How do you come to terms with saying goodbye?
March 28, 2023 5:48 PM   Subscribe

After several weeks of progressively worsening wheezing and coughing, my sweet 12-year-old black lab was just diagnosed with laryngeal paralysis. He is going to have the surgery to open his airway, but I know he'll still have the underlying disease and this is just a stark reminder he won't be here forever. How do I cope?

For context, 10.5 years ago, a dog I had growing up went into respiratory distress then collapsed and died in front of me. It was horrific and traumatic so watching my current dog, who is absolutely my heart dog and means more to me than I can possibly describe, struggle to breathe not unlike our previous dog has just been horrific. This whole week has just been so hard--we haven't known what's wrong with him and I've been spiraling. I've struggled to eat and sleep knowing that he's unwell. I'm scared of what the future holds for him. I'm terrified that he'll suffer, which is the absolute last thing I would ever want. And I'm pretty sure listening to him wheeze is triggering a full-blown trauma response, which is great.

I just.... I'm pretty sure over the last 10 years I've forgotten how to live without him so imagining a life after him makes me feel like I'm being torn apart. He is such a joy, you guys. He is just pure joy and has been every day of his life. I'm pretty sure my love for him is only compounded by the fact that he is a rescue dog who came with trauma, which means it's been literally years of helping him work through anxiety and fear to turn him into the absolute joy that he is today. He looks at me and I just melt. He has made my life so much better. So many things about the last few years have been so, so hard, but god has he brought me nothing but joy during every second of that, even when he's being naughty and causing trouble (which I secretly love about him, even if it drives me crazy).

I know I cannot change the fact that he is 12 and his life will end. But I'd like to find a way to have more peace with it than I do right now. Finding out that he's sick as taken an immense toll on me these past few days. Right now I'm full of anxiety and it's impacting my function, though I do feel a bit calmer having a diagnosis. I have been telling myself that all we can do is try and give him a happy, peaceful ending to his life, something well deserved after such a rough start. My hope is that the surgery goes smoothly, without any complications, and he can a good couple of years. Even then, however, the disease will progress and the day will come when we have to say goodbye. I'd like to be able to cope with that a little better than I've been coping these past few days, which is not at all.

How did you cope? How can I make this easier for myself?
posted by Amy93 to Pets & Animals (9 answers total) 1 user marked this as a favorite
 
This is part of the deal. We love them a lot, and part of that means being there for them at the end of their life.

I wasn't able to live in the future as much as you are... I didn't have anxiety about Chauncey leaving me. I was only focused on each day as it came. That helped, I think: what does he need from me right now? Can I take him to the vet? Can we have another month together? Those conversations aren't easy, but they kept me focused all the way to the end of the line.

It will help to have a friend around. It's good not to be alone when you need to take them to the vet, particularly if you know you won't be taking them home.

More than anything, focus on what you have: the time with them right now. That's what's important. When they go, they will go, and it will hurt, but futuretripping to that moment of loss will expand that time of pain and take your mind away from your wonderful puppo.
posted by billjings at 6:20 PM on March 28, 2023 [10 favorites]


Everything that we use to address this matter is a limited metaphor:

Come to terms with
Let go of
Accept

I use a different approach—

Survive through pain of
Maintain basic function despite
Build back quality of life after

Maybe this might help your search for answers! I’m glad you’ve been able to give your beloved friend a good life.

Edit—lost second sentence in final paragraph somehow! It is as follows

“When I approach the problem-space this way, I come up with answers that might work just as well if I were recovering from an illness or injury, rather than philosophical paradigm shifts—and taking care of ourselves after and during bereavement, just as if we were injured or ill, can give space for those paradigm shifts to occur naturally.”
posted by The Last Sockpuppet at 6:56 PM on March 28, 2023 [4 favorites]


Ugh, I'm sorry. This is so hard. I have a few thoughts, having just been through this last year.

First, not only are you allowed to be a mess right now, you're basically supposed to. Someone you love and believed to be healthy has a serious illness. It's okay to be in your feelings for a minute!

Second, hopefully you do get some more time with your guy, in which case you might actually be thankful for this wakeup call. Our dog had a near death experience a couple years before she actually passed, and it really served as a wake-up call to cherish every day we got. I'm actually glad we stopped thinking of her as immortal and recognized that her time with us might be more month-scale than year-scale. We prioritized different things knowing there was a good chance she wouldn't live to be much older than twelve.

Third, I am definitely the metafilter industry booster for palliative care vets, because my palliative care vet made my dog's recent death so much less painful than it would otherwise have been. If you bring them in early they can give you advice on how to alter your dog's living spaces so they can navigate them more easily with failing joints. They can recommend tests and medication your regular vet doesn't. And when it's time to make the hard decisions they have gotten to know your pet outside of a veterinary office context, and can help you think through quality of life questions. My palliative care vet was there to hug me when I cried. At one point she was crying too. I can't tell you how grateful I am to have had her to LITERALLY hold my hand through the palliative care and hospice process.

