The last few months have been complete and utter shit.

We had an amazing summer, culminating in the Anjunabeats Group Therapy Weekender at The Gorge in Washington (https://youtu.be/qg0M-PXWmlo?si=JdX4EEinNkvqff1u). Then we found out that my mother-in-law’s cancer had come back. My wife took FMLA to go support her mom & dad, whilst I stayed home to work and (latterly) look after our elderly border collie Cooper, who, it had become clear to me, was like a child and a best friend all rolled into one.

In September, I found out (with 1.5 days to go) that I would have to go on unpaid leave from my job, because my visa was expiring (along with my right to work) and the application for my Employment Approval Document (or separate application for my green card) had not yet been actioned. I was out of work for 8 weeks, watching the savings I’d accrued over the last year dwindle to almost nothing. Thankfully I got my EAD within 2 months, and started back in November. We had a somewhat difficult Thanksgiving with my wife’s family, then did it again at Christmas. I was starting to stress (as I do) that carting our ageing dog back and forth so much could not be good for him. Then again, I worry about a lot of stuff that I don’t need to be worrying about, so I just put it down to that.
My FIL & MIL came (unexpectedly by me) to visit us for New Years, which was actually quite nice. We all had dinner and a breakfast together before they headed back to New York.

January saw our dog start to go downhill. Cooper was having diarrhea episodes in our bedroom (one day at 4:30am, then again at 10:30am -.-) and generally getting shakier on his feet. He would often have a little lie/sit down whilst we waited for the elevator when we took him out, and tended not to want to walk too far. The snow froze into ice, which hurt his paws to walk on, so going out to potty was becoming stressful and (we think) a contributor to the pooping incidents.

Whilst Cooper was suffering, we were hearing regular reports from my sister-in-law that her mom was also going downhill. She and my wife clung to hope that she would be around for their wedding in May and (more unlikely) ours next January (Both couples are married, but we did quick signing-only ceremonies, and have proper big weddings planned).

February came, bringing more snow, and more decline in our dog. He was getting more tired. Often we would not be able to take him out in the evenings because he was simply too tired to raise. My wife had a plan to fly to New York to celebrate Lunar New Year with her mom and sister, something her mom was very excited about. The week before she was due to fly, we took our dog for his yearly checkup. The vet said that his arthritis didn’t seem as bad as we thought, and that there was a new treatment in town that had been very successful in Europe (yay EU!) and was injectable once per month, so he’d have to take less medication. Yay!! He got his shot, had bloods taken, and we took him home. Then, when I took him out to pee, on the way back in instead of sitting down, he flopped down. Flat on his side. I had to pick him up, put him back on his feet, and get him inside.
Over the next few days, it got worse. He collapsed every time we took him out.

On Friday we went back to the vet. His blood work showed that he had a UTI, so we got antibiotics. They also recommended a special harness called a Help ‘Em Up that would allow us to more easily pick him up and support him, so we ordered that with overnight shipping (v expensive).

On Saturday, we decided to test it out. He went outside, peed, and then trotted along to his usual spot where he likes to bark at stuff. He went down. HARD. Luckily I had the harness, but he was a dead weight. I lowered him to the floor, and he peed himself whilst his eyes scrolled side-to-side. I’d seen this before. A couple years back he had either a stroke or an ear infection. We thought it was an ear infection at the time, but now I wonder. We took him to the pet ER, where it happened to him again. The doctor told us that we’d have a difficult decision to make soon. We returned home and decided that we would get a second opinion from our vet on Monday. My wife cancelled her Sunday flight.

I spent all day with him on Sunday. He seemed himself, totally fine. I have a video and sequence of photos of him being ridiculously silly and cute in our living room ❤ We took him out that night, and he went down again, peeing himself as he did so 😦 Our hopes of a bounce back faded.
On Monday, my wife called the vet and made an appointment for the afternoon. Our plan was to confirm our worst fears, and then drive ourselves and Cooper to New York. The family would be able to say their last goodbyes in person.
In the morning we decided to take him out just to the hallway, and shove a towel underneath him to pee on (as he had taken to peeing in the hallway and elevator). Then we could bring him back inside – the longer journeys seemed to be what made him fall.

