The Shape of Days

I’m sitting here at my desk working on chapter 4, proofing it for typos before posting it here on the site. By the desk is a rolling cart, and on top of the cart is the computer and various accessories thereof. There’s a shelf on the bottom of the cart where the laser printer is, and under that shelf is a gap of about three inches. My dog has wiggled his way into that gap and gone to sleep. He only weighs about six pounds, so he fits under there like it was built for him. He loves to get in there, I guess because it’s warm. The computer vents downward, and hot air blows into that space. (These Power Macs make really effective space-heaters, let me tell you.)

Sometimes he snores. But right now he’s not snoring. Right now he’s dreaming. His legs twitch — I can hear the rustling under the cart — and he yips. He yips in his sleep. When he dreams.

That just blows my mind. The realization that dogs dream, I mean. I’ve never been a big dog person until these past few years — he’s not actually my dog, but rather my girlfriend’s. I’ve come to learn that dogs are smarter than I realized, and also that they’re creatures of habit just like we are. Playing, he tore the throat out of one of his toys a few days ago. I took it away from him because he was getting stuffing all over everywhere, and he was depressed. He missed it. Last night I sewed it back together and gave it back to him, and he was happy to see it. Dogs are more complicated than I realized.

But to think that they dream … wow. That one just bakes my noodle. What do dogs dream about? Chasing squirrels? Lying under the computer cart? Napping? Do dogs dream about napping?

He’s awake now. I can hear him yawn and stretch. Dogs stretch. These little things just blow me away.

Who needs an alarm clock when you’ve got a dog who just loves you so much he can’t stand to see you lie there, blissful and warm, while the day’s a-wastin’.

Six thirty in the morning. Six thirty in the freakin morning. Six thirty in the morning, with thirty minutes left on the alarm clock’s ceaseless countdown timer, he decides it’s time to get up.

I’m really sleepy.

An update now on redacted’s dad. He had quadruple bypass surgery on Monday morning, then had to go back to the OR on Wednesday night to deal with some fluid that had collected around his heart. It was a big deal, but he was never in any real danger. I didn’t know that at the time, of course, and I was completely terrified.

Long story short, it looks like he’s going to be okay.

I’m a disaster today. I think everything’s going okay, and then all of a sudden I burst into uncontrollable sobs. My roommate’s dog is sick, and I’m scared that he might not get better. I’m scared that he might be dying.

It sounds so silly when I say it that way: “my roommate’s dog.” He’s just a dog, and he’s not even mine.

Then why can’t I stop crying?

His name is Nelson. He’s eleven years old. He’s a shih tzu. I first met him about six years ago, when I started dating his owner. At first we didn’t get along. I’ve never been much of a pet person, and a dog person even less so. He had a habit that just drove me right up the wall. The very first night I stayed at this girl’s apartment, Nelson sat under the bed and licked his nose all night long. Lap lap lap lap lap lap lap. It was like Chinese water torture. I didn’t sleep a wink, and by morning I was ready to kill. The dog, the girl, myself, I didn’t care. I was just a basket case.

The apartment in which I was living at the time had a strict no-pets policy. But the girl lived miles and miles away, which meant if we wanted to spend any real time together, Nelson had to come along. Some months later, when it was time for me to move out, the owner of the apartment charged me an inordinate sum to replace all the carpets, saying that I was responsible because I’d broken the pet policy. Nelson never did anything to the rugs, of course, but I got stuck anyway.

So I guess you could say Nelson and I didn’t get off on the right foot.

But over the years, something happened. It happened so gradually I never even noticed. I couldn’t tell you when the process even began. All I know is that now he’s my best friend. I love him so much it’s breaking my heart.

In the fall of 2002, I lost my job. The dot-com bubble had burst, and the days of being able to pull in a six-figure salary for doing a job you weren’t particularly good at were over. I found myself unemployed and desperate and deep in the throes of a black depression. So I made a massively bad decision. I decided to write a novel.

To all aspiring writers out there: Writing a novel is surely one of the most emotionally difficult things a person can do. You have to have the self-esteem of a teenaged pop star. Seriously. Your ego has to be the size of a galaxy. If it’s not, there’s just no way you’re going to keep waking up every morning and adding a few thousand words to the stack of pages on your desk. A normal human being requires constant encouragement, and you’re not going to get constant encouragement, so you’re going to find yourself slipping deeper into depression. Just a friendly word of warning from somebody who’s been there.

During those few months when I was writing my novel, Nelson was a constant companion. Literally. He was never more than a few feet from me at any time. He didn’t make demands, except occasionally when I’d get wrapped up in what I was doing and forget to take him out regularly. He just sat there, snoring softly, keeping me company while I worked. When I got stressed out, I would talk to him. I would read him passages, or even whole chapters. He’d listen intently, looking me right in the eyes, hanging on every word. He never got bored, never lost interest. He was, in every way, the perfect collaborator.

It was about that time that I started blogging about him.

Eventually I gave up on my dreams of literary fame. Well, in fairness it wasn’t that I gave up on my dreams as much as it is that my bank account did. When a job came along, I took it.

What followed was an incredibly low point in my life. My relationship with Nelson’s owner ended badly. My work suffered. I became so deeply depressed that I managed to alienate basically everybody in my life. My health deteroriated.

