Teeka

It is two days after Christmas and our dog Teeka died on December 22nd. This is the second loss I have had in 2020, the first being a dear friend, over the summer. In her case, I learned from a therapist that it is best to say, “she died by suicide” not, that “she committed suicide”. The word “committed” has more harsh connotations of aggression, force, or entrapment. He committed a felony. She was committed to an institution. They committed adultery. Dying by suicide categorizes it with other ways of dying. Dying of cancer. Dying of old age. Dying of a broken heart. I was not entirely convinced by this logic for we hold on to phrases we have learned over a lifetime as being the only way of saying them. This is not unlike re-learning the words we may have used in the past to refer to people who are simply different from ourselves. Whether they have lived in different habitats, were born in other countries, practiced their own version of religion or had varying preferences in romantic partners. We used to use a lot of words to demonstrate the difference between ourselves and others. This has changed radically, and gratefully, in the last decade. When I thought about it this way, I understood, and I practiced saying it when I spoke of my friend’s passing, to others. In a small way, it softened the blow.

Teeka died because we “put her down”. You could say she had let us know she was ready for her death, in a multitude of signs and symbols that she laid at our feet in her final days. You could say that she yearned for her death even, and if she could have spoken English, would have asked us to do just what we finally did, but this did not make it more palatable to me. It is hard not to feel and refer to “putting one’s dog down” as “putting your dog to death” or simply “killing your dog”. I don’t mean to light any fires by writing that, even as I know I have upset a good deal of dog lovers worldwide by stating it so plainly. Humans who have domesticated animals, in particular humans with dogs, believe they communicate with them on an essential level, attributing human emotions to the give and take relationship between the two species. Until I had my own dog, I was not aware of this, or even sure how it could be. Teeka lived with us for ten years and was over 15 when she died. She had always been passionate about her food, even though she ate the same prescribed dog food (for urinary tract concerns), twice a day, for most of her life. In the days leading up to her death, her arthritic hips and wobbly legs brought her to her dish, but she would stare briefly at it and then turn away, her always cross-eyed eyes slightly glazed over, as if she were remembering something from her younger days: a romp in a field, the sun on dry grass where she would turn somersaults with glee. In these last days, she would take snacks offered from our palm, and she still leaned into our caresses at her silky ears, her bony back.

                My daughter Camille and I knew about ten days before that she was dying. We cried most of one day, considering it, watching her curled in her bed in deep dozing, watching as she stumbled across the kitchen floor, and down the back steps to the yard, gallantly keeping upright. I advised the rest of the family that I would be the one to decide when it was time. No one disagreed with me, perhaps because no one wanted to be that person. I was willing, as distasteful as it felt, when I allowed myself to feel the weight of it. And on December 22nd, I knew. Camille knew also, as we were the first two to rise most mornings this December, and we watched with pain as Teeka struggle from her bed, up the stairs and into the kitchen. She wanted, it seemed, to complete her morning routine. Camille carried all 62 pounds of her down the outside stairs and the sun shone fiercely on the lawn and the swimming pool, covered for the winter. I sat at my computer, trying to work through my morning emails and observed her through the picture window, as she drank from the bird bath and then sat, fragile, held up by the wind but noble and picturesque, as always.

                “She’s taking it all in,” Camille said. “Committing her yard to memory.”

                When she came back inside, I told Jay to call the vet. Our hearts were breaking, and it seemed crueler with each passing minute to keep her going. She lay uncomfortably on the carpet next to me in a sphinx pose, one of her back legs looked uncomfortably askew. The vet advised us to call Compassionate Care, a mobile service providing a vet with the right tools, equipment, time and well, compassion, to take your dog down and carry her away, while you and your family watch the whole thing as if underwater, pulled down by the fastmoving current of time that is your dog leaving you and never coming back.

                Someone shared with me that when we grieve it means we loved. This I know and have learned well over time to shore up the memories of what and whom I loved. It is the memories (and the countless silly photos and videos we have of Teeka) that prop me up when I feel sad all over again.  People ask if we will get another dog. I am not sure. People are not replaceable, and I wonder if dogs ever are either.

This year I truly lost two best friends.