Walking Summer Home

"Someone asked me what's the most difficult thing about owing a dog? I replied, the goodbye.”Unknown

On my hands and knees in the dirt digging out a grave for our dog Summer I hit clay, and Google says it needs to be one metre deep. The shovel with my arms now can’t reach the bottom. I have taken to using a saucepan to finish.

Damn Google. F*** life.

One of my daughters is coming in and out of the backyard to see if I’m done. Everything in me wants to cry out, to sob uncontrollably, not wanting to adult anymore. This is hard, it hurts. Crying for a week now as I watched our girl deteriorate. She could barely move.

The decision was to kindly end her life.

All three daughters come to vet. We pat our girl as she is injected. So many tears, and snorts, and yes snot and laughter combined into what is our family. We stay with her for a good while, stroking her coat, talking and comforting each other with stories.

Now she lays wrapped in the soft black blanket from the vet on the lawn whilst I dig.  

Two daughters have left to be with their friends. They wanted to help bury her but after the vet they changed their minds. Working in mental health and life have taught me anything goes with grief. I don’t insist they stay. Everyone does the best they can.

Ms 14 wants to place Summer in her grave. I gently unwrap her blanket.

She lays still. Lifeless. Surreal.

Childishly, everything in me wills her to jump up and run like she’s playing, even though I know she’s dead.

In her life she was never still, following us around, chasing the knock at the front door, sucking her foot and up and down the stairs. Our little companion for 11 years. Rescued from owners who didn’t want her anymore.

We struck gold.

We found a lump. A biopsy. Cancer. Two options of costly major surgery or palliative care. Bless the kids as they offer their savings. I draw up a pros and cons list. I want them to understand we have the money, but the decision is about best care for Summer. They read and write on the list.

The palliative path follows as I start to prepare them for her death. We don’t know when, turns out much quicker than anticipated.

Ms 16 completes the quality of life questionnaire, there is a silence as she reads aloud the last question to answer. Summer can’t eat, walk, toilet or drink much. We know, it’s time.

Now she is limp upon the grass, her grave ready.

My daughter is crying, choking out that she can’t do it. I understand. I don’t want to do it either. I reassure her it’s okay. I stroke Summer’s fur as my daughter reaches to do the same. Her body is still warm.

We don’t talk. We cry.

I lift her lifeless body and both of us whimper. I place her in the deep grave, give her to mother earth. We put flowers from our garden with her.

My daughter runs inside to the kittens. I want to as well. I can’t, I need to do the grownup thing. I suck in big breaths of air.

I feel so alone and sad, yet the coolness of the evening lawn on my knees and dirt under my fingernails soothe me. In exchange for Summer, mother earth is doing what she does best, meeting me where I am.

I pick up the shovel. I feel awful, placing dirt on her beautiful white coat. I want to howl, as ironic as that is.

Singular slow-motion moments where life demands you face on your own.

I remind myself I’ve got this.

You haven’t lived until you’ve dug a grave. Buried someone you love. The letting go is never easier but perhaps the kindness towards self is.

Later Ms 14 says she likes to think of Summer now with her Uncle who died suddenly many years ago, long before she was born. Her father’s brother, his death devastating his family. Our third child was serendipitously born on his anniversary, like he was reminding us life sits alongside death, or vice versa.  

One is not greater than the other.

Unable to control or predict when the last breath is taken, the final moment, a goodbye kiss, an ending forever. Life can be brutal, unforgiving, beautifully raw and annihilating in the way it brings us home, to collapse with grief, loss and love.

Metaphorically and now for real, I have found myself upon my knees under the cherry apple blossom tree in the cool of the evening, farewelling something or someone I never wanted to believe would go.

And as Summer lay on my chest the afternoon before she died, I reflected on the Ram Dass quote , “we’re all just walking each other home.”

And yet in all things, death sits alongside life. Or vice versa. And I think in the middle of all that, is home.