But through it all, I had a touchstone. Every night when I’d come home from work, Nelson would be there, excited to see me. We would play. He had a rawhide bone that he loved to chase. He’d run after it, barking like crazy as if trying to intimidate it, then he’d pick it up in his jaws and run off to some cool, dark corner of the house. There he’d sit, holding the bone between his paws, gnawing on the ends, until he decided it was time for me to throw it again. Then he’d bring it to me and drop it at my feet and we’d start all over.

My job collapsed in the spring of 2004; the investors pulled out and the company had to close its doors. I’ve been freelancing ever since, just barely scraping by, hoping that the day would come soon when I’d find a more steady source of income. It’s been incredibly stressful. I’m stunned that I’ve been able to cope at all, frankly. I don’t think I would have made it if it hadn’t been for Nelson. He listens quietly to all my fears and doubts, then looks at me with this quiet serenity that just washes over me, leaving me a little more calm, a little less scared.

About a month ago, Nelson stopped eating. He’s always been weird in his eating habits. Sometimes he’ll eat an entire bowl of food twice a day. Sometimes he’ll go a whole day without eating at all. I’ve come to expect a little irregularity.

But about a month ago, he stopped eating altogether. My roommate and I tried different foods with no real success. We — well, I — began hand-feeding him scraps of chicken and turkey dogs and other foods probably not that well suited for canine consumption, just to get him to eat something.

Over the course of the past few weeks, Nelson has lost a full pound, a tenth of his normal body weight. His ribs and his spine are sticking out. He’s skin and bones.

Yesterday we took him to the vet, who drew some blood and sent them out for lab tests. He told us that it might be something metabolic, like a problem with his liver or his kidneys. He told us that it might be cancer. And he told us that we wouldn’t know anything until Tuesday.

We have no idea what’s wrong with Nelson. He might get better on his own. He might need medicine. Or he might be dying. We just don’t know. We can’t know, not until the results of his blood tests come back, and even then we may not know.

He doesn’t seem unhappy, or like he’s in pain. He’s sitting beside me right now, in the sunbeam on the floor beneath my chair. His breathing is shallow and labored, but his eyes are clear and bright. When I whisper his name, as I do every couple of minutes, he looks up at me. He recognizes me. He knows who I am.

A few minutes ago, as I’ve been doing pretty much constantly since yesterday afternoon, I began to cry. Nelson heard my sniffle. He looked up at me with an expression of such sadness in his eyes. He wanted nothing more at that moment than to climb into my lap and put his head on my chest and make me feel better. But he was too tired. So he just looked at me.

It’s just not fair. It shouldn’t be like this. If this is how it ends, if these are Nelson’s last days in this world, he shouldn’t have to spend them lying on the floor of my bedroom listening to me sob over him. He should be playing. He should be chasing stray cats in the back yard. He should be bringing me his bone. He should be doing all the things he’s ever loved.

It’s just not fair that it should happen like this.

We got lab results back for Nelson. I’m reluctant to blog about them because I really don’t know what the hell they mean, but y’all realize that this is my therapy, right?

According to what the vet’s office told my roommate over the phone, all of Nelson’s labs were normal except those related to liver function: His ALT, AST and ALKP were all elevated, indicating that his liver isn’t doing what it should.

I got my roommate, who is a surgeon, to explain what that means for me in Fisher-Price terms. She said basically it points to either a problem with his liver or a problem with his gall bladder.

If it’s a problem with his liver, something like hepatitis, that could be bad. We might be able to treat him with medicine, but we couldn’t cure him. They don’t do liver transplants on dogs.

But if it’s a problem with his gall bladder, something like gallstones, then we might have an easy out. If he were a human, the treatment would be to remove his gall bladder through surgery. You don’t have to have a gall bladder. You can live without it. So if he were a person we would take out his gall bladder and put him on a low-fat diet — bile, which is stored in the gall bladder, is what we use to digest fatty foods — and let him live out the rest of his natural life, however long that might be.

I looked it up on the Internet, so I know that cholecystectomies are done on dogs at least sometimes. (That’s what you call removing the gall bladder.) Not being a dog person, ironically, I don’t know how common they are or what the odds of recovery are. But it’s a little bit of hope. And right now, I’m glad to have it.

We’ll know more tomorrow when the vet calls. He might want to get an ultrasound on Nelson to check for stones in his gall bladder, my roommate tells me. That might be our next step.

I think — I’m not sure, but I think — that the lab results allow us to rule out either kidney disease or cancer, though. I’m not sure about that, and I’m going to check on it when I talk to my roommate next, but I think the results let us cross those possibilities off. And that’s good. Of the four possibilities — kidney disease, liver disease, gall bladder disease and cancer — gall bladder disease is by far the most hopeful. The other three are … well, they’d be bad, if it turned out to be them.

The vet hasn’t called yet. It’s 3:00 in the afternoon, Nelson is slowly starving to death because he can’t eat, and the vet hasn’t called yet.

I am so fucking frustrated right now I could bite through a tenpenny nail.

Nelson is not here. And I miss him terribly.

