One Week

I write this on Friday, December 27, 2024, one week — seven days — since Malcolm departed. Has it been a whole week/only a week?

I look at the clock thinking, “It’s dog park time” or “Better take him for his bedtime walk.” When I come into the house, I wonder if he’ll need to go out right away. I sit at the computer at the kitchen counter expecting him to come padding in to see what’s up.

But of course, none of that is going to happen anymore. Has he really been gone an entire week?

I wake up when I want. I don’t have to worry about letting him out or feeding him. I go upstairs to watch TV and don’t think about his food or walks, like it’s always been this way.

But it hasn’t. Not for almost six years. Has he only been gone for one week?

Time is relative, but here I’m not talking about Einsteinian time relativity where your twin brother gets on a rocket that travels near the speed of light, and he comes back 30 years later looking only about a year older… The jerk.

No, this is emotional time relativity when sadness can make time drag and each… Tick……Tick……Tick…… is a crushing eternity, or when depression can lead you to sit down to numbly watch YouTube videos one morning, and next thing you know, the sun’s gone down, and the streetlights are on.

I miss Malcolm so much, and that’s saying a lot because the past few years with him have sometimes been difficult.

A little over two years ago, Malcolm collapsed on a walk with Robert. He was unable to move his back legs. I was scared and wondered if he had had a stroke. We were able to get him in to see the vet that day, who felt that this was likely due to an ear problem, vestibular neuritis of the inner ear, common in older, larger dogs, and that medication would help, but it would take a few days. I cancelled a trip to a conference I was really looking forward to where I was scheduled to be on a panel. But Malcolm was sick, and I couldn’t leave until I saw he was improving.

And with medication he did improve and generally did quite well.

Then, a year ago October, he suddenly started limping on his right hind leg. He had blown out the cranial cruciate ligament in his stifle — the human anatomic equivalent is the anterior cruciate ligament in the knee. We made the decision to have surgery to repair it, and recovery meant taking him on only very short walks as well as watching him around the clock to make sure he didn’t chew on or lick his stitches. (We did try a Cone of Shame for one night, but that was a non-starter.) I bought a really nice air mattress which we set up in the foyer so that Robert and I could alternate nights sleeping downstairs with him for eight weeks.

Again, he bounced back but only as far as a dog his age could. This past year the arthritis in his hips and back had made it more difficult to walk, and he began to have problems controlling his bowels and bladder.

Walking him went from an enjoyable routine exercise to a chore to finally an anxiety-filled burden. He would generally get three walks a day: morning, early evening to the dog park, and late evening before bed. Robert and I came up with a scoring system for his walks: “3” was a pretty good, near normal walk, “2” was a walk where he would collapse with some regularity but would get up with a small tug or nudge, “1” was a frankly terrible walk where he would collapse frequently and would need to be picked up to start walking or would need to be carried. “How did he do this morning?” I’d ask Robert when they’d get back from a walk. “No poop, some pee. A ‘2.’” “Not bad,” I’d say. So, whenever I’d take him out (I usually had the late evening walk, Robert the dog park walk, and morning was a tossup), I would wonder: How will he do on this walk? How many times will he collapse? Will he be able to get up with a quick nudge, or will I need to carry him? Above all, how could I deal with my own growing fears and frustrations around all of this?

As a result, during the past couple of months it became obvious to both Robert and me that Malcolm’s time with us was going to be measured not in years, or even months, but in weeks.

As I have seen Malcolm decline, though, I’ve also been thinking about my own steadily diminishing future. What will that look like? How do I want to be treated? Will people become frustrated with me when I can’t walk or fearful that I might fall and break something while I’m in their presence?

As I would gently prod Malcolm to walk, as I would urge him to eat as his appetite waned, as I would give him the meds he never wanted to take, as I would pick up his poop from the kitchen floor, or as I would give him a massage as he lay on his bed and feel him melt into my hands, I tried to be mindful of how I would want to be treated in that situation when, in 20 or 10 or even five years, the inevitable happens.

So perhaps I was being a little selfish, trying to make a little deposit in my karmic checking account, but I also did it because Malcolm deserved it. He deserved all good things because he was all good things to us.

I look at this picture, the last photograph taken of Malcolm a week ago, just before we let him go. Robert is holding him tenderly, and Malcolm is looking at… something. And he just looks so tired. Robert put this picture on Facebook the day after Malcolm passed, and that’s when it occurred to me that not only were we desperate to keep Malcolm healthy and happy, I feel like Malcolm was desperate not to disappoint us.

There is always a danger in anthropomorphizing non-human animals, but our emotions are likely not that different from theirs. They feel fear and joy and anger and disgust and pride and love just as we do. There were so many nights, especially toward the end, when I would get Malcolm ready for his last walk of the day and he really did not want to go, but he did anyway. He would look at me as if to say, “Okay. If that’s what you need from me, I’ll go.”

When I look at Malcolm’s exhausted face in this photo, I see myself. I see all those times over the past four decades when I’d been on call, aching to go home, yet being called to see one more sick kid because there was no one else to see them. Weary as I was, I was still always grateful that I could be there for someone who needed me.

So, seeing his exhausted yet determined eyes, I can imagine Malcolm feeling so much gratitude and love for us that he was trying his best to stick around because he knew how much we depended on him and loved him.

And because we did love him so much, what other choice did we have but to tenderly tell Malcolm, “It’s all right. Through all your pain, you have done so very much for us. You deserve to rest. We will never forget you. You have been such a very good boy. And we will always love you.”

And it’s been a week now… An entire week… Just one week…