When I was three I didn’t understand; when I was ten, I realized. When I was three years old, my uncle John had died from a heart attack at age 23. My aunt found him on the couch after going to get him Tums for his heart burn. He ended up dying that night, and not even making it to the hospital before being pronounced dead. I don’t really remember much about him other than two very vague memories. During both, he is running in the front yard of their house in Castle Rock. For my young self, there wasn’t much to mourn, so I didn’t really understand what death was till much later.
About seven years later, my chocolate lab, Oso, had to get teeth surgery for a few cavities. We packed him into my family’s Tacoma on the day of his appointment. He went to the back of the vet office after walking through the huge modern waiting room. For the surgery, he had to be put under with a basic anesthetic. As soon as he was put under, he couldn’t breath at all and almost died on the table from a simple dental surgery. But he ended up living through that for a few more days. We had found out that he had big tumors all over his body, and the anesthesia almost killed him.
He lived on for a few more days. It was painful to watch as his health deteriorated. He wasn’t the happy dog I had known. He barely had the energy to eat, and when he managed to walk, it was with a pathetic limping gait. When his condition began to worsen, we decided to take him to the vet again. When he was trying to get into the truck bed, his back legs buckled and he toppled onto his back. His mouth was slack, and scarlet blood was oozing from it.
He went from the dog I would constantly walk around the neighborhood with, go camping with every weekend, go sliding and pull my sister and I up the hill, go for runs, hike, and bike ride with our family, to the dog who needed someone to lift him into our truck in a matter of days.
After watching him suffer, we decided it would be best if we put him down. He was 11, and we knew that he wouldn’t have gotten better from this. The vet had also said she wouldn’t do the surgery to remove the tumors of cancer, because he was too unstable under anesthesia the first time. She simply told us to enjoy the time we had left with him.
My parents were sad, my mom was crying and I didn’t understand why, and I knew my dog was sick, but I just thought he was going to get better. My parents had told me and my sister that he was going to get put down the next day. I knew getting put down meant something, but I didn’t realize that I would never be able to see him again.
The next day was a school day, and it was a field trip. I woke up the next morning and my mom told me to say bye to Oso, because he would be dying that day. My parents had me go on my field trip, and put him down during the school day. I had a good field trip all day, but I couldn’t stop thinking about Oso and what that meant. Finally, it reached the end of the school day and my mom had come and picked me up, and my mom said that she had put him down. My brain couldn’t comprehend what that meant. I stood still for a moment, and I felt so small.
My mom put the car in drive, and I was looking out the window wondering what all of this meant. I had no clue. I just thought my dog was sick, and he went away to get better. When I got home, I slammed my moms car door shut like I always did. I ran to the front door like I always did. I flung open the door like I always did. But my dog wasn’t there like he always was, just his best friend Marley.
That’s when the dots connected that death means that you won’t ever be able to see the person or animal that you always saw again.