for connection with you again. I imagine particles of you linger in that spot on the floor, cemented into the wooden grains like you're cemented into my memory.

I am not ready for another dog. Not yet, at least. My friend told me not to be like her; she waited 8 years to get another dog after her precious best friend died. I don't want to wait that long... but I just can't imagine anyone but you in my heart and in our home. I don't want your memories to fade away and be forgotten. I cringe at the thought of a different dog's fur caught in the amber of the sunlight as I sweep the floors.

Right now, all I want is you. And I can't have that. I never will.