Recovering The Self

On the Loss of Azul

by Brittany Michelson

"Until one has loved an animal, a part of one's soul remains unawakened."

- Anatole France

A delivery man came to the door with a cardboard box. On the outside it said "Handle With Care," "Fragile," "Do Not Drop." The packing slip said 1 lb. I never opened a package so carefully. Inside was a shiny wooden box with Azul engraved in gold. My best friend, my 12 year old dog-my greatest bond-in a box.

I wondered what else he was delivering that day. New shoes, a computer, books? My love along with items people had ordered from catalogs. I was angry she was in a box, reduced to specks of bone and calcium and dust. Outside of our rural Topanga Canyon home were the animal sounds she loved: call of wild peacock, whinny of horse. Her good friend Nemo, the black lab, barked down the road.

She was just there, vibrant and hiking. Twelve years old, fifty-eight pounds, and not a trace of arthritis. This was my first loss of someone close to me. I'd never held a box of ashes. My baby in a box. A fucking box. My heart was in it with her.

I hit the floor on my knees, sobbing from a deeper place than I'd ever accessed, as if there was a gaping hole through which my heart shot straight out of my body. But if my heart was removed, it wouldn't hurt. I could toss it aside, grow another heart. The neighbors probably thought I was dying.

Five days earlier, Azul had a sudden shaking episode. Even though she was lifeless when my neighbor put her in the car, I drove like hell down the hill to the emergency vet clinic. Please don't let her die, I begged the universe. I clung to the fact that it was a radiant spring day; that she'd been hiking and eating big bowls of food up until that morning.

The vet was waiting in the parking lot with a stethoscope. When she tested Azul's heartbeat and said, "I'm so sorry, she's gone," I started screaming like a wild woman. It was a ripping apart, a shredding.

An ultrasound revealed that she had a tumor on her spleen. But she hadn't acted like anything was wrong.

"There's no way you could have known," the vet told me. "Dogs don't usually show signs until the organ ruptures and that's it."

"What if I'd moved faster? Put her in the car right away instead of consulting the neighbors?"

"Wouldn't matter," she said with a sad smile. "If you'd known, you would have had to put her down. Even with surgery, the animal has a poor quality of life afterwards, and they only live for a few more months. Many do not even make it through surgery."

"I can't believe she's dead," I said. "She seemed perfectly fine."

"You're lucky she went this way," the vet said, her kind eyes locked into mine. "She didn't have to suffer. And you didn't have to watch her suffer."

Maybe I should've been grateful that both she and I were spared a drawn-out suffering, but I couldn't feel grateful right then because I was obliterated by her unexpected departure.

Yet within that intensity, something told me I needed to feel that way. To know what others might have felt. It was as if-in that moment, on my knees, hugging my dog's dead body that lay on a green rug in a little room-I was not in my body. Yet the pain was so acute that instead of one heart in the box with her, there were fifty that belonged to me-engorged and beating wildly.

When I got home, I researched Azul's condition. Hemangiosarcoma is a rapidly growing, highly invasive form of cancer. A frequent cause of death is the rupturing of the tumor causing the patient to rapidly bleed to death. Owners of the affected dog often discover the presence of Hemangiosarcoma only after the dog collapses. Splenectomy gives an average survival time of 1-3 months.

I also read that dogs are of a pack mentality. They don't want to appear weak because they would be taken out by the pack so they act like nothing is wrong. Humans often don't know anything is happening until it's too late.

I miss you like I've been severed inside, gutted, wrenched apart. You were my light and I want you here forever. But I suppose that is selfish. You had other plans. You want to run through the gold streaks in the sky.

"You are at this level of intense pain because you had such an intense bond with her," a friend said as I was trying to digest that Azul would no longer greet me at the door, that her body was on its way to the crematorium.

So I was in hell because I loved her so intensely? Would I have traded the depth of my love to be spared that degree of pain? We don't get to make these bargains after the fact. And really, we can't make this kind of bargain ever because our hearts have their own agenda when it comes to loving someone.

Inside, your scent is everywhere, on the foot of my bed, the blanket you died on. Your leash on the hook. Your food can in the fridge. Your poop on the side of the road across from my car, my car you died in. I can't believe you're dead. Shock. How it wakes me in the night. I don't know how to be in this world without you. To love something so pure and so good. You never judged, you never asked me why. No one has ever loved me quite this way.

Throughout my twenties, I categorized phases of time in my life by places I lived, relationships, or periods of travel. But within these categories, there was one constant: my dog. She was with me through multiple moves and several relationships. She witnessed my worst anxiety and patiently waited for me to return from the depths of it. She loved me for every part of me-flaws, mistakes and all.

Shortly after her death, at my sister's yoga studio, I mentioned to a friend how deeply I loved my dog. How attached to her I was.

"Non-attachment, non-attachment," she chirped, reminding me of the yogi philosophy of being at peace with the present and not being beholden to anyone or anything. But it was true-I was attached to my dog. I adopted her when I was a college kid. I'd never lived alone without her.

What is the line between love and attachment? How can being attached to someone you love so dearly be a bad thing?

Perhaps we are so attached to our animal companions because no single human gives what they give: unconditional love without judgement, criticism, or argument. Dogs are excited to see you when you've been gone for ten minutes. They always want more of you. What human exercises this degree of pure love and devotion?

Baby steps. Today I throw the half-used can of food away. I put my nose in to inhale the scent of the food you loved. I don't even like that smell, but you did and if it brings me closer to you then I'll inhale it. I dump the water out of the bowl that you drank from, the water that touched your sweet mouth with the gray and white furriness. The water, your mouth, your sweetness. It breaks my heart to think of your purity. And yet the purity is what makes my love for you deeper than humans. People often assume that grief for an animal can't match that for a human. That's like saying 'I know your heart. I have a divining rod for your pain.' What if that person was closer to their animal companion than some human family members?

Whether skin or fur, you are grieving a being and the loss can be just as profound, a pet loss counselor told me.

I'd never known life without a dog. My family always had one or two or three. But Azul was the first dog that was all mine. After her death I had to learn the strange emptiness of living completely alone; what it meant not to have someone to care for. I fed her, bathed her, walked with her, cuddled her, adored her- things a mother does for a human child. My child had fur. Azul loved me with an intensity of spirit unmatched by anyone I'd ever encountered. To be with her was more comforting than any other presence. Each night at the foot of my bed she would sigh as if to say, you are enough.

Do we love our animals so much because they make us feel like kings and queens? Because we can do no wrong in their eyes? Or simply because they know how to love in the truest way?

In her booklet on pet loss, Dr. Kathleen Ayl writes: "The grief sustained due to the loss of a pet can often exceed grief that's experienced from the loss of a human. Where else do we find a relationship where we can be fully authentic at all times and not be judged? How many people accept us no matter how we look, what mood we are in, what we drive, or where we live? Not many, but our four legged friends do."

I cannot expect anyone who hasn't had the experience of bonding with an animal to understand the depth of love one can know with a fur being. We can't measure one another's bond anyway. It is so individual.

Your bone on my table next to your photos and the wooden box with your ashes and your name engraved on it. Azul. Blue. Your name. Azul. Blue. Your blue eye, your heart, your love. Nothing like your love.

I loved all of her- calloused elbows, brown eyebrow dots, the quizzical look on her face when I asked if she wanted to go for a walk.

I'd never known a...