I’ve now been back from the Big Drive just about a week, and am getting more lessons in wanting and letting go, being here now, and gratitude.
My sweet Sofia is gravely ill, and I’m not sure how long she has. I came back from my walkabout not wanting to be here, wanting to be back out west but for Sofie and my guilt over leaving her for so long. I’d said on arrival that she was the only thing that made the house a home. Little did I know how true that was, and how sick she already was. Not a week later, I learn she was already well into renal failure. Now I’ve had to put her in the hospital. I came home from the hospital knowing I’d done the right thing, but going home to an empty house, even though she’s alive and getting treated, was excruciating. The house truly is not a home. Wracked with guilt over my self-indulgent journey that left her to decline so rapidly, I am devastated, and am sparing no energy nor credit card to save her. While the doctors assure me that end-stage renal failure does not occur in 23 days, I am stricken at having left her for these last few weeks. Oh, the lessons in wanting. Right now, all I want is for her to be fine. And that’s not going to happen. I don’t know what will happen, but I know she’s not going to be fine – that’s the best-case scenario.
Re-entry swept aside, the ensuing days and weeks have become a blur of veterinarians, veterinary hospital visits, increasingly agonizing decisions about increasingly risky and invasive tests. My seemingly suddenly-sprung-up community of friends work in rotations, accompanying me to the vet hospital, just in case this time will require the big decision. I want to be able to concentrate on something else, but find it nearly impossible. I’m trying to allow, allow, allow; know resistance is futile, all that. But boy, if I wanted to be elsewhere when I got back, Sofie needed me to be here now. She’s my Zenmaster. She’s in the hospital, which is a place she does not want to be, but it’s her best chance at turning it around and having more time, and so she’s there. And she seems to be adapting; she sure as hell doesn’t like it, but she’s adapting. My little yoga teacher.
Twice Sofia comes home, home to me poking her with a needle several times a day, giving her pills all day long, spoon-feeding her on the sofa (where she has decided to camp out). When home, she rarely sleeps with me anymore, staying on the couch, but she struggles to rally, be with me, offer me her sunshiney, spunky, affectionate self. Twice she goes back to the hospital for kitty dialysis, responding so well they can only send her back home and see how she does. The last time she comes home, the transformation is extraordinary, giving great reason for optimism. It wouldn’t be her previous low-maintenance life – she would have to receive subcutaneous fluids daily, and pills all day long. I would be poking and prodding her for the remainder of her life, and my traveling days would be curtailed. But if she could tolerate it, we could have each other. They send her home with me, with instructions to return in four or five days for a re-check.
On the return visit, accompanied by a friend (who refuses to be identified here, even by pseudonym), we go in hoping for the best. We drop off Sofie, go for coffee, and return a little while later for test results. The news is dismal: her numbers had not crept up in the last few days – they had skyrocketed higher than ever. She could not be sicker. Her seeming good cheer was all an act, all efforts to please me, stay with me, be here with me. As soon as I realize we are at the end of the road, I fall apart. I had been vigilant about not crying in front of her, staying calm and centered and hopeful to support her mood and well-being. But as soon as my façade collapses, Sofie’s does, too. She lay down in her carrier – someplace she never wanted to stay – and went chin-down on her paws. And looked at me as if to say, finally, “Mommy, I really don’t feel good.” She looked almost relieved to tell the truth.
The hospital had previously told me they could euthanize at home, which was my strong preference, as Sofia loathed the hospital and being around the other animals. It was the least I could do for her, give her lasting peace in comfort and peace. But here we were at the final hour, only to learn that because it was now Saturday, they didn’t have the staff until Monday to send someone out. I gasped in horror, sobbed still more. Take her home with an axe over her head for 48 hours, waiting for a date with Death? It was too horrible to consider. The doctor excused herself while I sobbed on my friend, beseeching advice. The doctor returned, saying a tech had offered to come out to my house the next afternoon, even though it was his day off. It was immensely kind, and I wanted to meet the kindness extended, but even 24 hours of this doom seemed too agonizing to endure. We would just be miserable. I saw myself just sobbing over my little fluffball all night. It seemed unbearable. I turned to my friend, who had known what she might be getting into coming with me that day, and was ready to step up. The doctor wouldn’t choose for me. I was paralyzed myself, hating the options. I turned my gushing eyes to my friend. She knew what she had to do, and so, she decided. She chose what was best for all of us, and I utterly trusted she would be right. I felt awful putting her in that position, and my gratitude to her for coming through will never end. And so we told the doctor yes, OK, it’s time.
They told me what to expect, that she would first literally fall asleep, then feel nothing, in two distinct stages, from two separate drugs. The staff left us alone, but I needed so little time with her at this point. I had already told her everything I had to tell her, given her everything I’d ever had to give her. Sofie seemed to understand. When the staff returned, Sofie climbed off the exam table into my lap on the adjacent chair, I thought en route to an escape. But instead, she just lay down in my lap, where she remained, and with her little forehead pressed into the crook of my elbow, entered a peaceful slumber, and slipped away.
Now my girl Sofia is gone, my little familiar of these last twelve-and-a-half years. I put her to sleep on Saturday, November 21, 2009, after twelve days and thousands of dollars. Sunday was my shiva day: I had five visitors, and nearly a dozen phone calls, coming from all over. People have been wonderful, taking this grief of mine very seriously. I must’ve cried a gallon on Sunday. Maybe, just maybe, I can now start to recover, now that the uncertainty is closed. With resolution, there are only tears, and grief, and missing her. I wrote to my ex-husband, and his kids (they all had loved her, too), and got a kind response from the ex.
Sunday night my brother was here, and while he was getting ready to go home, I felt this powerful, powerful impulse to start lighting candles. I have all these candles in the house, but hadn’t lit them in a long time. Yet here I was walking around compulsively lighting candles. Stuart saw me doing this, and said in his offhand, dry way, “I prefer to curse the darkness myself.” It was hilarious. And I laughed. It was not irreverent, it was Jewish humor at its best. My brother was there with me in my grief, and he, too, had loved Sofie. Knowing me well, he gave me a glimmer of laughter through my tears. Later that night, I was talking to my oldest friend, Laney, and told her about feeling impelled to light these candles. Without hesitating, she said, “That’s what we do when someone dies.” I guess so. Maybe there’s something about the flame…it looks like it’s alive. Now the only living thing in my house besides me when I’m there, is an orchid I’d been given as a housegift. Which I’d been forced to stash in the only place that’s a combination of where it could get enough light, and where Sofie was least likely to eat it. I have no plants because Sofie ate them all.
And so, this is the first time in almost 15 years that I will be living without another soul in the house. Heaven knows I’ve done it before, but it’s been a long time. Sofia let me off the hook for going away over Thanksgiving; Stuart’s coming back tonight, and tomorrow morning we go to Cleveland for Thanksgiving together. Because my angelic friend stayed with me the night before, last night was the only night I will have to pass alone in the house for a long time. And I made it through because I was so cried out. Now I am packing again. And thankful I don’t expect to spend a lot of time in Philadelphia in the coming months.
It’s hard to lose a pet and even harder to make the decision to put one to sleep. Many Hugs even if it was a cople years ago the memories never go away.