My parents’ dog Max died last Friday. Mom called me on Saturday to tell me. I was in the mall, standing in line for lunch when my cell phone goes off; because of the noise, I can barely hear what she’s saying. “We lost Max,” eventually gets through. I blank for a moment- wait, Max the dog? And because he (and their other dog, Sophie) had a history of running off, I wasn’t sure what Mom meant. I yell out, so she can hear me, “Max is dead? You mean he’s dead?” She says, “Yes.” I tell her I’ll call her back, and then order some chicken nuggets.
On my way back to my car, I try and convince myself I’d misunderstood. Max couldn’t be dead, after all; Sophie was the eldest, if either was going to die, it would probably be her, and last time I’d seen Max, a couple weeks ago, he’d been fine. It’s stuffy in the car; I broke off the driver side window handle during the winter, when the window froze up and I tried to force it open, so the only way I can get any air in is to leave the door open. I call Mom back.
“Did you say Max is dead?”
“Yes.” She starts crying and explains what happened. Max had this habit of eating, well, anything, and he’d started coughing a little on Thursday, so my parents were worried he’d gotten into something he shouldn’t’ve. They took him in to the vet, who X-rayed his stomach and found a huge black mass- turned out to be a tumor. They operated on Friday, but he didn’t make it.
I keep coming back to that. I don’t know the timing on any of it, don’t know if he died in surgery or afterwards, but I know my parents weren’t there- they had no reason to be, it all happened so sudden. He died alone. Max was the friendliest dog I’ve ever seen. He would jump on me whenever I came to visit, even though we tried to discourage him. And he fucking died alone. Christ. How stupid is that? I hope somebody pet him, and told him he was a good dog, right near the end. But even if they did, it was still a strange person in a strange place, a cold, metal place with loud smells and too much light.
When Mom was finishes telling me, I break. For about a minute, it’s like when you laugh so hard you can’t breathe only it’s the exact opposite, and I am drowning in this endless, ugly sea. He was a good dog, such a good fucking dog- then I catch hold of myself. I ask how Dad is doing. Not so hot, Mom says; he was closer to Max than any of us were. I talk to Dad a little. He keeps asking me about my car. The car’s fine, Dad. The window handle is annoying, but that’s about it. I tell him if he needs to talk, he can call me. Which is oh so much bullshit, and we both know it; Dad would only call me to talk if something happened to Mom. Besides, he doesn’t like talking about this stuff.
I haven’t cried since, although I’ve come close a few times. On the car ride home, I tried to work out a blog entry on the whole thing, although it made me feel somewhat cheap to do so; hi, here I am, let’s talk about dead pets so everybody can have a nice cry. A week later, it still feels a little cheap, but I also think I owe Max more than some spastic tears in a parking lot.
He was a yellow lab, and he was two years old when he died. He was still small, not much bigger than a puppy; Mom thinks the tumor might have had something to do with that, as he was carrying it around for most of his life, but who knows. He didn’t like to be left alone for very long, and he’d tear stuff up if you weren’t careful; and like I said, he jumped on people, which I didn’t mind, but makes some folks understandably nervous. Even after they neutered him, he repeatedly tried to hump Sophie, which was always sort of gross. But he was a good dog. The best.
The next loved one you see, give ‘em a hug, okay? From the two of us. Humping’s optional, although I know Max would approve.
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