Saying Goodbye to Barney

Today - I mourn. I lost my best friend. It was his end, but he lived a long life full of love. Anita and I loved him as deeply and strongly as we could, and he loved us. This isn’t the first time I have lost a pet I adore, and it won’t be the last. Knowing his suffering is gone makes it a little easier, but it’s not easy. Loving a pet is an intensely personal act. That bond created becomes a silent dance as you grow into each other’s habits, know where to scratch and they know the sound of your steps as you come to the door. Barney had many friends and if you ever met him you were one of them. As I mourn, I also want to celebrate that love shared between people and their furry friends. Give your friend a pet or a squeeze and tell them you love them. And then give them an extra from us.

Barnabe Riche in Brighter Days

 
Below are notes I took for the last several days, so these moments don’t get forgotten as the ones you have love and lost live on in our memories. 

#3/23/2021
 
Yesterday evening Anita and I had a hard conversation where we decided that Barney's age and infirmities had caught up to him and the cumulative effect is that he can't really function and is uncomfortable most of his waking day. So, we're going to be looking to put him to sleep. I love him very much and this breaks my heart. One of the great tragedies of life is how short our pets live. He's been in decline for years but the last few weeks we've had a couple things that really illustrated to us that it is time to say goodbye. Needless to say, I am a mess and not being very productive workwise right now. I think I'll need a couple of days off but I'm not sure of the timeline right now.
 
My family had a lot of dogs growing up, but I only had a few that I considered my dog, and somehow, they all died too young. I've been blessed I've been able to have Barney for over 14 years, but I still selfishly want him to live forever.

Couch Terrier

Can ignore pooping in the house and feel sad that he has trouble getting up and down, but when he falls walking more than once, something is up.
 
I’ve cried a lot so far, and it was just on making the decision. The hardest was when I remembered that he was a gift from Dad, and that was a connection there. And also, when crying about him made me think of all my other dogs. 

 
It is partly selfish. Cleaning up poop daily and waking up in the middle of the night isn’t fun.

One last Treat

But I think I really understand people who are ok with the death of those who they love and who have suffered. Being around Barney and watching his decline has been a bit of a denial, pretending that the constellation of things wrong with him really aren’t wrong with him but also knowing that if a healthy dog woke up like he is now we’d be wigged out. The decline is slow enough you don’t notice it. The real hard thing is that you can’t talk to your dog to really get his consent. 

 
I want to be there with him when passes, but I also really don’t want to.
 
He’s my buddy and it breaks my heart how much I love him.
 
I wonder what he’s thinking as we pet him more and cry. 
 
##3/24/2021
 
Anita as I was leaning on her Tuesday night and starting to cry: “Are you getting sad again?”
 
I think this is one of the things made harder by covid. We called the vet and first got their voicemail. And then we called and talked to a receptionist, and the vet on duty was busy. I don’t think we’ve seen one of his normal vets for a year and a half since the pandemic started right before his normal checkup date. He has seen a vet, but the only time we got face to face was with the tired woman at Countryside and that was really focused on the emergency situation. So, we called and got the voicemail, and then we called and got a receptionist who left a message and then this morning we did the same thing, hoping for a call back. I’m exhausted. And sad. 
 
But in a way it sucks because we’re just looking for permission to do the thing, we already decided needs done. If I think it’s time, dude, it must be time. 
 
I remember thinking along the lines of “When the time comes, I’ll be ok since he’s lived a long full life.” Well, I was wrong there. I’ve been mentally preparing for losing him for a couple of years, but I am still not ready. 
 
He’s been such a good dog.
 
We just talked to the vet and Merrick isn’t allowing people in the office. The countryside vet will allow people to come in, so we’re going there.
 
I wanted to snuggle with him on the couch, but I think it agitates him and makes him uncomfortable. You see these stories about people taking their dog out and do the things they like to do, but the reason we’re at the point where we are is that he doesn’t like doing the things he used to like to do. At times laying down is a chore. 