We trotted out. He stopped and peed, but kept on going to the elevator.
“OK!” we said, so we went with him. Down to the ground floor, and he peed some more. He kept going. Outside we went. He peed. He kept going. We were thrilled! He had peed a lot, and he still seemed to want to walk!

Then he went down. He twitched, then he vomited. I think that might be the first time that I’ve tasted that particular flavor of fear. My wife ran over. Crouching down, she made sure that he wouldn’t aspirate on his own vomit, but noted that his tongue had turned gray 😦

I called the vet and told them what was happening. She quickly conferred with the doctor who said ‘get here now’. We bundled our boy into the car and were there in 20 minutes. We carried him in, and were given a room with a blanket to go into.

I knew that this was the dying room, and my heart broke a little.

We saw ‘our’ vet and confirmed that he was dying. They think he had a heart tumor that nobody picked up, and on a dog as hold as he was, it was untreatable. He was tired, so tired. He actually fell asleep at one point, which my wife said was incredible, as he was always so alert and concerned at the vet. I don’t know if he knew it was his time, or he was just too damn tired, or both, but we knew that this was it. Putting him in the back of the car for a long drive to New York didn’t seem the right thing to do – we couldn’t have faced it if he’d had another seizure in the car and died on the road.

We called a quick family video chat, and everybody said tearful goodbye messages. My mother-in-law was particularly distraught. It’s possible that she was seeing her own near future far too closely for comfort, but she was also losing one of her family, who she loved very much.

They told us that we could euthanize him outside, if we wanted. It was an unseasonably warm day, with a pale blue sky dappled by fluffy clouds. Given that his last few months of outdoor visits had been marred by snow, ice, or seizures, I loved the idea that he could lie outside, feel the warm sun on his fur and sniffer all the outside smells that the breeze would carry to him.
They gave us a buzzer – a remote doorbell – to call them when we were ready to go outside. We sat for ten minutes, crying at one another and soaking Cooper’s fur.

I pressed the bell.

I keep thinking about that moment. The enormity of consequence for such a small action. I was, and always would be, the person who pushed the button that said “Yes, we are ready to take our most precious thing to die.”
Of course, we weren’t ready. We would never be ready. This was like being inside a nightmare that we couldn’t wake up from. I felt, in some ways, a strange sense of detachment, almost like I was expecting to wake up. I’d look over to the bedroom door at Cooper and, as I approached him, he’d throw his head back and look at me like “Morning Dad!” and the tip of his extravagantly fluffy tail would do little thumps on the carpet.

Instead, we walked behind two nurses as they carried Cooper outside in his big blanket. His little head was all we could see, and he seemed thoroughly confused but not overly concerned by the way his day was progressing.

Sitting on the grass, I was again given The Doorbell. We were told to take as much time as we needed with him, and to call when we were ready.

We sat there for probably 10 minutes. It feels long and not long at all, somehow at the same time. We told Cooper what a good boy – the bestest boy – he was. We hugged his implausibly soft and fluffy chest, and we cried and cried until he just looked like a blurry shape. Eventually, he started to exhibit some anxiety signs, so we decided that we should act whilst ‘the outside’ was still a good idea.

I pressed the bell.

How do you resolve the intense, overwhelming love you feel for a creature with the fact that you pushed the button that sent them to death?
I know that it was the right thing to do, and that my wife and I made the decision together and, well, somebody had to press the bell.
But I still pressed the button that put our baby boy to sleep for the last time. And saying that to myself makes it feel like my chest is being sucked inward by a vacuum.

I haven’t sobbed so hard in my life as in these last few weeks. Each time I think that I must surely have exhausted the well of emotion, more pours forth.

I know myself, and I know that when I am moved to tears, a lot more than just the current event is coming with it. If I, say, watch something that makes me cry, I’ll shed a tear for what is in front of me, but the frustrations of the week might well come with it. That effect is proportional to the strength of the initial emotive force; the bigger the emotional shock, the further back my brain mines its prison of suppressed anxiety and emotion.
Therefore, by Wednesday morning, I was feeling very zen. Sobs had wracked my body until I felt physical discomfort. We had both taken Tuesday off work and I’d spent almost all of it on the couch, under a blanket, watching YouTube.