I got a call from the vet about two hours ago. He explained the lab results to me — I didn’t tell him that my roommate called last night and conned his assistant into reading her the numbers over the phone — and said that the next step should be an abdominal ultrasound and a needle aspiration test of his liver. I bundled him up in the car and drove him down to the hospital, which fortunately is only a few minutes from my house, and got him checked in.

The people at the animal hospital are all consummate professionals. They were so accommodating of me in my unshakable desire to be never out of Nelson’s line of sight at any point. I held his head as they shaved his belly, and again as they inserted the catheter that would let them deliver liquids right into his blood. They put him on what they simply call “fluids,” which I gather is a salt-sugar-water mixture designed to keep him hydrated and at least minimally healthy while he’s sick and unable to eat. They also gave him an antibiotic against the possibility that he might have an infection in his belly.

Then they took him off for the ultrasound. I held his hand and whispered in his ear while the doctor rubbed his belly with a sweet-smelling lotion then applied the probe that let him look at images that seemed to make perfect sense to him but that looked like the static of a TV tuned to a dead channel to me.

The news that followed was almost universally good. “His liver looks healthy,” the vet said. “His gall bladder seems fine.” Then, “His spleen is normal,” followed by, “His kidneys appear perfect.” Your dog is in perfect health, Mr. Harrell, except that he seems to be dying.

Next came the needle aspiration test. The vet asked me not to observe that test, and I didn’t argue. I waited outside, sitting in an uncomfortable chair, looking at my watch every six seconds.

The lady — do you call them nurses when you’re talking about a vet’s office? — appeared almost exactly when she said she would, about fifteen minutes later. She invited me back to the ward where Nelson was waiting. They’d prepared a flannel blanket for him that was almost exactly like the one he sleeps on here at home except it was green instead of blue. They’d brought in a large sterile drape wrapped up in a sort of wad to give him something to alternately rest his head on or hide behind. He was tethered to a pump that made rhythmic braap-braaaap sounds as it fed a clear liquid into his vein.

The instant I turned the corner, he made eye contact with me. He didn’t cry out or leap to his feet because he’s just not that kind of dog; he’s eleven years old, for crying out loud, show a little class. But he looked at me with an expression that … well, let’s be honest here, okay? He’s a dog. He looked at me with an expression that meant nothing at all but “I see you,” but I projected my feelings onto him, and it almost killed me.

I think the fluids made him feel a little better. He was more alert than he had been all day. He held his head high as I got closer, sitting proudly, not giving an inch. I held my hand out and he sniffed it formally, like best friends shaking hands, absurd but part of the protocol.

And then he began to pant.

The vet came in and told me that the procedure went well and that he was able to prepare some good slides for cytology. I don’t know what cytology is, exactly, except for the high-school biology definition, but I know that it’s what lies between me and answers, so I’m all for it. The vet talked to me about something called an abdominal effusion, a collection of fluid in his belly that shouldn’t be there. He then listened to Nelson’s breathing and his heart and admitted that it’s possible that we could be looking at something as serious as congestive heart failure. He promised to look at Nelson’s chest as soon as he could to try to rule that out. And then he went away and we were there alone.

I stayed for a while, hoping that Nelson would doze off. His eyelids were heavy. He hasn’t been sleeping, and I was hoping he would doze off while I was there, but he didn’t. He just lay with his head on his blanket and looked at me while I petted him.

And then, knowing that I was just getting in everybody’s way, I left.

I can’t remember ever having to do a harder thing.

I’m going to spend a couple of hours here, catching up on a little correspondence if I can bring myself to it. Then I’m going back to sit with him some more during the prescribed seven o’clock-to-ten o’clock visiting period.

It’s not supposed to be like this. Doctors are supposed to be omniscient. When faced with symptoms X, a doctor is supposed to be able to produce diagnosis Y and prescribe treatment Z. There’s not supposed to be any waiting. There’s not supposed to be any mystery. This is the 21st fucking century. It’s not supposed to be like this.

4/5/05 6:17:38 PM

I just got off the phone with the vet. Nelson is in congestive heart failure. That means he’s got fluid around his heart that’s keeping it from beating the way it should. He’s also got a pleural effusion that’s make it hard for him to breathe.

The vet said that he thinks there’s a very real chance that Nelson might recover to the point where his condition is manageable. He doesn’t think we’re in a hopeless situation.

I’m going to go back to see him in a little while.

Just got home from the animal hospital. They moved Nelson to an oxygen thing this afternoon. I don’t really know what to call it. It’s kind of like a large box with three aluminum walls and one plexiglas wall hooked up to a machine that has numbers on it. One of the numbers is a partial pressure of oxygen expressed as a percentage. They had him on about 36 percent oxygen, which was about 16 percent higher than normal room air.

They also had him on Lasix which is a diuretic. It makes you pee, basically. The idea is that if Nelson pees a lot, his body will just naturally absorb the fluid around his heart, lungs and liver, solving all three of his problems at once.

They also had him on IV fluids … which sounds completely fucked up, but makes a kind of sense. See, because Nelson’s not eating, his body is really deficient in electrolytes, which are massively important for neurological and muscular function, and carbohydrates. In the fluids they’re pumping into his vein, they’ve got salts of various types (sodium, potassium, chloride) and sugar (dextrose) in a water matrix. Fluids go in, electrolytes and sugar get absorbed by his tissues, water comes back out ’cause of the Lasix.