Photoshoot

 
Tried chilling upstairs, but I think he may be reading me, weirded out that I’m acting weird.
 
Took him for his last walk today. He stumbled a couple of times but not as bad as he did on Monday. Interesting juxtaposition in that the weather is a spring day. The lawns are greening. The bulbs in people’s gardens are coming up, but I’m walking in the neighborhood with him one last time and I’m the only one in the neighborhood who knows it.
 
I have been lucky that I’ve been around him for the last year. I’ve gotten to be with him more, And I bet that’s actually helped extend his life.
 
I owe it to Anita for being the strong one, but It’s also got to be a burden on her, always being the strong one. 
 
Now he’s laying calmly at my feet, in a spot he never lays in.
 
And he farted himself awake and went over to his bed.
 
What’s weird is that on Monday, after cleaning up poop, I noticed the Nature’s Miracle cleaner was running low. I put a new bottle in my cart, but I didn’t buy it when normally I have no issue making purchases. What did I know then, before the walk? Compare this to last week. I bought a big bag of food and several boxes of treats. I guess the thought was there can be nothing wrong with him if I have a bunch of food. I literally just opened the food the other day. That’s a sunk cost. 
 
It's incredibly hard to go through the motions of the day knowing that they will be the last time I do these acts with him. Habits, a nightly dance furrows plowed year after year.
 
And today and yesterday there have been no major poop accidents. Haven't had to clean the floor. But today his mobility has been worse. Falling on the floor in the back, needing help up. But he didn't fall on the walk. But stumbled.
 
Fuck. I don't want to go to bed because it brings the morning.
 
It's weird how focused I was on his last few age milestones. Fourteen. Fourteen and a half. If he made one, he could make the next. Subdivide that to days and hours. If he made it through this minute, we can be assured of his survival for the next. But those minutes draw few. 
 
Perhaps this can be a bookend for the long year that started with dad dying last February. 
 
##3/25/2021

To everything a season

 
A weird thing I've noticed when I woke up yesterday. I've had songs that they were getting stuck in my head. And I think my subconscious was picking songs trying to mentally help and soothe me. For whatever reason Tuesday's Gone and Freebird. And then last night after I woke up to let him out when he was moving around, the song that got stuck in my head was 1999 by Prince. Specifically, the line the life is but a party the party aren't meant to last. 

Also, the Byrds, Turn Turn Turn.
 
I guess today is the day and there's no denying that.
 
Was petting him as he was laying on the ground, but I was too much for him, so he got up and moved. I just want to hug him and tell him I love him, but it will agitate him and he's laying down so peacefully in his spot by the door. I've told him I love him a million times in his life so at least there's no regrets there. Still, it has been one of the hardest weeks of my life, just overwhelmed by grief at times. Stuck here in the interregnum between having made the decision and acting on it. Keep thinking about the end of the Stranger as Meursault faces his death.
 
Robot wife in the other room doing work stuff when I'm giving him his last treat, taking him out. Stumbled again getting up and then again up the stairs. I worry about him every time, but I really don't want him to get hurt now. 
 
I joke but she's very strong or at least good at pretending to be strong.
 
The process at the vet was nice. We pulled up and were right in and had an opportunity to say goodbye. I've been imagining the moment for days, so it wasn't as bad as I was worried about. Still incredibly hard but I didn't pass out. After they sedated him, they hit him with the drug. It was the first time he really seemed relaxed for a while. I lay next to him on the ground until I started hurting and pet his head one more time. Anita had his collar as we were leaving, and I heard his tags jingle which made me look back until I realized what was happening.
 
The house is quiet. 
 
I went to pick up some things and went to grab the bottle we filled his water bowl with. Instead of taking it to the sink I mindlessly poured some water in the bowl. It took a second before I realized what I was doing and then I broke down. I imagine that will be the first of many times something similar happens.
 
Tried to do some comfort activities. Went to Culver's. Watching Half Baked. Still so silent in the house.

