10 days ago I said goodbye to my furriest born love.
I got Chachi when I was 19. He was with me through college, marriage, babies, divorce, tween+teenage kids, sobriety, covid. . . . Through all of life’s many highs and many lows, he was my constant. Always right there, under my feet. He loved me more than I ever could have deserved.
If you have been here for awhile you know I used to regularly photograph births. Birth was my favorite space to photograph/ be in. I didn’t return to the birth world after the pandemic for a multitude of logistical reasons, but the magic of my years in the birth world changed me on a cellular level.
And as I walked Chachi through his death, I was once again flooded with gratitude for my experience in the birth world. I don’t think I would have been able to labor with my dog as he died, had I not labored with so many women as the birthed.
Birth and death are one and the same. The waiting for the inevitable. The fear. The calm. The presence. The finality. I have been in the room with two other human family members as they left their earthly bodies, and I believe death to be as sacred, and dare I say as heartbreakingly beautiful, as birth. For it is all love.
My experiences with Chachi are simply that, mine. They are absolutely right for me, and they may be fully wrong for many. He did not die peacefully in his sleep. We did not skip the hard part. I laid with him, cried with him, breathed with him, slept with him, cared for him, and allowed him windows of solitude. I lit candles, carried him to the couch for Joanie Loves Chachi, carried him to the yard for sunsets, played countless hours of meditation music. Bearing witness to his incredible drive and spirit until his final hour and letting him/nature decide when it was his time to die, are gifts I will forever cherish.
I didn’t always take the time to slow down and be present with him through the years of motherhood. Three kids are consuming. Nevertheless he was present with me. He’s in nearly every photo/ home video of the kids growing up. Always greeted me when I came home. He labored by me and was in bed with me for my own home birth. He never missed a trip to the kitchen when the refrigerator opened. His presence was always there. He was beautiful in every way. When he declined I got to stop life and escape to a bubble of love in his final days. I got to honor him with the presence he honored me with his whole life.
When mothers are laboring, there can be the urge to stop the suffering, to get it over with and just get to the baby. Skip the hard part.
But there is no skipping the hard part in life. In the rushing we sell ourselves short of so many lessons. So much magic. The hard part wasn’t the act of him dying. Allowing space for that was oddly healing. The hard part was the day after and the boulder on my chest. His absence. The lack of footsteps, the missing greeting, the lack of color. It doesn’t matter how hard you try to avoid it, the hard is going to catch up with you anyway.
A month before Chachi’s decline I had done some work around fear. What kept showing up for me, as far as my part in my fears, was my inability to sit with that which is not “good/ideal/happy” etc. Struggling with accepting the inevitable reality that life hurts sometimes, no matter what. Wanting to escape that fact and force perfectionism was at the root of so much of my anxiety. But there is no way to avoid pain, there is no perfect. And it gave me clarity about what to do with Chachi as he declined.
My favorite dog was never going to live forever. But he left me with so much. As I obsessively go through photos and videos of our 16 years together I am so thankful for a life well lived, for us both.
I just wish I could kiss his fluffy head.
