I hate death. I hate the separation from loved ones, the words unspoken, the unfinished business, the permanence. I hate how it looms over us, making us wonder if we’ll live to old age or if some tragedy or disease will shrink our horizon. I hate the hole it leaves behind. I am glad that God hates death, too, and has conquered it on our behalf. But that seems like a far-off reality sometimes, not a present truth.
Yesterday we had to put our 10-year-old German Shepherd, Lita, to sleep. She had a condition called degenerative myelopathy, which causes the spinal cord to disintegrate over time. At first her tail stopped wagging, then slowly she lost the ability to control her back legs. Fortunately, because the nature of the condition is gradual paralysis, she wasn’t in pain. Her back end was just going numb. She was still able to walk, more or less, but her legs would slip out from under her easily. She had to pull herself up stairs with her front legs. It was time to do the right thing, and I am convinced it was the right thing at the right time. She was losing her spark and getting frustrated and depressed that she could no longer chase the ball or jump on the couch. She was losing that part of her that made her “Lita.”
I cannot yet write about the details of the joys that she brought to my life. That will take some time to get to that point. The wound is still fresh; the gaping hole is still raw. My husband is grieving as much as I am, and that does bring some comfort. Someone else who feels exactly what I am feeling, who knew her as I did. But I was thinking this morning that when you suffer a pain as deep as this, it feels like the whole bookcase of loss, betrayal and sorrow comes tumbling down, and past hurts and losses are scattered around. I keep tripping on these and it is an odd experience. I have been thinking about my dad a lot lately. This morning I made it almost all the way to work without crying, until I started grieving for my only brother. I never knew Ronnie; he died as an infant over a decade before I was born. He was the only male child my mother bore. I cried over that loss, that I didn’t get to experience having a big brother. I even thought that now, at my age, when he would be in his sixties, it would be nice to have him to talk to. Of course, he might have turned out to be a crotchety, complaining, alcoholic miser, but I’ll never know. Since that life is a blank slate, I was choosing to fill it in with what I most wanted.
A friend recently sent me an article about not comparing your pain to someone else’s. That has helped me not to minimize what I’m feeling by dismissing Lita as “just a dog.” She was my dog and a part of my family—my everyday, waking up, around the house, bedtime ritual family—and now she is gone. I don’t need to justify my grief. God still cares that I am hurting and offers me His comfort. Grief is grief and pain is pain and the world is full of both. It doesn’t come in sizes, but it is universal. This is my cup for now, and for perhaps the first time I am willing to drink it instead of burying it or distracting myself until it is lukewarm. When I pray for God to heal my emotions, I must take the bad with the good. Pain is the price of loving, whether it is the pain of separation, or disappointment, or betrayal, or death. And really, in the grand scheme of things, a few days or even weeks of pain is worth the years of love and joy that Lita brought me.
