Grief, Acceptance, and Letting Go of a Dog Named Scooby

April 17

I wake and check to see if he’s breathing, a routine that happens throughout the night, in fits of nightmare and anxiety. I see his tummy rising up and down, like the slow, steady hum of a tugboat slicing through a choppy sea.

He’s alive.

He’s still here.

I’ve got one more day.

I’m exhausted, and there’s no doubt in my mind he’s exhausted, too. I scream inside, why can’t he speak my language?! But then I remember he can. I need to listen deeper.

It takes him fifteen minutes before his back legs are even ready for the plunge off the bed. They splay out under him like unattended marionettes until I, the conductor, gently lift his back end and guide him off the bed.

Sometimes he’s not ready to take on the morning, so I wait. I make coffee, I feed Madi, I prepare his breakfast, I interrupt Madi before she eats her own morning plop.

I wait, and I listen. Deeper.

What’s his body saying? What are his eyes telling me?

His tail wags a rotation, like a furry helicopter blade, and I wonder if he’s telling me he is still here, ready for what may come.

I don’t want to rush him though. I don’t want to burden him with my anxiety, my human hopes and selfishness. The truth is I don’t know how to fully tell if he’s ready — to get off the bed, or to venture into the Great Beyond.

Maybe he doesn’t want to come down at all, channeling his human mama’s deep love for bed.

When I guide him down eventually, I notice again the instability in his front legs. Where the back legs are like the black-out drunk stumbling his way out the bar, his front legs are like a war-torn soldier carrying battle wounds and the PTSD he’s tired of fighting.

A couple of weeks ago, we noticed a gargantuan tumor near his right armpit. Last week, the vet said it’s the kind of tumor you can’t really operate on (especially for an old dog), and that it will be the thing to take him.

I feel an urge to be angry at the tumor. But perhaps that’s my misplaced grief, my need to make sense of a thing that’s nonsensical.

Death, the mystery, the lights shutting off. The point isn’t in the making sense of. The point is in the allowing, the accepting, the letting go. We are finite creatures. Life is fleeting. And death comes for us all. That’s what makes it beautiful, and gives it all the meaning.

Doesn’t mean I don’t still want to talk death philosophy with a dog named Scooby. Doesn’t mean that it isn’t fucking heartbreaking. Doesn’t mean that I won’t miss him everyday for the rest of my life.

But it does mean that I can, when I allow and accept and meet the world (and our dogs) where they are — I can create more space for beauty.

April 19

It’s Monday, and in two days the vet will come over to our house to put Scooby to sleep fur-ever. It’s The Decision we all animal lovers hate the most. So we listen as best we can, we allow for him to be his truest, most beautiful self, and we try not to muck it up with our real human yearning to keep him here with us.

As our vet says, “it’s better to go early than go a minute too late.” And I nod, and agree, and yet I want to burn it all to the ground because my best friend will be dead. And that means I won’t get to wake up with him anymore.

On Wednesday, April 21, for the first time in almost 15 years, I won’t wake up with Scooby. And this realization tears me apart. And also, he’ll always be with me. And the beauty of what remains, as Rabbi Steve Leder says, will be profound, and lasting, and like nothing else.

April 21

It’s today. Today is the day. Scooby’s last morning. His last marionette show. His final plunge off the bed. In a few hours, he’ll be gone.

I ask myself, what’s a life like without him?, and an honest answer has to recognize that the past month he hasn’t been fully himself. So maybe I know a little bit already what it’s like without him.

I wonder if that’s part of the process, the creature on their way out showing us a glimpse of what life will be like without them. An invitation to listen, an invitation to allow, an invitation to accept.

I accept that it will be so very hard. And I accept that it will be so very beautiful.

I accept that I can hold both of these truths in my heart, not allowing them to exist as opposites, but to honor their existence as a reflection of humanity and the multitudes we contain.

Some days will be worse than others, where I’m awash in heartbreak and sadness. Some days his memory will brighten my heart, as I reflect on the immense joy of his life.

And all the days, he will be in my heart.

My sweet baby boy, my first dog, my first love, my Scooby.