So that’s the plan.

The good news: Nelson looked a lot better. He was so listless and weary this morning that it was just breaking my heart. After a few hours of IV fluids, he looked more like himself. He was alert, he was responsive, he was aware of his surroundings.

The bad news: We’re in a wait-and-see situation. Either the treatment is going to work or it’s not. If it works, the Lasix will pull the excess fluid off of his heart and lungs. His heart will start working normally again, and his liver will return to normal in turn. We’ll take him home and treat him with medicines and a healthy diet. If it doesn’t … he’ll continue to deteriorate until he dies. There’s not a lot of middle ground here.

There is actually a third option. The third option is that we’re completely wrong and there’s something else making him sick. We didn’t see any tumors or other unexpected things on his ultrasound or his X-rays, so the congestive-heart-failure-brought-on-by-age-and-blood-pressure idea seems sound. But yesterday, the cholecystitis-brought-on-by-gall-stones idea seemed sound, too. So who the hell knows.

This is the hardest experience I’ve ever been through in my life. When my father was sick and, ultimately, dying, I had two saving graces. First, I was just an idiot kid. And second, I wasn’t actually responsible for him. I didn’t feel any responsibility. It was all somebody else’s problem.

But now, I feel responsible. He’s not my dog, but I help care for him, and I have a responsibility. It’s part of my moral obligation to him to take care of him and to keep him healthy and, when I can’t keep him healthy, to keep him comfortable. I know that I’m doing everything I can to live up to that responsibility, but do you seriously think that matters? Do you seriously think I don’t blame myself for letting him get so sick? Do you seriously think I’m not hating myself for letting this go on for so long?

I told you before. This is my therapy. And to answer your question, no, it’s not helping one damn bit. Nelson is still sick and it’s still my fault, and the fact that I feel bad about it doesn’t excuse anything. God may forgive those who express remorse, but I’m not that easy on myself.

I just got back from seeing Nelson at the vet. He was sleeping when I got there, which is a good sign; I haven’t seen him sleep comfortably in a while. He hadn’t eaten, so I ran back home and got him some chicken from the fridge and fed that to him by hand until he’d had all he wanted, then he drank some water.

It’s unclear to me at this point whether he’s responding to the Lasix. He did urinate this morning, at about 5:00, but only that once, and I don’t have any idea how much there was. I don’t know whether that means he’s not making as much urine as we’d hope or whether that just means he’s so reluctant to pee where he sleeps that he holds it in. It’s in an oxygen … compartment. Thing. Anyway, he’s inside that, so they don’t give him regular trips outside like they do for their other animals. Patients. Whatever.

This hospital restricts visitors from 9:00 to 10:00 in the morning, so I was only able to stay with him for a little while. After lunch they have a window from 1:00 to 4:00; I’ll get to spend more time with him then, and I’ll try feeding him again.

He’s going to get an echo cardiogram tomorrow. That should tell us some more about his heart. Specifically, whether his heart can reasonably be expected to recover.

I’m going to say it again: This is the hardest thing I’ve ever been through in my life.

The paperwork clearly says that visiting hours are from 9:00 to 10:00 in the morning, 1:00 to 4:00 after lunch and 7:00 to 10:00 at night. It says this clearly. I checked twice.

But today the vet has a sign on the door of the hospital saying that due to a blah blah didn’t pay attention, visiting hours won’t begin until 2:00.

I think it’s a clue into my current emotional state that, when I got there, I seriously considered ringing the “this is an emergency, please let me in” bell. I, like, stood there for five solid minutes thinking real hard about it. On the one hand, I might piss somebody off. But on the other hand, they’d get over it, and Nelson is in there all alone and he needs me.

Wisdom won out. I came home, ate a little bowl of oatmeal, wished I hadn’t, watched an episode of Jeopardy on the TiVo, wished I hadn’t, and looked for ways to kill forty-five minutes. “I know,” I thought to myself. “I’ll play with Nelson!” And then I remembered, and then I cried.

My roommate called me around noon. I’d left her a message with the details of what the doctor told me this morning, the stuff about the echo cardiogram and all that. Her question to me was blindingly obvious and a total shock: Why? Why subject Nelson to an uncomfortable test, and subject ourselves to the expense? What will this test tell us? How will it change our course of treatment? These questions are obvious, and they never occurred to me for a second. Of course we’re doing the test. That’s what you do. When somebody is sick, you do everything until he’s better again. That’s what you do.

Isn’t it?

Twenty minutes to go.

Nelson is home now.

He has cancer of the liver.

He’s dying.

First things first: This stuff about “putting him to sleep” or “putting him down,” that’s gotta go.

Euphemisms don’t help anybody. When you say “We’re putting him to sleep,” you’re just trying to make it easier on yourself. But stuff like this isn’t supposed to be easy. If it were supposed to be easy, it’d be easy, you know? It’s supposed to be hard. It’s good that it’s hard.

So to hell with euphemisms. Nelson isn’t sick, okay? He isn’t under the weather. He isn’t ill. He isn’t feeling poorly.