9/15/2006 - 3/25/2021

Cycles

I don’t believe in reincarnation

But if anything is a vote in its favor

It is the feeling that when I met you

We had know each other before

A love so instant and deep 

Had to have echoes from past lives

A cycle infinite, going back 

To the Dawn of time.

If there’s any consolation

Of the certainty of death

It is the small chance of this truth

Being real, and knowing

That in some future life we 

Will be able to find each other, 

Our souls seeking across the firmament

Each step grinding the earth 

Creating the geography of the land

And meeting, able to fall in love

One more time, again and again

Three Reviews: The Plague; Cement; Lower Ed

 Lower Ed - Tressie McMillan Cottom

Lower Ed is a Powerhouse of a book. Professor Tressie McMillan Cottom does an excellent job looking at the privatized education system in America.

 

It reminds me of my own time working as a student trying to get a certificate. I ran into people who had both been students and as professors and there's a certain type of student I really feel as if they're the ones being preyed upon by the system.

 

She covers it as well but there is a subset of ambitious African American women from backgrounds that aren't tied into the traditional education system that see these kinds of schools as the way up and out. It's a little distressing both of my own experience and in the reading to see those ambitions as realized only to see them as coming to fruition with degrees that don't have a lot of worth in the wider society either on the job market or the academic market. I can’t imagine spending the time and money investing in a degree that was worthless. Oh, wait, too late. It's a formal accusation about the schools and about the opportunities that you get on the other side of Education. It's a terrific book but it's heartbreaking.

 

 Cement - Fyodor Vasilievich Gladkov

I first came across Cement because I was looking to read something that was representative of socialist realism. And this book was held up as perhaps the best exemplar of that genre. 

 

It is the story of a man who comes back to his hometown after the Russian Revolution fighting in the Army and he finds that everything has changed. The social structure has changed. His wife has changed. And he and the rest of the village must come together and get a cement factory back up and running. They must fight not just local reactionaries but also the bureaucracy of the Soviet system. 

As story in the translation, it's not that bad, but it is more of interest as a historical text than it is just a fun book you're going to sit and read. The other thing of note is that it makes me think of the contemporaries of this text.  It was written in the twenties and at the same time Mikhail Bulgakov was writing Master and Margarita and Heart of a Dog -- much more interesting modernism influenced text than this is. So at least that time artistically you were able to have a very separate threads representative in Soviet literature. Overall, I would say it is worth a read but again as the representative text of the genre.

 

The Plague - Albert Camus

I first read The Plague about 2002 it was in my French literature in translation class and it was the first time I'd read Camus. There was something about his work that really attracted me, and I think The Plague is really a representative sample of his work. 

 

It's beautifully written but there is a sense of isolation and loneliness even when the characters have a relationship with people  -- we're still isolated. And The Plague is set in this Algerian city and the people are having to learn to fend for themselves as they’re locked out from the outside society. I think when I read it  20 years ago it was read as the metaphor for life under Nazi occupation. I returned to it early in the most recent pandemic reading it in March of 2020. Reading it then felt as if  there weren't direct parallels because there was still some simple life where you could go outside and be with people just a little bit. 

 

But I keep going back to this text in my mind because that sense of  isolation that has become more real over time. And the parallels to the world of the text and the current time have multiplied: we see the people who try to break the quarantine those who've gotten rich despite the lockdowns and we see people have gone about their lives and learn to live with the plague as everybody suffers. As in real life in the book there is just widespread trauma for all the characters. What I want to see is the parallel is that in The Plague there is an ending where the gates open but even then, the people of the city are still wary and that's where I think we're at right about now. The gates may open soon but there won’t be the one day that we all get to celebrate but must try to recreate normalcy even though there is no return to normal, “the plague was bound to leave traces in people’s hearts” (280). Early on in March it didn't feel as if it mapped onto our experience, but I keep mentally going back to this book because of that sense of  isolation that he captured so well. It's a classic and Camus is a fantastic writer. I of course recommend this book,  but it is bit of a drag on the soul.