Saying Goodbye

Emotions, whether positive or negative, always seem to lead me to writing. I consign my feelings to language and hope for the best. This afternoon as I sit in this shabby little house without the small brown dog on the bed behind me, the sense of loss is acute. For fifteen and a half years, she was my shadow and my most devoted friend. And this morning, I bundled her into her favorite blue flannel blanket and took her for her last car ride.

She was eight weeks old when she started coming to work with me at the camera store. She spent her days in a dogbed on the sales counter and brought smiles to even our most curmudgenly customers.

“What is she?” people would ask and we would smile and say, “Her mama was a Yorkie but her daddy was a travelin' man.”

Customers brought their children to play with her while they shopped and the dog bed was always full of stuffed toys and treats and tiny designer sweaters. She recognized faces and voices and easily won over anyone who stopped by. She was petted and cooed at and given kisses. It was the best socialization you could've asked for. She was patient and gentle, affectionate and always perfectly well behaved. She never got in the way, rarely barked except in greeting, and never turned down an opportunity to be walked or held or admired. She was a sweet natured charmer of the very first order, a happy, healthy and confident little animal, so well adjusted and so little trouble that I was sometimes absent minded about her. I never thought about a time when she wouldn't be with me.

At her next to last annual vet visit, she was diagnosed with congestive heart failure. She'd developed a persistent cough, not much more than a nuisance really, but over the next few months it got gradually but steadily worse. She began losing weight, her bright eyes began to dull, and though she still played with the cats and slept on my pillow every night, she tired

more easily and her sleep was often interrupted by a coughing spasm. In the last few days, I watched her struggle to breathe and slow down to the point of being willing to be carried. She was unsteady on her feet and overnight had become fragile, her belly swollen and tight, her coat rough and lackluster. A tumor the size of a marble suddenly appeared on her back leg. The coughing spells had stopped but there were other things waiting and I knew it was time. I think she did too.

I found myself automatically filling three food bowls tonight and after the two remaining dogs came in from outside, it took a minute to realize that she wasn't coming too. I slept badly, painfully aware of the empty space on my pillow, missing the sound of her gentle snoring in my ear. The house is still filled with animals but there's an emptiness to it that wasn't here yesterday. It's going to take some time to get used to.

So it's true. When all is said and done, grief is the price we pay for love.

Erin Bucchianeri