But on Wednesday evening, we departed Boston and drove into a new kind of waking nightmare.

We arrived at my in-law’s place to find my mother-in-law in a shocking state of sickness. She had visited us just five weeks earlier and we had eaten out at restaurants. Now, she could barely eat. By Friday, she was admitted into the CCU at the local hospital because her oxygen levels were too low.
The doctors determined she had fluid compressing her lung, so put in a drain. She started to improve somewhat, and was moved down to a regular ward, where a series of less-than-ideal (and some downright unpleasant) roommates made her life more of a misery than it already was.

For the next week after we’d arrived, my wife cooked for her mom and for everyone else, whilst I washed the dishes and otherwise kept on working. My wife and her sister were either at the hospital or running errands, all the while hoping that their mom would be released soon.

This was quickly turning into a “we’re going to be here for a while” situations, so I rented a car and drove back to Boston that Friday to load up on guns, bring your friends … *shakes head* sorry, where was I? Oh yes, load up on clothes and kitchen items and charging cables and etc., and etc.

The first thing I did however, was collect Cooper’s ashes. Upon returning him home, I broke down and felt the previous Monday all over again, but this time somehow amplified by the presence of his remains.

On Saturday morning my phone freaked out, and the touchscreen wouldn’t work. I used my iPad to book an Apple Store appointment, and found that luckily it was just a software glitch; the phone thought it was in DFU mode but had loaded up the OS. A quick reset and restore, and all was fine. I got on the road and made it back to Long Island by nightfall. By Monday, I was back on the road again – heading back to Boston to sit in on some planning meetings that I felt really demanded my presence (even though my boss was chill about me attending remotely, because he’s awesome). I spent a couple of nights at home alone, then drove back to Long Island again after work on Thursday.

My MIL was home, and her siblings had arrived from Taiwan to sit with her. Sadly, she was in and out of sleep most of the time. She definitely knew that they were there, and I think she took great comfort from their presence. Unfortunately, the demon that is cancer was sinking its talons deeper, and she was slipping away from us.

By Saturday, she was barely waking up. The previous day, my wife had talked about how she hoped her mom could at least make it to her sister’s wedding in May. This was a significant and concerning turn of events, and she called the hospice who promised to send a nurse but delivered the news that she was unlikely to wake up again.
That evening, the nurse confirmed that things had progressed to the dying phase. We recalled my sister-in-law (who was in the middle of a 24 hour shift at her hospital in Pennsylvania) and her hubby drove through the night to get them to us at midnight.

The following morning, after very little sleep from all of us, the status was much the same, but slowly drifting towards the inevitable conclusion. Family was called, and family came. The house – so quiet and empty and cold in recent weeks – became full of life again. It was – just as on Cooper’s last day – unseasonably sunny and warm, and the big windows let in the light and the warmth.

As her girls sat resolutely by her bedside, the rest of us passed in and out periodically, leaving final messages, hugs and squeezes of encouragement and sympathy, and restocking tissues. A sermon from a church she loved was played, and her daughters played and sang music to her for hours.

At 4:10pm, she passed away. We know she was with us throughout the day, and that she made the decision to go when she did. Even though there were still so many things unsaid, for her and for everybody else, at least she got to spend her last day with the sun shining, and an outpouring of love.

Once again, the overwhelming grief hit like a train. I can’t even begin to imagine what my wife, her sister, and her dad are feeling. Thankfully, I am good at hugs, and have a very absorbent chest, so I can provide a small measure of comfort.

This has been, without a doubt, the worst few months that I can remember, and we’ve been through some difficult stuff before now. At the beginning of the year, we were walking Cooper and pontificating about how we hoped 2024 would be kinder to us. Within 10 weeks, cancer had ripped away our beloved dog, and my wife’s mother.

I sincerely hope that there isn’t anything else bad in store for us this year, I’m not sure that I could handle it.