He’s dying.

The words have a cold, crystal clarity to them that makes things easier somehow. They come down like a guillotine blade, severing all sentimentality. He’s dying.

It makes it easier, in a bizarre kind of way. It makes it easier to just come right out and say “he’s dying” than to stumble over the words, looking for the right poetic metaphor.

Now we have a decision to make. I say “we” but it’s not really mine in any way, and I’m fine with that. Nelson is my best friend in the whole world, okay? But he’s not my dog. And that’s all right.

The decision that my roommate faces comes in the form of a multiple-choice question with four possible answers. Does she want to:

1. treat Nelson’s cancer aggressively with chemotherapy in the hopes of extending his life by a few months.
2. treat Nelson’s cancer only enough to alleviate his symptoms and help him feel better.
3. not treat Nelson’s cancer at all and let nature take its course.
4. kill Nelson to spare him the suffering of his final weeks.

The question here is, which of these choices is the least selfish? Nelson has given me everything over the past six years. He’s loved me unconditionally, never asking for anything at all in return except maybe to hold him during thunderstorms. He’s given everything he has to give, and now it’s my turn. Now it’s time for me to give Nelson everything I have.

There’s only one problem with that: I’m a selfish, self-absorbed jerk. I don’t have the slightest idea how not to be selfish. On the one hand, I want to throw every drug in the formulary at Nelson just so I can be with him for one more day. But that’s selfish because I’m thinking more about my own desire to be with him than I am about his comfort. On the other hand, I want to kill him right now, gently and peacefully, to end his discomfort. But that’s fundamentally just me crying out to God to please make it stop, to lift this burden from me, to end it.

So I don’t know what the right answer is. But that’s okay. Because the decision isn’t mine. It’s my roommate’s. And I’ll do whatever I can to be supportive of her, and of him.

He carried me when I couldn’t go on. And now it’s time for us to carry him. And I’ll be damned if I pretend not to be up to the burden. After he’s given me so much and asked for so little, there is no task, emotionally, physically or financially, that I wouldn’t accept with a smile in my heart and tears pouring uncontrollably down my face.

I have a request. Those of you who’ve been sending me comments and e-mails and tokens of sympathy, I love you all very much. But I have to ask something of you. Please don’t e-mail me or submit comments of the form “I think you should do X.” As I’ve explained, this isn’t my decision, but if it were, I would not be soliciting advice. This is between Nelson and his owner, and I will not allow this tragedy to become the subject of debate, no matter how civil. Please continue to send me your prayers and sympathy; they mean more to me than you can know. But please refrain from offering advice at this time. And thanks for understanding.

Whenever somebody is very sick and there’s nothing anybody can do, doctors haul out the old saw, “resting comfortably.” She’s not dying. She’s “resting comfortably.”

Well, Nelson is resting comfortably. I mean it literally. He’s on the couch right now, covered by a little fort made of throw pillows. We’re watching TV, my roommate and I, and he’s resting comfortably.

My roommate’s plan, which I wholeheartedly endorse, is to let Nelson have one more night and day at home. We’re going to keep him here with us tonight. He’ll sleep on her bed tonight, then when she gets up at 5:00 to go to the hospital she’ll put him on my bed to sleep until I wake up at whatever time I feel like. Then, while she’s in the OR during the day, he and I will spend some time together. When she comes home, we’ll evaluate his condition and, if it’s appropriate, help him to rest.

Here I am, launching these hundred-word diatribes against euphemism, and I can’t even bring myself to say the words. We’re not going to kill him. We’re going to help him to rest.

He’s not dying. He’s just going to take a nice, long nap.

Every time I think I’m okay, I turn around and write something like this and then I end up crying again. I’m clearly out of my freaking mind.

Nelson died at about 11:30 tonight from an administered overdose of sedatives. He died peacefully.

His race is run.

More later.

Nelson Luong, 1994 – 2005. More than we deserved.

Nelson Luong died tonight at about 11:30 from an administered overdose of sedatives. He was suffering from hepatic lymphoma and congestive heart failure. His illness struck him suddenly and progressed quickly.

Nelson lived a long and happy life filled with more love than he knew what to do with, which he returned in spades. He loved rawhide bones and cats. His favorite foods were roasted chicken, mangos and Teddy Grahams. He was afraid of heights, mice and lightning. He never knew a moment’s pain in his life.

I have so much to say about Nelson. I don’t know where to begin. Begin at the end and work backwards:

There was never any doubt in my mind, not even for a second, that my roommate and I had made the right decision. I don’t know if I can explain why to anybody who hasn’t been through this process … and to those of you who have, no explanation is necessary. There comes a point where a strange certainty grips you and you know what needs to be done. There comes a point where this pet, who has given so much and asked so little, needs one last favor from you. There comes a point where you know what must be done.

But when the final needle went into his catheter and the doctor began to depress the plunger, it took everything I had not to cry out. Wait a minute, just wait, are we sure, come on, just one more minute, please, STOP! And after it was over, which took only seconds, I regretted the decision more than I’ve ever regretted anything in my life. There’s an irrevocability to it, a moment when the realization comes that I have just taken a life, but I don’t have the power to give it back. A moment when you realize the full weight of what you’ve done. A moment in which I would have given anything, would have given my life, just to take it back.