Hopefully your dog's surgery goes great and you are nowhere near needing to bring in a palliative care vet. But it was indescribably helpful for me to have mine by my side for the last six months of my dog's life. So if you're looking for ways to feel like you're empowered on the road ahead, consider looking at what the options are for palliative vets in your area. If you happen to be anywhere near Seattle I can recommend Compassion 4 Paws with no reservations.
posted by potrzebie at 7:08 PM on March 28, 2023 [5 favorites]


We outlive them and then outlive outliving them when we get to the age where we worry instead over who would take care of them if or when they outlived us. My heart goes out to you.
posted by y2karl at 7:16 PM on March 28, 2023


How do I cope?
In my experience; you don't. Until he dies you operate functionally, doing only what you know you need to do and anything you can think of to help him. You'll forget things (even things like showering or eating) and if you have support you can get reminders. If your support person needs help, you remind them to eat too. Some people get closure when it happens. I didn't. Eventually it just becomes a thing you live with and think about less. Or someone drops a puppy on your chest who decides you're their person now.

This meme makes me smile sadly sometimes.
>>>> In the dog world, humans are elves that routinely live to 500+ years old.

>>> They live so long... but the good ones still bond with us for our entire lives.

>> These immortals are so kind, we must be nice to them.

> Now I am old. The fur around my muzzle is grey and my joints ache when we walk together. Yet she remains unchanged, her hair still glossy, her skin still fresh, her step still sprightly. Time doesn't touch her and yet I love her still.

For generations, he has guarded over my family. Since the days of my great, great, great, great, great, grandfather he has kept us safe. For so long we thought him immortal. But now I see differently, for just as my fur grows grey and my joints grow stiff, so too do his. He did not take in my children, but gave them away to his. I will be the last that he cares for. My only hope is that I am able to last until his final moments. The death of one of his kind is so rare. The ending of a life so long is such a tragedy. He has seen so much, he knows so much. I know he takes comfort in my presence. I only wish that I can give him this comfort until the end.
posted by gible at 7:18 PM on March 28, 2023 [12 favorites]


Dammit, you made me cry.
posted by gible at 7:23 PM on March 28, 2023


This might help. It’s by Mark Glavon.
posted by manageyourexpectations at 7:56 PM on March 28, 2023 [5 favorites]


I have loved many, many pets in this lifetime. Someday, developers will raze this tenth of an acre that used to be mine, and they will find an ancient (to them) pet burial ground, and they will wonder, “What kind of sick monsters were these people?” And then they’ll scan the skeletons with the forensic app everybody has on their phones by then, and they’ll go “Oh wow, this one was complications of diabetes, this one was feline AIDS, this one was chronic lymphocytic leukemia…these ones were in the dying process, and they were administered happy drugs to help them over the last threshold. I guess these people just had a lot of geriatric pets over the years.”

The most recent goodbye was last October, and we have a few in their twilight years now. I’m here to tell you that the anguish never leaves the picture, even after you’ve been through it literally a dozen times.

But the love never does either.

To borrow an analogy I heard somewhere, even though the weight never gets lighter, you eventually build strength from carrying it. I know I’ll survive the next pet loss, somehow, because I’ve survived the ones before, and somehow the reservoir of love keeps filling back up, seemingly infinitely. In the meantime. I’m building on my experience with the weird/messy medical treatments. All those pets buried in the backyard are with me when I give Freya her subcutaneous fluid therapy, or her thyroid medicine. Even if you don’t believe our souls outlive our bodies, those animals are still part of my experience until I’m gone too. (If you’re like me, you hope they’re all waiting somewhere with no pain and lots of pleasant textures and snacks, but this is not a requirement.)

Bookending their lives is a unique and essential part of our duty to them. We are supposed to outlive our parents and our offspring (if any) are supposed to survive us, but pets are adults at one year old and also innocent babies forever, so we fulfill our obligation by seeing them through to the end.

That doesn’t dull the pain one iota, of course. But — if this makes sense — I think it lends the pain a nobility and a beauty and a richness. It’s a love like no other. The love is worth the grief, and it lasts at least as long.

Keep the love focused on your little one during this precious time; when the time comes to mourn, do so with the knowledge that you kept your promise and did right by your sweet dog.
posted by armeowda at 10:07 PM on March 28, 2023 [11 favorites]


It just sucks a lot and eventually it heals, though it leaves a scar.

Take pictures with him, and videos when he's having a good day. It's been a year since I lost my last two, a week apart, and now that the awful second-guessing and what-ifs and oh-I-was-a-terrible-dogmom waves of grief have mostly settled, it's my biggest regret.
posted by Lyn Never at 12:08 PM on March 29, 2023


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