Dear Prudence.

half a year without you, or, lessons in grief

Mar 18, 2024

Dear Prudence,

It’s been six months since you left us. I like to think you’re off somewhere, unleashed to run as fast as your good, whole legs can carry you. This has the kind of loss that feels simultaneously like yesterday and like years ago. So I’ll do my best to update you despite the disoriented timeline of grief.

Remember when we put our mattress on the floor years ago? You couldn’t jump anymore so we lowered it all the way to the ground? It’s still there. We tried to put it back together and it felt and looked so wrong. I know we don’t need to adapt our house for you anymore, but some things were better because of the change you called us to.

We also rearranged the living room recently. We got rid of some furniture and books, and the floor is wide open on the carpet now. You would have loved rough housing in here with your daddy. And you would have been so happy about the traction your soft pads and lanky legs would have all over the place now. We keep saying we wish we could have done this before now, for you. We did change so much for you as you aged, but this one just never occurred to us. Now it’s just an empty space of and for you. There are many things that feel that way now that you’ve left us.

I have been growing a life large enough to hold the grief of losing you and the joy of loving you. And maybe someday soon I can write more about your life than your death, but I’m just not there yet.

I still cry when I look for you and you’re not there. The house is too quiet and your hair is miraculously gone except for the few strays on the black shirts I never used to let myself wear. You were always all over them, even, impossibly, the ones that never left my closet. I swore you’d stick around this way and you haven’t, which breaks my heart in new ways. There have been others in the mix, so maybe it’s not even your fur.

We’ve been dog sitting on the Rover app and the owners are booking us and resonating with the parts I wrote about you. Our life was already perfectly arranged to fit in a dog or two, so that’s all we’re doing now. For Margot & Cody & Franklin & Satchel. For Tallulah & Tucker & Lilo & Ducky. We joke that these dogs are our rentals pups because we feel like we’re the lucky ones. I give them so much love while they’re here, but I don’t love these dogs.

This new gig is bittersweet. Each new dog rips me open. Each one has put a piece of me back where it belongs. They’re not you.

When I rub their ears between my fingertips, they’re not as soft as yours. When I wake up in the morning and they want to cuddle, I hug them to my chest and feel… empty. When I tell them to go outside into the backyard, they don’t spin in circles like you did and make me laugh as they back out of the door.

I enjoy having these other dogs around, but we are so temporary. As soon as we learn each other, they’re gone. They’re our companions for only a few days. They keep me going for walks and a little extra change in the bank. They allow us to offer a service that is so natural and easy. They keep reminding me of how cute dogs can be, and how much I miss your energy and endless love, but not how broken your body and brittle your bones became in the end.

I’m still struggling with how your story ended.

About five months ago, I joined a Ridgeback rescue group on Facebook, just looking for some hope. It’s a double edged sword because they all resemble you in one way or another. Recently, I came across Xander, and your likeness was uncanny.

Xander was in a shelter when he got sick. As soon as he was pulled from the pound by the rescue volunteers, they took him to the vet, then the ER, and learned he had severe lung issues. Watching for Xander’s updates, I am remembering a half dozen ER and vet visits that filled me with dread and made me scared we would lose you. And then the one where we actually did.

We didn’t know for sure we were saying goodbye when we loaded you up that morning, but we brought your blanket and bed just in case you needed some home comforts. Two days before, you’d broken two bones in your front leg chasing a squirrel in the backyard. You were having the time of your life. The vet did x-rays on your leg and chest and confirmed you had cancer growing rapidly in your bones. That’s why they snapped the way they did. So, not only did you have tumors in your bones, you had a broken leg that couldn’t bear weight or be fixed. You had weak hind legs from years of injuries and muscle wasting that couldn’t support the new injury or surgery, had that even been an option.

I’m not sure if the cancer or the break or an amputation would’ve taken you first, but we didn’t wait long enough to find out. We took you in to the best team around who suggested we should start thinking about saying goodbye, which is all I needed to hear. They were the last hope before it became clear which path we were on. No more rescues. No more cheat codes.

It all felt too sudden, so rushed. How could you have been playing one moment and dying of cancer the next? How could there have been a time when you could run and a time when you would never walk again? How could a third of our family just evaporate like this? Such a weight to bear.

I learned that unfortunately Xander died of complications from the lung infection he got at the overcrowded shelter. The rescuer wrote a beautiful tribute, but I could hear the pain in her voice. That weight I knew too well. The questioning that mocks, the decisions that taunt.

There must have been something else we could’ve tried.
They deserved a better outcome.
It shouldn’t have ended like this.

For you. For Xander. For anyone lost unfairly or unexpectedly.

The first comment on the post in the group was this: “Xander didn’t die in a shelter, as he otherwise would have. He died in your loving care. This is a sad, but still successful rescue.” In that moment I remembered you didn’t die alone, even if you were the only one who died. The best way it could’ve happened is that you died in our arms, in our loving care. We held you and comforted you long after your last breath, a successful rescuing of each other until the very end.

I hate and love that you ended this way. It is a small peace in the ocean of grief. And it’s still so sad.

In her Grief and Rage workshops, my friend Kari says grief is love with no place to go. Life without you, Prudence, has been as hard as I knew it would be, and also, I’ve learned I’m in great company. For those of us grieving, each grief is different and we’re not alone. Especially in our collective grief, of which there's been no shortage. Our common denominator is unexpressed love.

It’s still there. It still wants a place to go. The story of Xander reminds me to find where love lives now.

To find light in every moment I am reminded of you. To see joy in every dog we board that has quirk like you. To relish every beautiful blue sky you’d like to sunbathe under. To look for hope and rescue in the darkest of situations. To allow my perspective to evolve and soften with time. To tell the truth about how lonely, sad, and beautiful this process is. To buck against the unhelpful tropes of “blessing in disguise” and “everything happens for a reason.” To tell your story, even the tragic pieces I’m tempted to keep close. To become a better human by allowing grief. To honor the paradox of love and loss in grief. To be engulfed in love at the end.

Prudence, it’s only been six months. Or six years. Or six hours. Time is categorically irrelevant on this planet of grief.

There is still so much love with no place to go, but I promise to keep forwarding the mail to wherever love lives now.