That moment nearly broke me.

I began to sob uncontrollably. Literally uncontrollably, as in I tried to stop and couldn’t. Nelson was in the arms of his owner, my roommate, who held him as he died. I leaned in and gave him a kiss on his fuzzy forehead, then I collapsed on the floor in a heap, unaware of where I was, drowning in grief and regret. I howled, I don’t know for how long.

And then, gradually, it passed. The sobs left me in the way that all sobs do: temporarily. I composed myself, then I told my roommate that I would step outside and let her have some time alone. I walked out into the hall, closing the door behind me, and just kept walking. I found myself on the sidewalk in front of the building, not entirely sure how I got there. I reached into my pocket and found my phone. I called a close friend — woke him up, actually — just because I needed to hear his voice. I hung up and went back inside.

Now earlier: When we arrived at the vet’s office, we were told that Nelson would need a catheter through which the fatal drugs could be delivered into his blood. He’d had one from his earlier hospitalization, but we’d had it removed when we brought him home this afternoon. (I write the words: “this afternoon.” It feels like a lie. Surely it was a year ago that we received the terminal diagnosis, a decade before that that we first suspected a problem.)

In order for the catheter to be inserted, it was necessary for us to put Nelson on an examining table, a cold, hard, impervious surface. The person who was doing the inserting remarked that she would have to go get a towel so that Nelson would have something on which to sit. Without thinking, I pulled off my sweater and spread it on the examining table. It had to be that way. In his last minutes, Nelson needed one more thing from me, and I was there to give it.

Earlier still: My roommate is a surgeon, and she was on call tonight. She had to go into the hospital for a few hours. While she was gone, Nelson and I sat on the couch, whispering to each other. I did most of the talking; he was very tired. I prayed for him.

I am not a praying man. I am not religious. I am not a man of faith. But I prayed for him, wholeheartedly and without self-consciousness. I whispered my prayer as he dozed on my chest. I asked God to welcome his faithful servant into his embrace. I apologized to God for not being a very good person, and asked him not to let that reflect badly on Nelson. I asked God to be merciful. And finally I asked God to give me the strength to go on alone.

And then I made Nelson a promise. There were times, during the blackest of my periods of black depression, when the only thing standing between me and a self-destructive impulse was my feeling of responsibility for Nelson. I promised him, tonight, in the quiet hours of the evening, that after he lay down to rest for the last time I would not forget my responsibilities to him. I no longer need to feed him. I no longer need to walk him, or play with him, or bathe him. But I still owe it to him to be strong, to be responsible, to be loving. I owe him those things, and I will not let him down.

And again earlier: Once upon a time there was a dog named Nelson. He was the best dog who ever lived. He was loved by many people, and he loved everyone. He was my best friend, and I will never forget him.

Last night I kind of had a little breakdown. Breakthrough. Whatever.

As the afternoon turned into evening — daylight savings time still has me messed up — I found myself slipping out of control. My grief was turning into full-on depression. Sitting here at my desk, I began to cry. My roommate, who was in her bedroom across the hall, heard me. She came in and sat next to me, not saying anything for a minute, just being near me as I cried.

Then we started to talk. I don’t remember how it began, but I started to say things between wracking sobs. I talked about how much I missed Nelson. I talked about how hopeless I felt. And then, without even a second’s premeditation, I said, “I hate myself for standing by and watching you murder him.”

And then I screamed for a little while.

My memories of the whole experience are a little fuzzy. I remember the hysterics in a very abstract way. I was so overcome with grief that I was no longer in control of myself, but then, little by little, it passed. My roommate just sat with me until it passed. And when I started to come back to myself, I realized that I’d said a bunch of things that I had had no idea I’d been feeling.

I told my roommate I hated myself for not stopping Nelson from being murdered. I told her that that was what I was supposed to protect Nelson from, that that was my job, that I’d let him down and that I couldn’t forgive myself.

Now, here’s something important: I do not, not even for a second, actually believe any of that. I don’t need to be told it’s not true. I know that what happened to Nelson was mercy and not murder. I know it, and I believe it.

But what I know and what I believe doesn’t seem to have any affect on what I feel. And that confuses me.

Then I said the other thing that shocked me. I told my roommate that, on Wednesday night while Nelson and I were alone after she’d been called into the hospital for an emergency, it seemed so clear to me that he was in his final hours. His breathing had become so shallow and irregular. He would even stop breathing entirely for seconds at a time, then sort of twitch involuntarily and begin breathing again. It seemed so clear to me that he would soon die, and I prayed to God to be merciful.

But God didn’t answer. God wasn’t merciful. He didn’t take Nelson quickly and peacefully. Instead, he made us murder him. I cried out: “I am so mad at God for that.”

I’ve written time and again about how I’m not a church-going man. I haven’t been to church in twenty years. I have no faith at all. And here I was, railing against God with indignant fury. I didn’t understand at all.

