Zack's Final Lesson

I see a lot of loss in my line of work and I felt like I had a good concept of how it manifests and is appreciated by families.  But enduring the loss of Zack I have explored it all to a different extent and in a way than I hadn't appreciated before.  I hadn’t thought much in depth about the different kinds of losses and the poignancy of day-to-day loss and the slow petering out of a life after death.

Full disclosure: I would not have predicted myself to grieve deeply over Zack’s passing.  I was quite open about the fact that we had adopted him when the kids were both at too young of an age.  I was balancing my own return to work with my new job of being a mother of 2; Toby was just 3 and Mia only 5 months old when Rob decided that our family needed a dog.  To the kids he was their 3^rd sibling.  To Rob, his parental leave and lakeside companion.  To me, Zack was always a dependent that I never had enough time or energy for.  He challenged my beliefs on a dog's role in the family and I often looked at him with a sense of guilt.  I wish now I could have realized what a good life he had with us as opposed to always resenting what I wasn’t providing him with.

And so my first observation about sudden grief is the pedestal.  We all immortalize the dead and speak only of their good qualities and so are true about dogs – even the goofy, loud barking ones you never feel like walking.  I am struggling to remember what was so annoying about this now.  Gone are the daily frustrations that he gave me, replaced instead by the quiet emptiness of the spot where his smelly mat should be lying with his water bowls, waiting to be tripped over.

It’s hard to pace your grief when you lose one of your day-to-day fixtures.  The reminders are everywhere – previously banal, commonplace things now carry a weight of loss and sadness that is unavoidable.  Some seem impossible.  How is it that he was just eating breakfast out of this bowl?  Others just serve as unexpected reminders.  Oh right, I don’t need to hang his leash back up…  

I felt this way the day he died.  As I struggled to figure out which order to do things in and how quickly to do it all in order to make this process easier for the kids I fear I might have rushed some steps. That first night I washed and put away his dog bowls and beds.  The next day while the kids were at school we packaged up his food, treats and dog brushes to distribute among our dog owner friends and I spent an hour in the mudroom trying to rearrange the mats in their to make it look like there shouldn’t be a dog bed at the end of it.

I didn’t feel overly emotional about the big things –it was the little unexpected things that crept up.  When I nonchalantly vacuumed the main floor on Sunday afternoon I realized that this would be the last time I’d be vacuuming up his hair.  (Turns out it wasn’t – I’m clearly not a very good vacuumed…).  When I washed the back door window I gasped as I realized I had just wiped off his nose print from where he used to sit.  And today, as a balmy day in February brought with it a giant thaw, I watched as his footprints disappeared from our once snow covered backyard.

It’s amazingly sad to watch someone peter out of your life.

I know what will come next.  One day I will be able to leave for work without purposely shutting the mudroom door so the dog doesn’t get out.  I will return home from work and not hesitate before putting the groceries on the floor and I will not cringe and wait for the loud barking to start when I see someone with a dog walk by on the back trails.

These steps and remembrances are unavoidable.  Like everything in life, you realize that grief, too, is a process.  Though I see it every day, I don’t actually know anymore how people cope when it’s their daily life companion that they lose.

Before any more of Zack peters out I want to end with one final voice over.  I would always vocalize Zack’s inner voice for the kids when he would rush out after animals in the back yard or do something particularly goofy and Zack-like.  His final voice over tells of his final run down to the fence where we found him lying in quiet stillness just 10 minutes later…

It reads in a deep, slow, earnest voice,

“What a lovely morning, sitting here with the family – WOAH - WOOOAHHH!!!

There’s something walking by out back!!! WOAH…wait there’s a TRAIL in our BACKYARD?!? WHOOOOGOES THERE!!! WHOOOOO GOES THERE!!!!

LET ME OUT LET ME OUT LET ME OUT LET ME OUT!!!!”

(The door to the backyard opens)

“OMG IT’S A PERSON! AND A DOG!  MY FAVOURITE COMBINATION!!! AND THEY ARE WALKING TOWARDS ME!!! HELLLOOOO!!!! HELLLO!!!! HELLOOOOOO!!!!

OOOF.

Woah.  There’s a fence.

OMG IT’S A DOG! IT’S A DOG! IT’S A...oh she smells so good…OMG It’s TILLY!!!

TILLY!  TILLLY!! TILLY!!! I haven’t seen you in SOOOO LONG! 

OMG you smell SOO Good I almost forgot what you smelled like!

Hey!  Where are you going? TILLY!!! TILLY why are you walking away?! 

Don’t leave me!!  OH NO TILLLLY!!

Now I’m standing her all alone in a …oh wait…there’s my house… and my people…

My People!  Toby! Mia!  What am I doing out here when you’re all in there?  Oh my goodness you must be missing me….don’t worry…I’m coming….”

We do miss you, Zack.  Every day.  Though the little details and habits of having you around will continue to fade with time, the missing and loving of you will forever stay with our family.  You were our first dog and our kids 2^nd sibling.   Our lakeside companion and our day-to-day constant.  And ironically for me, in the end you were a great lesson on grief and love and focusing less on the details, but noticing instead what’s lying right in front of you the whole time….

Perhaps the greatest treat of his life - Mia's ice cream cone remnants.
He never did figure out that he was actually able to eat it...

Our very last picture of Zack  - taken after laughing at how he insisted on digging his nose into the snow