UPDATE Aug 29, 2024: Miller is doing just fine after a lot of at-home TLC. These words encapsulate a feeling in time that I needed to capture.
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I’m writing this sitting next to Miller, my 4-year-old rescue pup, who is extremely sick. How we reached this point is a question I’ll never have an answer to, but the short version is his kidneys started failing and never recovered despite every treatment we threw at it. He went from joyous energetic yapper to sluggish, sleepy dog getting IV fluids on our couch in less than a week, and I am destroyed.
The doctors that you talk to are always nice and always willing to tell you there’s still a chance that something can work but might do more harm.
- “We can try this medication, but it may hurt him more.”
- “We can put in a feeding tube, but he may not wake up from the implementation.”
- “We can run another test, but it probably isn’t going to say anything new.”
The people you reach out to for help can only offer platitudes and sympathy, but they can’t take the pain away — as much as you wish they could share in it and absorb some of it.
- “I’m so sorry man”
- “That’s awful, I can’t believe it.”
- “Let me know how I can help.”
I don’t mean to discount these interactions. Being who I am, I have reached out to dozens of people for help and to tell them that I’m struggling. If you’re one of those people, I thank you for letting me sob to you either over the phone or SMS. Even if it was just a sentence letting me know that you were thinking of me, it meant the world.
The stickler is that you want and hope that their wishes and the doctors’ best advice will make a difference; alter the course of the world and guide you to a better and happier place. The truth is that you cannot control everything, or in some cases anything. I thought naively that I could throw money at the problem and that would fix Miller. It’s worked in the past, mostly because we live in America, but no amount of credit cards can solve every problem as much as the commercials tell you they can.
There are millions of quotes about why love and loss go hand and hand. None are more apt than this:
To love is to suffer and there can be no love otherwise.
Fyodor Dostoevsky
To grieve someone or something who is still here is a very unique experience. He’s there but simultaneously not. The energy that lit him up like a spark plug is gone, replaced with a slumbering, sad coil of canine. Knowing a hard, ultimate decision lay down the road from us brings me to tears for even considering it. You feel robbed — of all the experiences you had planned and hadn’t even dreamed of yet. Of the moments in life you envisioned sharing with him. You feel mad at yourself, questioning everything that you did that could have led you to this point — wishing you could be Superman and reverse the spinning of the world for just one more try, one more chance to make it right.
The Son of Krypton is not real. This pain truly is. I am reminded of another quote:
The only way out is through.
Robert Frost
I called my therapist in a fit of desperation this week. He graciously made time for me and helped me with what he could provide. I told him it felt like I was staring into the abyss, paraphrasing Nietzsche the best I could. He clarified that for me.
“What you are experiencing is not the end of the world. It’s not the end of anything. You’re staring at life, and all its wonders and pains. You are experiencing human nature work its way through you. This is the reality of being alive, of being human.”
If you read this, I love you — truly. I appreciate everyone who has reached out and will reach out. I need you more than ever.
That’s how I’m choosing to view this calamity. Part of an amazing, horrifying journey that we all must go through, one way or another. To avoid the realities of this is to run away from your own existence — to turn away or to mask the pain, as much as I want to, is unfair. Unfair to Maggie, to Miller, and to myself.