Tripping on Death

I imagine most of us learn of death indoors. A shaking-voice phone call or an elder sitting us down to explain in slow deliberate cadence their “sorrys” and condolences for what they’re about to tell us. But I was outdoors. The August sun was hot which would have been bad for her, except she was dying and didn’t know it. Also, I didn’t learn of her death, I orchestrated it. I made the choice because she couldn’t make it herself. She entrusted me with this.

“She’s gone now,” the vet said. Sweat mixed with tears and rolled own my face. My eyes burned and my throat roared with an angry pain that had been working its way to the surface for the past six months. She was the first being we brought home.

When the vet left, I found myself yipping like a coyote, which I thought was strange. I was either not in complete control of my faculties, or else my subconscious was paying some sort of homage. It was all quite embarrassing, even though I was alone. And so what do I do? Well of course I pick myself up and dust myself off. I put on my running shoes and head out the door with my headphones and a podcast at the ready.

I walk for a while, convincing myself that I’ll start running at the next street corner and then, well, then I’ll be just fine.

black tunnel

When pets die, there isn’t the level of circumstance that you get when it’s a person. Sure, that’s how it should be. But it’s a truth that carries consequences that I hadn’t realized I would need to bear. For starters, after your friends and family say sorry for your loss, that’s it. There’s no return to empathy that you yearn for. There’s also a quietness in the house that, if you’re the pet’s favorite (they always seem to have favorites), you feel it the deepest. It’s not a loneliness that I now feel with Charra being gone, it’s more of an absence. A realization that movement I see out of the corner of my eye isn’t her. It’s the liminal moment between thinking I’ve tripped on her body, when I’ve only tripped on her memory.