She was to be untouched

This is a memoir on my experience with death.

Death has never been a constant in my life; the few experiences I had with death as a child were a handful of funerals I attended with my mother. Even these I can only reclaim blurry memories and images that don’t make much sense, for they were seen through weak, unobservant child eyes. I can, however, recall the pale, lifeless faces of the dead bodies lying in the polished wooden caskets surrounded by potent smelling roses and lilies meant to ease the process of accepting a lost life. Then, I hadn’t put much thought of the scene for being anything more than standing in a long line of strangers waiting to peer into the casket at yet another face that was unknown to me. You could say that because of this lack of emotional connection, or rather for the deficiency of knowledge on death itself, was the reason why I saw it as nothing more than a simple distraction from things that were more important to an eight year old girl. It wasn’t until just last year that I realized the traumatic affect death brought. A sort of originality or normalcy is almost always paired next to the death of a childhood pet, whether it is something as feeble as a goldfish or something as robust as a horse. In this case, the death of my childhood dog was not only much more than ordinary; it was my first experience to watching death irrepressibly run its course and undeniably crush my belief that she would be forever saved from such a fate.

                It was a joyful time of year. White, wispy flakes of snow had just begun to fall, covering the ground with a thin, white blanket and quenching the thirst for thrill among the snowboarders and skiers. Families were coming in from long since abandoned childhood homes; stores were bustling with livid shoppers risking their lives trying to get the last decent turkey or ham to satisfy their large groups of holiday guests. Thousands of red, green and yellow twinkle lights and grand Christmas trees decorated almost every store and holiday classics played on almost every radio station to help influence the Christmas spirit, or rather to induce an urge to buy cart fulls of presents. Among this happiness resides a darkness that only my family and I can recognize. Despite the efforts made by the media to promote a joyful time of year, an unshakeable feeling of doom lingers in a small back room, contrasting with sounds of laughter filtering in from the television. She who once ran around in the backyard on four strong legs and wagged her tail, to a point of being hazardous to anything within a foot of her, at the sound of a shaking treat box now lay in a heap of colorful blankets, helplessly hanging on to a flimsy edge that will soon vanish from existence.

                Not long before, a sickness entered her life and planted itself like a rusty, metal stake, into her fragile, innocent life. Unnoticeable at first, it soon began to unveil itself through her rapid weight loss and inability to eat, or for her inability to hold anything in longer than ten minutes. Not long after her appetite gave out, her strength followed. We watched in horror, day by day, as her legs slowly became unable to hold her already thin body. Her sides shrank in and gave her stance a disturbingly unusual appearance; red, scabby sores formed on her legs from excessively lying down. Death was revealing itself in carefully directed moves, conveying its ugly, monster-like appearance in the way we saw my dog deteriorate. One by one, the ‘thing’ drained her life as if it were savoring its meal rather than consuming it in one blow. Not only was it torturing her, it was torturing us.

                While death was playing out right in front of me, I realized a weakness that had long been attached to me. Even though I had once beheld death at funerals, I had come to believe that this animal that was not fighting for her life would never actually die. How could she? As I grew up with her, she was always healthy, and she was always happy. I can so clearly remember the hot, sticky summer days when I would walk her along our neighborhood, or the callous winter nights when she would sit beside me on the touch, panting softly in sheer happiness that she was unconditionally loved and cherished.  She was to be untouched by something as foul and sickening as death. She was to remain a constant force of purity and happiness. She would be at the backdoor, excitedly awaiting the loving gesture of her masters, greeting her after a long day away. I had thoroughly convinced myself beyond doubt of the impossibility of losing my most beloved pet. Still, though, before death entered her life, I began spending more time with her; I simply sat with her and stroked her head robotically for hours in the late hours of night. It was as if my unconscious knew better than I; it knew that she wasn’t going to be around forever and that every moment spent with her was precious and limited. Not only did my unconscious know things that I myself did not, but the diminishing life in the backroom knew as well.

                As the sun rose, signaling the morning of another day, a quiet, yet central moment gracefully placed itself in the middle of the sadness and darkness hovering over our lives. It was the moment when I understood that she knew she wasn’t going to make it and that while the evil sun rose higher and higher in the pale white sky, her hours dwindled. In that moment, I realized that my dog was wiser and the wisest human. She had understood and peacefully accepted a concept that will forever remain foreign and mysterious to us. As I lay with her, I noticed that she was unusually calm and serene. She breathed soft, labored breaths as I stroked her bony body. After removing myself from her presence, she was suddenly uneasy. She whimpered and wined until I returned to her. Only then did she become placid once more. After experimenting several times with getting up and coming back to her frantic call, I grasped that she did not want to spend her last moments alone any more than a human being would. I knew this only because she had never behaved in such a manner before. So I sat with her once more, and sank into an unpleasant understanding that death was slowly dragging her away into a realm where I could not follow.

                So here we sat, in the final scene of deaths malicious play. She lay atop the traditional stainless steel table on more blankets, although this time they were a dull, plain white. There were no medical supplies or equipment, just two multicolored chairs and a sink. This room wasn’t intended for recovering; this small corner was just another backroom, a room for death to finish its deed, or instead speed up the process with a painless injection, to guarantee an opportunity for a final farewell. This is the one control we have over death. It’s not to provide a cure from dying, but to have a partial decision on when fatality ensues. Not that death much cares, for its triumphing still.

                And indeed did death triumph, as her breathing gradually slowed to a stop just seconds after a pair of hands squeezed an injection tube, releasing a clear liquid into her veins. We had each held a part of her as she crossed over from this world into another. She became utterly still and her eyes rolled back into her head. A moment of panic washed over e and a small voice inside my head screamed in defiance, shouting words of disbelief that if I called her name like I had done thousands of times before she would suddenly reclaim her body that was so gruesomely stolen from her and return to us. I watched for anything that would indicate life, a twitch of her nose or a rise of her chest. It was too sudden of a change, from one moment seeing her brown eyes look curiously around the room to knowing that she had become nothing more than a corpse lying in a heap of white blankets. But she wasn’t just a corpse; she wasn’t just a pale body lying in a casket with a room full of strangers looking down upon her. She was a constant in my life that had suddenly disappeared.

                It was a struggle to exit the small room then, to leave her body lying there on the table, and to return home without her. Even now, at one year’s passing since, I still see ghostly glimpses of her figure sitting by the backdoor, curiously watching me go about my business around the house, even though her ashes now remain in a small wooden box with a picture of her engraved on the top and words that say ‘we love you, forever and always’ on the side. Every day I pass by this box and give my greetings. A feeling of grief fills me, but I have learned to accept this as something that will serve as a reminder to me that she who was to be untouched, was touched.

Reviews

[RazzySkittles]

This makes me want to cry!!! It's so sad, but really well written. It was easy to read the text and understand. Although I admit it took effort not to cry. Good memoir, truly, emotionally daunting, sad and beautiful.