31 May Saying Goodbye to Abby

SAYING GOODBYE TO ABBY

by Jane Southworth, longtime BAH supporter

Saying goodbye to Abby, my four-legged friend of 14-plus years, has been hard, difficult, excruciating, expected, and swift and for her,  I most fervently hope, painless.

One knows, when a dog or cat comes to join the family, that their life expectancy will not be as long as yours. But the (mostly) joy of teaching, training, being with, having companionship, plus the challenges of learning about the other’s being and how to live with it, take energy, time and focus.  And saying goodbye is long in the future and easily kept away from one’s consciousness.  Until it is necessary. Your friend slows down, gets grey around the muzzle, doesn’t run as fast, and then doesn’t run at all. The eyes glaze over with cataracts, the once sharp hearing misses sounds.

 You say to yourself that you know this is coming, that you’re prepared. You think about who and when and where. Providentially there is a traveling vet new to town who will make that horrible horrible last trip unnecessary.

And you make the long put-off but necessary judgement that things are not going to remain the same or get any better, and that her quality of life is more of a struggle than it needs to be. And you make the call, set the appointment, and try valiantly to keep her life as normal as it’s been so that your sadness and anxiety don’t spill into her.

It’s over so quickly- anesthesia and death. Did I say goodbye deeply and well enough? Did she feel my love? Taking  her body to the car with the vet, tucking her into her final journey. Dear God, I tried.

And now, the places that she hung out in so she could be near where I was, are all empty. The food and leashes are donated to the Humane Society.  What’s odd, now,  is that the house has noises in it that sound like dog paws clicking, or other ways that she moved around the house. And she’s not making them.

I am prepared for the sadness, the lack, the loss. I am unprepared for the anxiety that has come creeping in and paralyzing me. I do not know why, after going thru the same hard time with 7 dogs previously, the sadness of saying this goodbye has to be overlain with anxiety. I knew and expected to have to deal with emptiness, loss, deep sadness, but to be imprisoned within this odd unidentifiable straitjacket is unsettling and deeply disturbing.

Straight-up sadness, loss, tears, being hit over and over again by the knowledge that she’s gone, the empty spaces and the untaken walks, the unused pieces of chicken I tempted her with. All this is expected shipwreck.  But who ordered up the straitjacket net that fell over my being and kept my gut inhaled and my hands tied?

Friends have been so kind, going for walks, sitting on the porch talking, sitting with tea, talking. One suggested writing, which I am. I went for a drive in the hills, and told the Universe loudly, in no uncertain terms, what I thought about the anxiety on His/Her list of to do’s for me.  “I am in charge of my own grief,” I yelled.

What a thing to claim. But I’m trying to be. I want to face the hard stuff straight on, as best I can, with no scrim of anxiousness in between.