On Death and Dying, Dogs and Dreams

Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share
1

I lost my best doggy friend last week. Her name was Papers and she was a black lab. She and I have been together almost her entire life. She was rescued from the streets in Elon, North Carolina about 12 years ago, and she moved around with me from NJ to Jacksonville, FL, and then back again to NJ. She was 12. Maybe 13. She was healthy throughout her entire life until that one night when in her sleep, she started having seizures. They were cluster seizures, so until we got her to the Animerge and started her on anti-seizure meds, she kept having them. My poor sweet girl. While I drove to the hospital, my husband sat with her in the back of the car and held her.

I had to transfer her from the hospital to my vet the next day. She still was unable to walk due to the meds, sedated but not asleep. Once there, my vet took a look in her eyes and said, “This is serious.” He said it was probably a brain lesion or tumor that was causing the seizures. I said I didn’t want her to suffer….He said the kindest thing to do was to let her go. So I did. I remember her last doggy sigh. I tried not to cry and get upset, because I knew she could always tell when I was, and I didn’t want her to be afraid. I rubbed her belly and told her what a good girl she is until she was gone. I remember her last doggy sigh. I tried not to cry and get upset, because I knew she could always tell when I was, and I didn’t want her to be afraid.

I miss her. She was such a good friend to me. She was smart and funny…and considerate! I never knew a dog that had this quality before. In the mornings, she would actually wait until she heard that I had my shoes on. Then she knew it was time to go out and she would go get her leash. She never went in the garbage, even if there was something dog delicious in there and right within her reach. So many things like that…

I had a dream the other night that I was to be euthanized because I had stomach cancer. (I don’t have cancer IRL). A lady took me into a little room with a little couch and injected me with the pink poison. Both my mom and my husband were in the dream somewhere, but they weren’t there when I got the needle. I was so sad about that – I can’t even describe the terrible, awful, empty feeling I had knowing that that there would be no one holding my hand at the end. I ask the lady if it was reversible, and she tells me no. No going back now. Then I see Papers! But she’s having a seizure. I’m dying! I can’t help her! Who is going to help her? I try and fight back the sleepy feeling that has come over me. Then I wake up.

I know this dream had a lot to do with the guilt I feel over enabling her death, as well as my own anxieties of what the moment of death will be like for me.

I am creeping myself out today.

you may expect someone with the user name ‘meow meow’ to be a cat person. i like cats, but dogs are really my thing. i just happen to really like the word meow.

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Big HUG for you. My mom had to put my dog to sleep about four years ago. He’d had cancer for a while, so I knew it would happen eventually, but I was away at college and I’m sorry I didn’t get to say a final good-bye to him. He still makes occasional appearances in my dreams, though.

3

I know how awful that kind of dream is. Years ago I had a newt. When he was a couple years old he got some kind of fungal infection that ate sores into his skin. It weakened him to the point that he couldn’t come up for air, and he drowned. I felt terribly guilty that I didn’t save him from drowning, even though the disease would have killed him anyway. I had recurring dreams for several nights in a row that I was watching him drown, and I wanted to save him, but I was afraid to pick him up because he looked in the dream like he was already dead, so I ended up running away. Then one night during the dream I finally got up the courage to pick him up, and I held him and told him I was sorry. I never had that dream again.

I wish I could help you with the guilty feelings. All I can say is that you did the right thing for the suffering she was going through, and saved her a lot of pain. Sorry you had to go through that.

4

::even more major eye leakage::

Right now all I can say is that I hope that Papers is doing The Happy Dance with Delia and Morgan at The Bridge.

I am so very sorry for your loss.

5

big hug meow meow, my heart goes out to you. I can only hope I don’t have such dreams, too. Although her illness was more dramatic, slow and dragged out isn’t any better, trust me. I do hope the rainbow beidge exists and they are waiting for us.

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BRIDGE, not beidge. I will blame my sore, red eyes for that typo.

7

It’s nice to have another place to remember her. Thanks, everyone, for the thoughts.

Thinks2Much: I was thinking about you yesterday afternoon. I’m glad she got to have a nice big, fried chicken dinner all to herself. I’m sure that made her very happy. I can almost see her chowing down!

I was thinking that I might put some of Papers ashes into the soil of a dogwood tree that I will buy. The dogwoods were blooming when she passed on. I live in an apartment, though, and I’m not sure if I am allowed to plant one. Not only that, when I move, I wouldn’t want to leave her there. Maybe I can keep it potted and keep it inside in the winter.

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That dogwood idea sounds good, especially if you leave do the pot idea, so you can take it with you when you move. I don’t get her ashes back until next week sometime. I have no idea what I will do with them, though. She never liked outside much… probably because the first man who had her left her there alone a lot. She was always happiest laying on the couch.