Saying goodbye to Suki

The house is so empty I can barely stand it. I keep hearing sounds that I am sure are hers. But they are merely the noises of my house: the refrigerator purring, the water cooler gurgling, the house settling. She is no longer here. A short while ago, Suki, our beloved lhasa apso whom we treasured for 18 years, was put to sleep by our compassionate vet in her bed in the family room where she spent so many of those years. And my heart is broken into so many pieces I doubt it will ever feel joy again.

For those who do not love animals, I must sound like an overdramatic jerk. The millions who love their pets with a passion reserved for the closest members of their families will understand that I am simply a woman whose beloved pet has died.

Because I am a writer who writes at home, leaving for only a few hours a week to teach writing classes, Suki was my constant companion. Each day she could be found lying at my feet as I wrote in my office or rummaging under the couch for stored chewies, offering me the look that meant, "Can we please go for a walk when you finish that stupid chapter?"

In her sad last year of life, blind and deaf and barely able to walk, she merely lay in her bed and slept, breathing so heavily, even the drone of my printer could not mute her sounds, often crying out in her sleep with sad moan-like barks that made me stop and pat her head until they mercifully ceased.

My husband Jack and I did not care that she was so disabled. She was still our precious puppy, able to find her way to her feeding dish, out the front door to her favorite patch of grass and to her bed in the family room. Because my husband needs so little sleep, he was in the family room with her every night until three or four in the morning, doing his work while she slept, and when she woke, confused and crying, he would let her out and then pat and hold her.

Those around us would not cease. "Don't you hear her cry?" one son would ask. "I can't bear to see her like this," the other would say. "It is too heartbreaking to watch Suki struggle to walk outside," a neighbor would remark. "I will be with you when you put her down," my brother-in-law would offer.

And so we knew. The time had come. For my husband, a physician who spends his life saving lives, the concept of putting a dog to sleep was abhorrent. He had witnessed the death of the dog he grew up with when a truck ran over her, and he never forgot the look of agony on his dying dog's face. Of course, he understood that Suki's death would not be agonizing. But still it was killing the dog he now loved. If only, please God, she would die in her sleep, we both prayed each night. But she hung on, loving us, we were convinced, too much to hurt us by dying.

Finally, we both agreed to a date: Wednesday, November 28th at 7:30 a.m. The day before was excruciating. Feeding Suk her last meal, filling her water dish for the last time, cleaning her eyes for the last time, holding her in our arms for the last time--each task left us distraught and heartsick. Suki slept soundly and without so much as a whimper Tuesday night, but neither Jack nor I slept a wink.

The vet arrived promptly at 7:30. Suki sat up in her bed when he walked into the family room. With my husband's arms tightly wrapped around her, Suki snarled bravely as the vet shaved her arm to find the vein. And then, in a split second, as my husband whispered, "It's okay, Suki. It's okay, honey," and I sobbed helplessly from the doorway, the shot was injected, and she lay her head down. And it was over.

And so I sit in my office, hearing all the sounds that are not my dog, grateful she is no longer suffering, but suffering my own incurable pain. "Will you get another dog?" friends ask when they call to express their condolences. And I tell them I do not think I could ever go through this pain again. "But remember the joy she gave you," one says. And I do. All the years she loved us unconditionally, adjusting somehow to the departure of each of our sons to college and their own apartments and new lives, racing around so frantically when they returned home that we feared she would die of a heart attack.

All four of us adored her in our own special way. To me, she was the third child I never had, the lone representative of my sons' vanished childhoods, the faithful friend who never left me alone as I wrote my endless stories. To my husband, she as was the one who was never too busy to greet his arrival home with a grandeur worthy of a returning warrior. To each son, she was an important part of his former youth: a ball catcher, a companion at the end of his bed, the first face he saw each morning.

Now she is merely a memory. And I will miss her every day of my life. Yes, I can replace her. In a flash. And maybe we will. But nothing can make me forget the puppy who filled my life with so much joy, and sat up in her bed that one final moment, I am sure, to tell me she loved me as much as I loved her, but it was time to let her go.