The Passing of an Old Friend

A personal essay

I want to take a moment to welcome a whole bunch of new subscribers this week and to thank those of you who have been here supporting my work from the beginning. I appreciate you more than you know, especially this week. When I posted the note below about having to put our beloved dog down on Monday, there was such an outpouring of love from the community which confirms my sneaking suspicion that animals really bring out the best in us.

I know I’ve been a little light on delivering personal essays of late on Catch & Release because I’ve been so focused on getting chapters of “Departures” out the door, but this week it was clear I had to write one. This is a very personal story and it’s about much more than a dog, though he’s the sturdy and capable vehicle to deliver it to you.

I’ve spent an inordinate amount of time thinking about consciousness and death the past few years and I highly recommend it. I would give the experience five stars. There is no greater mystery and nothing we’re collectively more afraid of than death and yet rarely do we contemplate what it means until we’re given no choice.

This week I had to let go of an old friend, though that’s not completely accurate. I had to initiate the letting go. On Monday, my children and I had to put our beloved sixteen-year-old dog Pepito to sleep. I knew it was coming for some time and even wrote about it back in March, but I still wasn’t really prepared. I spent the day with him. I carried him to the park where we sat in the sun and I held his tired little body, once so spry and coiled with energy like a spring. I gave him all the peanut butter cookies he could eat which was a surprising amount considering he had no teeth left to speak of. When my daughter got here, we gave him a warm bath and bundled him in towels afterward. When my son arrived, he got more peanut butter cookies and more holding. He was peaceful, so happy to have his family back together for a few hours, for his little family has weathered some storms in the past ten years.

We rescued Pepito from a shelter in 2008 during a time when our nuclear family was at the peak of our arc together. We lived in a comfortable old ranch house on a large lot in a suburban neighborhood filled with trees. We had passed the challenging years of diapers and tantrums and danger at every turn and were moving into the years of orchestra concerts, sleepovers, campouts, and wondrous vacations to discover new things together. Pepito entered a stable, happy home and he thrived. We thrived. It was only beginnings and racing to the next thing. But there were, even then, the hairline cracks in the foundation of our family which was my wife and my relationship. Those cracks would grow steadily over the next ten years as would the undetected emotional and mental struggles both our children battled. Our little dog would bear silent witness to some horrible fights and gut-wrenching moments of anxiety, hopelessness, and despair. He would be there for each of us during our darkest moments, holding a quiet vigil with his sturdy little body and all-too-generous tongue.

The many faces of a small dog named Pepito.

In 2019 when our eldest was just finished with college and our youngest was about to start, my wife and I had to end our marriage after countless attempts to resurrect what could not come back. It was a long, agonizing death, and not unlike with Pepito, one I had to initiate. It was, without exception the single hardest thing I’ve ever had to do. To end something that was once good and so full of life is to stand at the edge of a precipice and willfully let go. There were many weekends leading up to the end where I had to retreat into the woods just to keep sane. Pepito was always there, leading the way up the trail by day and snuggling into my sleeping bag at night, his thick fur still damp from splashing in the creeks and fragrant with campfire smoke. His physical presence was grounding. In many ways, he kept me alive.

He would be made to move from his comfortable fenced in backyard with lots of shade and smells to a beige, third-floor, walk-up apartment in town. He would mourn the absence of his three other humans, two of whom would visit but never stay for any period of time a dog might be able to appreciate. But he and I found a slower rhythm together in this new life apart. We moved into the heart of the city, close to a lush, sprawling park filled with trees and new smells though he would be too tired to take long walks. His eyes would grow milky with cataracts. He would stop being able to hear me when I called, and all his teeth would gradually fall out. But he still got up to greet me, albeit more slowly and with some stumbling every time I came back home. I would clean up lots of accidents and my apartment would begin to smell like a vet clinic littered with pee pads. On Sunday morning when I came in the door with my partner’s six-year-old little girl, she noticed right away that Pepito couldn’t stand. His back legs collapsed under him when he tried. When I began to cry, she said, hopefully “We could get him wheels.” But I knew, in this case, the adage about old dogs and new tricks was true. Later that evening, feeling like a monster hiring a hit on a loved one, I made the appointment to have a vet come to my home.

In the hour before the vet arrived, my children and I sat with him on my sunporch. We told stories about when we first brought Pepito home, and we shared pictures of his svelte younger self standing in a stream or at the head of a trail like a miniature version of the protagonist in a Jack London story. When the kind vet arrived, she informed us of the two-step process, and we gathered in a circle on the rug around our sweet little guy. He was still and looked very wise as each of us stroked his fur and the vet administered the painless shot at the scuff of his neck that would allow him to fall asleep. I moved around so I could cradle his little face in my hands and look into his eyes as his lids got heavier and heavier. I felt the weight of all he had carried on his little shoulders for all of us for all those years and I cried for all that was lost and would never be again. I gently laid his head down and he snored in the noisy, rattling way he had for the past few years, enjoying a delicious nap in the sun. My children put their arms around me, and we cried together as the vet slowly injected the medication that would stop his heart forever. It felt unbearable. I thought I had cried and grieved all that I could in the past five years for the loss of the family that we were, but this little dog carried with him the last vestige of that life. When his chest stopped moving and he was still, a door that had stood ajar for so long, finally closed.

After, I carried his little body in the basket the vet brought along for this purpose and followed her to her car where I place him in the back. I must have looked like I needed it, because the woman, with tears welling in her eyes, opened her arms and gave me a hug. It will get easier in time, she whispered.

Later that night I took my children to dinner, and we toasted to our departed little friend. We talked and laughed together, and it was as if something had been lifted off us. There was a lightness and a hopefulness as my daughter talked with some glimmer of optimism about possibilities for her future and my son told us of his plans to chart a course toward a vocation that he hopes will give his life a sense of purpose. I’m so proud of them both and I can’t express how healing it was to have the three of us connect on this saddest of days. Pepito did that.

I’m keenly aware that this little dog’s death was training wheels for the much scarier ride in my near future as my parents enter the final chapters of their lives. I set out to write my latest serial novel “Departures” as a way to mentally prepare for the unimaginable. Each week as I write, narrate, and post new chapters, I get the opportunity to explore my understanding of death and dying, but more importantly, I’m forced to hold and contain the uncontainable, and to expand the capacity of my heart and consciousness. Many readers have asked how I can possibly begin releasing a story for which I have no ending yet or even why I would do such an insane thing. For me, the logic is simple. We don’t know how this life will end for any of us. Hell, we don’t even know what will happen this afternoon and yet we continue to move through our story and make adjustments as we go.

If you’re curious about “Departures,” we’re ten episodes into the novel and there’s a wonderful community of brilliant readers and writers following and commenting each week. Join us. You can read or listen for free. Follow the link below to get started with episode one.

How do you think about death?

It was clear that my note this week about the death of my beloved pet struck a universal chord given the response from the community. I’m interested to know what your relationship is with death. How has it shaped your life? Does thinking about your own death or the death of loved ones change the way you live your life? Join the conversation by leaving a comment.

Finally, I would be remiss if I left this topic without mentioning someone who has taught me so much about death and dying in the past year.

Chloe Hope

writes the publication Death & Birds where she shares her heart, wisdom, and personal struggles with death as she confronts it on a daily basis in her vocation as a death doula. I highly recommend checking her work. You won’t regret having her in your life.