After I got those two things off my chest — which I hadn’t even known were in there — I began to calm down. Not all at once, and not quickly; I think my roommate and I sat here for another two hours after I’d regained my composure. I told her all the things I’d been afraid to say out loud. I told her how I’d been horrified to see Nelson’s facial muscles continue to move after his heart stopped beating. It looked like he was sniffing the air like I’d seen him do ten thousand times. I told her how I’ve been haunted by the thought that Nelson’s death wasn’t really as peaceful as we were led to believe. The vet gave him first an injection of a milky white liquid, and after he got that injection, he stopped moving, as if he’d been paralyzed. I wondered, after it was all over, whether the final injection, the pink one, had been painful to him, or frightening. I wondered if, at the last, his primitive reptile brain hadn’t kicked in, filling his veins with adrenaline, triggering the fight-or-flight reflex, only he’d been unable to respond because of the paralyzing effects of the drug he’d been given.

These are thoughts that had been tormenting me ever since I saw the needle go into his paw. I hadn’t said them aloud because … well, I don’t really know why. They seemed unspeakable. At the one end, I didn’t want to be seen as foolish for worrying about nonsense. But at the other, I didn’t want to poison my roommate’s mind with doubts about what she’d done. I kept them inside and tried to ignore them … until I lost control and they all came pouring out.

I slept in my bed last night for the first time since Nelson’s death. It was so empty. I was used to sharing it with him, though “sharing” might be too strong a term. The bed was clearly and in every way his, and I was just encroaching. To go to sleep without his warmth nestled in the small of my back, knowing that he wasn’t just in the next room over and that he wouldn’t climb in bed with me in the pre-dawn hours when my roommate left for work, was just about unbearable.

But last night I was finally so tired that I slept anyway.

I dreamed of him, of course, and I woke up this morning thinking of him. It still hurts more than anything I’ve ever felt in my life, but I’m somehow a little less haunted. I’m a little less afraid of my own feelings. Even though I hadn’t meant to, even though I hadn’t even known they were there, I said them aloud last night, and someone heard me, and somehow that made them just a little bit easier to deal with.

I think. I hope.

Today, among other things, I went through my roommate’s photo albums and scanned a few pictures of Nelson that she’d taken over the years. I think I ended up with about twenty of them. Most of them are old, from Nelson’s first few months. They’re available here if you want to see them.

I haven’t annotated any of them. They’re in no particular order. None of them even have meaningful titles. They are what they are.

I tried going through and selecting my favorite, but I can’t seem to do it. They’re all so great. I mean, most of the photos are fairly crappy, technically speaking. They’re not going to win any awards for composition … or even for having the subject entirely in focus. But they’re not supposed to be works of art. They’re supposed to be little slices of time, condensed memories stored as numbers in a computer.

I can look at these today without having my heart break into a zillion pieces. I guess that’s a sort of progress.

We brought Nelson home tonight.

The past twelve days have basically been one long lie for me. “It’s getting easier,” goes the lie. “I’m doing okay. It’s getting better.” One big, fat lie, repeated over and over again, never becoming any more true.

I didn’t know what to expect. I knew what was going to happen in the abstract sense. I’d been there when my roommate decided. I’d heard the options described to us by the girl at the animal hospital. I’d heard my roommate ask for his body to be cremated and his ashes to be returned to us. I knew what was going to happen, in the broadest terms. But I didn’t know exactly what to expect.

During the just-under-two-weeks since his death, I’d been haunted by the knowledge that he wasn’t here. He was somewhere else. He was out there, somewhere, lonely and afraid. It was my job to protect him, and I wasn’t there. I’d left him. I’d left him lying under the blanket on the examining table at the animal hospital. He had died, and I’d turned around and walked away. I’d left him. It haunted me, haunted my dreams.

When the call came, my roommate asked me if I wanted to go get him tonight or if I wanted to wait until tomorrow. “Tomorrow,” I said out of deference to her. She had a big chore to do tonight and I didn’t want her to feel rushed. “Tomorrow is fine.” Then I thought of him, waiting for us, wondering what was taking us so long. “Tonight,” I blurted out without elaboration. She seemed to understand. “Okay,” she said.

Before we went, I showered and shaved. I washed carefully. I wanted to look my best for him. I wanted to do it right.

We went to the animal hospital. There was a little Mexican lady cleaning the windows just outside the front door. We made eye contact on our way in. She saw me, saw the look in my eyes. She looked away.

My roommate did the talking. She explained why we were there. The girl behind the counter asked us to wait a moment and walked to the other end of the room. There, stacked on a shelf, were about a dozen little cedar boxes, all alike. Each had a little brass plaque on the top. They were too far away for me to read them, but I knew what they were. Each plaque was engraved with a name, a name of somebody who’d been loved, a name of somebody’s best friend.

The girl returned with Nelson. She put him on the counter. She exchanged words with my roommate; I wasn’t listening. I looked at the box. Across the top, on the little brass plaque, was written, “NELSON.” Like that, in all caps. Definitive. Final. It would have been poetic if there had been a period at the end of his name, but there was none. It was unpunctuated. Which, I guess, is appropriate in its own way.

