How do you tell the story of an unexpected goodbye?
When I woke up on Tuesday, I never imagined that it would be the last day we spent with our dog.
He’d been having some orthopedic problems recently, and we thought he was having a reaction to the pain medication.
But on Tuesday, we ended up in the pet ER, being told that he had a likely cancerous mass on his spleen that ruptured, leaving us with no good options.
Here I thought we were just going to end up with some different meds for him.
Losing him so suddenly has shattered our world.
I had plans to write an entirely different post this week, but now, most other things don’t seem to matter.
He’s the only one I’ve been thinking about and want to write about.
I’m sitting here in my home office, with his bed next to my desk, thinking about how he used to drive me NUTS licking and grumping at me.
And I’d give anything to have that back.
In my work, I’ve been talking about storytelling so much lately and how to convey your impact on your community.
I’ve been wondering if it is even possible to tell Aries’ story and come close to explaining the impact he had on me and my family.
Unlikely. I feel like I owe it to him to try though.
I can say this: no numbers or statistics will ever adequately explain who he was or how much he meant to us.
– Not the number of years we spent together (over 10).
– Not the number of times we had to tell him to stop licking each day.
– Not the insane amount of money we spent for his ordinary medical care.
– Not the astronomical death rates for hemangiosarcoma, the cancer he most likely had.
Only stories and pictures will ever show how special he was.
My grandpa used to call him “Aries, the wonder dog.”
He was the sweetest, most loving, most cuddly, and quirkiest pup.
The absolute best, most tolerant, big brother to our girl.
– The one who let her do literally anything to him (thankfully she’s always been pretty gentle!).
– The one who brought my husband and I closer together at the start of our relationship and held us together like glue.
– The one who always made me feel better when I was down by plopping his whole body weight (about 60 pounds) next to or on top of me.
– The one who, even at 11, wanted to play every day and was so grumpy that he couldn’t play with his recent leg injury.
– The one I called “friendly to a fault” because he got himself so worked up any time a new friend (of any species) was around.
– The one who would refuse to snuggle with my husband during the day (always me) but would curl up against him in bed every night, even after we got a bigger bed for more space (That didn’t work out).
I could keep going.
It feels wrong to pivot and think about work when we are grieving so acutely.
But I also want to honor our boy.
So, since I am sponsoring my first webinar next week, on Friday, 10/16 (10 – 12 EST), I’ve decided to donate 10% of the proceeds to the shelter where we adopted him, the Maryland SPCA in Baltimore.
I’d love to see you there. You can register here.
But most importantly, hug your pets a little tighter today, for me.