We lost our 16.5yo shih tzu last Tuesday. She’d been declining for a while; it was time to let her go. Nothing about the process was easy, except for her. I’d never been through it before, not as the person who had to make that call, and certainly not as the person who was in the room. It was one of those moments where you look for the adult to handle this hard and terrible thing and realize you are the adult, prepared or not.
Panda couldn’t see or hear much anymore, so I insisted on holding her instead of just touching her head. She fell asleep in my arms within a minute of receiving a sedative, and I’ll always be so grateful for the fifteen minutes or so that I got to hold her, alone in the room, listening to my little companion snoring (her head was so heavy on my arm, as always, and all of the tension she carried in her little frame of late was gone…I’m not sure she’d had sleep that solid the whole week prior).
I’m not going to talk about the rest of it, because the rest of it doesn’t need description here. It was hard. But it was right.
We’ve all been doing fairly well; I think it hit me hardest because I’m the one carrying the concrete memories of the end of her life. Today, we received a card from the vet expressing condolences, and not only did everyone in the office sign it, but the entire inside left panel was filled with writing from the vet who usually saw Panda and who was there at the last.
What’s a little more rain on a rainy day, eh? She was a good companion, worthy of mourning. I’m grateful for the time we had with her and glad she left peacefully.
I was going to just summarize the above in a few lines and also add other news here, but that seems disrespectful somehow, so this is it this week.
(Oh, but did you know that our current president doesn’t even have a dog? Panda would not approve. Vote him out [not because he’s dog-less, but because he’s a feckless traitor and a terrible person all around]!)
Mel’s Monday Musings: October 19, 2020
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