Sunny

I know how to sit with the dying, I’ve been doing it more  as I approach the end of middle-age and enter whatever comes next. Dad died ten days before my son was born in 1998, but just recently I lost Mom.  And in between those two deaths countless others passed who I sometimes sat with and sometimes didn’t.

Today I’m sitting with Sunny, my seventeen-year-old pup, who is like the Edith Wharton quote – “My little dog – a heartbeat at my feet,”  a sentiment captured by a friend who came to the park one morning and photographed all the dogs and then created lovely cards with a special quote for each one.

The story of Sunny is one of good luck and great fortune because when she arrived in our home, when my son was nine and my daughter was seven, she had been found abandoned, abused and pregnant, but was saved to give birth and find a new home.

At the time she arrived I was just in my forties and my children were still of the age when they needed me to drive them everywhere and manage most things. And while I did work in the monetized world a few days during the week, I spent most of my time being Mom with Sunny by my side.

Sunny and I would walk around the block early each morning to our local park and meet up with our dog-friends so often and so consistently that Sunny had her own fan club. Sitting with her now, curled up and small, I can still see that past Sunny running in circles while I chatted with my friends until it was time to run home to get the day started.

When people used to ask what Sunny was my standard answer was always  “a brown dog,” which usually elicited a laugh. She looks like a small fawn, never more than twenty-pounds, and in her day could run like a grey hound.

Honestly, I can’t remember exactly when the early-morning park days ended, but they did, and then our time together changed. As Sunny liked to walk less and she didn’t really play anymore, she and I settled into the next phase of her dog life when our early morning dog group dispersed and we both socialized a little less.

Then came the pandemic that challenged us all in many ways, and for her it was both good and bad. She loved that all her people were home with her every day, all day, even our son and daughter. But also bad because she suddenly refused to take walks and didn’t seem to hear that well. We all aged a bit during the chaos of the pandemic, Sunny clearly did too, but time moved on and our children moved out and her life quieted again.

We are now in the phase where each day she still gets up, eats a little, walks down the stairs to get some fresh air, and then sleeps for most of the day. But she is aging and we can see that something is shifting. I know that a decision has to be made and together, as a family, we are going to make it.

My Rabbi often quotes a Judah Halevi[*] poem:

It’s a fearful thing to love what death can touch.

And I feel these words each time I look at my little dog who makes me crazy in so many different ways, and who I love so much that I’ve accommodated my life to care for her in ways I never would have expected when I reluctantly agreed our family should have a dog over fifteen years ago. But now I can see she is waning and my heart breaks as I write because losing love does that to a person.

So I must once again be still and sit with her, like I’ve done with others I’ve loved, and remember through the sorrow what a gift true love is.

[*] A Jewish poet who lived in Spain about a thousand years ago.