Yesterday was a hard day in our home. Thoughts of Sammy were constantly on all of our minds. I think we all kept thinking we would turn around and see him. He had this way of popping up throughout the day with his tail wagging, mouth smiling, eyes twinkling. "Hey, Sammy. What's going on?" is the phrase that was repeated multiple times each day in our house as we would give him some love.
While everyone is taking his death tremendously hard it is Josh and Sarah who feel the grief his death has left behind the most. Joshua who tries very hard to keep his emotions in check and close to him has been unable to restrain his grief as it cuts him so deeply. Sarah is also mourning in ways that I did not expect. Her grief pours out of her in a wave of hot tears that stream down her face in regular intervals throughout day and night.
My grief has rubbed me raw. I see shadows of Sammy everywhere - all throughout the house, in the car, in the places we go. I forced myself to take Lily on a walk yesterday to Sammy's favorite watering hole because I knew that if I didn't the pain of that place would grow infinitely more hurtful. Bob and Sarah came with me. I don't know what I expected to feel or find, but all I felt was the empty ache of a dog that I wished could be there, but was not, and the echo of memories that would never be repeated again.
Josh is afraid of forgetting Sammy. He is afraid of forgetting all of the details that made Sammy who he was. The way his ears felt, the heaviness of his lion-like paws, the way your fingers would get stuck on his belly fur because it was so long and fine that it would get tangled up. He is afraid that we will forget the feeling of his God-awful breath on your face and how it made you want to gag. He is afraid that Sammy will just disappear.
And truth be told we most likely will forget the small details about him as time marches forward. But I think that each of us will remember the small details that mattered the most to us as individuals and together the 6 of us will always be able to remember all of him as we pull together our individual memories.
We began to make a list yesterday of "Sammyisms" a.k.a. 'Things I will remember about Sammy'. It's kind of an insurance policy if we do forget some things. It's a great list that is already 3 pages long. He was just that kinda guy. He was the memory maker, the adventurous spirit, the risk taker, the sweet gentle boy. He was just Sammy. Unduplicatable, unique Sammy with a quiet disposition, but a large than life personality.
As I went through my day yesterday I was trying to think if there was anything else I could have done to save him. Should we have brought him home for one more night? Should we have asked the vet to wait one more day to see if he would improve? Was she sure that it was bone marrow cancer? Maybe he wasn't really as sick as I thought he was? On and on the questions rolled about in my mind.
And the answers came to me slowly and surely. If we would have brought him home he would suffered because he would have become dehydrated. He hadn't taken a sip of water on his own in 48+ hours prior to his death and was being given IV fluids to keep him hydrated. If we truly loved Sammy bringing him home wasn't an option because even though it would have made us happier it would have made him more miserable. When Sammy arrived at the first vet's office on Monday he had blood work done that showed that he had zero platelets in his body. Zero. His white cell count was low too. When his blood work was redrawn on Tuesday night he still had zero platelets despite having been given medication to boost his count. His white blood cell count was even lower than they were on Monday which the vet said was unbelievable since it was so low then, and he was becoming anemic. (Anemia is basically suffocating from within as your red blood cells become low in hemoglobin which carries oxygen throughout your body.) Yes, it was cancer. I knew it even after both vets told me it was and even after I did some research on the symptoms myself. And he was sick. So sick. I know this may sound morbid, but I am glad that I took those photos of him so sick because then I will have proof that he really was a sick boy in the event that my mind tries to play tricks on me and tell me that he wasn't so sick and that we shouldn't have euthanized him because maybe he could have gotten better. He just went down so quickly. Literally one day he was his usual happy self and the next day he wasn't.
When the vet came to administer the medication that would take his life he didn't move. Didn't raise his head. Didn't seem to feel the sedative and then the cold saline solution before the lethal cocktail of medication was supplied to his failing body. His eyes were closed, he was snuggled up with Lily, and had 12 hands holding and rubbing him. He was surrounded by those that loved him deeply and whom he loved deeply in return. I have to believe that he was at peace. I have to believe that putting him down when he did was saving him unnecessary pain that was bound to come as his body shut down on itself.
I don't know how long it will take for the loss of him to not feel like an open wound, but rather a scar. A scar whose pain isn't active anymore, but a visual reminder of a searing hurt that was once on fire. I think this pain will take a little bit longer to scab up because it is our family's first loss of a pet. Firsts of anything are always the most memorable.
I had the thought yesterday as to why God took Sammy and not Lily. Lily is very, very loved. Please don't get me wrong. But Lily has lived a very posh life for her (almost) 7 years. She doesn't know what hardship is like. She only knows what it is like to live a pampered and spoiled life. If God was just and fair it would be Lily he would have taken first and allowed our family to love on Sammy for a few more years and spoil him the way he should have been spoiled his whole life. But after some reflection, I knew that I had to trust God. If Lily died first Sammy wouldn't have been able to live without her. Really. We couldn't take Sammy anywhere alone because he didn't know how to function without Lily. He truly couldn't live without her. And I know that Sammy appreciated the life that we gave him, probably more so than Lily ever has, because he knew what the not so good life looked like and it made him so grateful to have found his own Garden of Eden with us.
Per the kids request, we had Sammy cremated. We will keep his ashes until Lily's future death and then we will bury them together.
Which brings me to the point of this whole long post: Almost every animal that we ever take into our homes and lives will die on our watch. For the majority of us it won't be almost every animal it will be every single one. And yet we will do it time and time again. No one thinks about their puppy growing old and dying when they bring it home. I don't think many of us who have rescued animals think about their animal dying either. We just bring them into our lives because the gifts and love they shower on us is so strong and so good that the grief and heartache we experience when they die is worth it. Deep down, even though we hardly ever acknowledge it, we know that we are staring down the barrel of a limited number of days with an animal that we love with abandon despite the heartache. They become a part of our family. They become a part of our very being. They have personalities and feelings. They make us laugh and cry. They sometimes make us mad and sad too.
This love isn't a one way street. Our animals love us without abandon too. They love us despite all of our faults and shortcomings. I don't think there is a purer love than that of an animal for its human family.
They live with us year after year creating memories with us.
And then they die and they leave their mark in the form of a scar across our hearts, but we love them anyway. Because loving them is a far greater reward then never having loved them at all. The intense hurt that we all feel now just shows how deeply Sammy was loved. The depth of love is shown in the reflection of the depth of our grief.
I asked Sarah last night as she lay in her bed crying if she would rather we not have adopted Sammy at all in order to save herself the heartache she is feeling right now. She responded without a second thought that adopting Sammy was one of the best things we have ever done despite the hurt she feels right now.
I couldn't have agreed with her more.
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