After a moment, it was time for us to leave. I picked up the box. It was so light. Nelson weighed ten and a half pounds when he was healthy, nine pounds at the end. The box was so light, so fragile. I was afraid I was going to drop it. I held it in both hands, carefully, carefully. We turned to leave. The little Mexican lady who’d been cleaning the windows had come inside and was standing by the door. She saw us. She saw me. She saw the box in my hands. She looked at me, then, saw the tears running down my face. She looked at me with such compassion. I know she was probably thinking about what to have for dinner, or remembering to pick up her dry cleaning on the way home, but for that instant, it felt like she was looking at me with such compassion.

I held Nelson in my arms as we drove home. My roommate had done the driving. I sat in the passenger seat with Nelson in my lap. I cried the whole way home.

We pulled into the garage, got out of the car. “Where do you want to put him?” she asked me. I didn’t know. “You pick,” I said. She took him — carefully, carefully — and put him on the mantle over the fireplace.

I’m so glad to have him home. I’m so glad he can finally rest. He was so tired, so tired. I’m so glad he can finally rest.

The six-month anniversary passed, unmarked but not unnoticed. It’s been so long. I was hoping I could get through this without reliving it, but I was wrong.

When you roll out a new Web site like this one, applying new templates to old content, you have to go back and look through the archives to make sure that there’s nothing horribly wrong, that none of the old content causes the new site to collapse or anything. You just have to; it’s part of the chore. For a week now I’ve been editing; a little more than a week, actually. I started sometime during the first week of November, Wednesday or something. Anyway, I’ve been editing for a while. And it finally reached the point where I could put it off no longer.

I had to edit this.

It was nine months ago today that I lost my best friend. Nine months is how long it takes to make a baby. In nine months, we go from being a single cell packed with genetic material and promise to being a fully formed and independently viable — if not strictly independent — human being. It takes nine months to make a life. Doesn’t it follow, then, that it takes nine months to get over a death?

At the time, I took a lot of heat from people who mocked me for getting so emotional over the death of a pet. I was surrounded by people who expressed their love and concern, sure, but I was also flooded with e-mail from people who called me a fool and worse. I have no argument with these folks. Yes, it is fundamentally absurd to grieve for a dog. But it’s fundamentally absurd to grieve period, isn’t it? Death is the one constant in life. No matter what else happens, we know that our time — your time and mine, and the time of every person and creature that lives — is limited. We know that death will come. So doesn’t it make sense that we should be able to just get over it? Sure, you lost a pet, or a friend, or a loved one, or a parent, or a child. But it’s just death, you know? It’s just death.

Except it doesn’t work that way at all. The one thing in life that’s inevitable and irrevocable and inescapable is the one thing that we can’t just accept at face value. Death feels unnatural to us, despite being the most natural thing in the world. It feels like a mistake, like something wrong. It feels like a tragedy. And we grieve.

I grieve. I’ve been grieving every day since April 6, 2005. I’ve remembered my friend every day since holding his limp and lifeless body one last time. I’ve remembered him ever since pulling the blanket over his still-open eyes, turning out the light, and leaving the room, blinded by freely flowing tears that have never quite stopped. I’ve remembered him in my dreams and in my waking hours, every day since and probably every day from now on.

That’s a terrible burden to carry around all the time. It’s a horrible weight that presses down on me unrelentingly. And there’s one way, just one way, that I’ve found to deal with it. It’s absurd, and I’m going to get more hate mail for it, I’m sure, but here it is: I’ve let myself believe that Nelson is out there somewhere taking care of me.

I took care of him for the last half of his life, give or take a couple of years. I fed him and walked him and played with him. I held him during those rumbling, roiling Texas thunderstorms that left him shivering with fear. I petted him during the night when he had bad dreams. I let him crawl under the blanket with me during the longest, coldest winter nights. I loved him with all my soul, and when his body began to collapse and his life neared its end, I took care of him as best I could. Imperfectly, incompletely, but as best I could.

And now he’s gone, and I’ve dealt with his loss, with his constant absence, by letting myself believe that the tables have turned. I roll over in the night and feel for his warm little body, and sometimes I can almost imagine it’s there. I listen to the sounds of an empty house, and sometimes I can almost imagine that I hear him moving around downstairs or snoring softly from the vicinity of my dirty laundry. I come home from a long day, and sometimes I can almost imagine that he’s there waiting for me, excited to see me and begrudging me not one bit for the time we spent apart.

I know it’s not true. I’m crazy, yes, but I’m not that crazy. I know it’s not true. But here’s the thing: I let myself believe it anyway. And that’s how I’ve lived with the grief and the guilt and the pain.

Just a dog? Yeah. He was just a dog. And someday when I die, I hope somebody will be left behind to say of me, “He was just a man.”

He used to snore.

He’d be in bed next to me, all curled up in a little ball of black and white fur, his nose tucked under his tail for warmth, his eyes squeezed shut tight. And he’d snore. Not loudly. Just a little. Just faintly.

Sometimes it’d wake me up. I’d nudge him with a knee or elbow. Sometimes he wouldn’t even notice, and I’d have to nudge him harder. Sometimes he’d wake up and look up at me with one sleepy eye as if to say, “Man, I don’t wake you up when you’re having the good dream. Give me a break.”

And then he’d roll over, nuzzling his chin right up next to mine, and go back to sleep, his beefy, doggy breath filling the air between us.

It was one year ago tonight.