To Love and Let Go

by Rachel Brathen

  Before we fell asleep, I wrapped Pepper in a blanket by my feet. I didn’t want him to be cold. When I kissed him good night, he barely lifted his head. I went to sleep holding him, repeating to myself, to Andrea, to God, to anyone who might have been listening: “Save him. Please, save him.”

  I awakened to a gasp but it wasn’t mine. It was Pepper. He couldn’t breathe. I called the vet in a panic. “Bring him in right now,” she said. “Hurry.” Pepper couldn’t stand. We carried him to the car and I sat in the back with him, holding him in my arms. “Breathe, baby, breathe,” I whispered. I couldn’t see the road through my tears.

  We arrived at the vet and he was put on oxygen. “He is dying,” the vet said, placing her hand on my shoulder. “It is happening now.” Tears streamed down Dennis’s cheeks. He buried his face in Pepper’s fur. This is not just my loss, I thought. It is our loss. Maybe it’s even more Dennis’s loss—Pepper was “his” dog. Pepper always slept at Dennis’s feet. Dennis took Pepper to work every day; he was the skate shop dog. Dennis loved him more than anything.

  “He is in pain,” the vet said. “We can help him. Let him go.”

  I look at Dennis. He nods. It all happens so fast.

  She leaves the room and now time is standing still. Pepper is still struggling, but his gasps are farther apart. His eyes are calm when he looks into mine. I am vibrating with love for him and I am sure he can feel it.

  iloveyouiloveyouiloveyouiloveyouiloveyouiloveyouiloveyou. I repeat it like a mantra. It’s flowing through me like a prayer. iloveyouiloveyouiloveyouiloveyouiloveyou. I am intensely present. The space between Pepper’s breaths is getting longer. I breathe with him. Dennis is sobbing. I am calm still. We hold Pepper tight. I love him so much—is it even possible to love this much and to die this much? He is so loved. In the minutes that pass I remember my grandmother and her quiet passing; the space between her breaths that grew longer and longer until there was nothing left but space. This is nothing like that. It’s violent, terrifying, horrible, awful, overwhelming, too much to bear. Pepper is gasping for air. He wants to breathe. He wants to live. His eyes are panicked. The vet comes back in with a needle and she puts it in his neck or maybe his arm, I don’t know. It happens so quickly. Too quickly. The gasping stops. He is gone.

  I wail.

  • • •

  Dennis tries to pull us together—it’s over. We have to leave. We have to get out of there. There is a back door. We leave through it. We are in the car again and we turn the corner and I realize—we left him behind. “Go back!” I yell. Dennis pulls the car over. “We can’t leave him there! We have to take him with us.” I don’t know how we got in the car so fast. We are in absolute shock. Dennis turns the car around and goes inside and when he comes back he is carrying Pepper wrapped in a sheet. He puts him in the car. We drive home with our dead dog in the backseat. I feel like none of this is happening, none of this is real. We come home and it’s like we’re moving through mud; everything is happening in slow motion. We’re here, but everything is blurry, hazy. Dennis takes Pepper from the backseat and puts him in a shaded spot on the stoop next to the house. The sheet is a little bit brown—he’s pooped himself. “They said that happens when you die, the body releases like that,” Dennis says. I have no idea how he knows that. I didn’t know. I never before held someone as they died. Before this year I didn’t know that a heart can stop and be restarted and stop and be restarted again or that blood smells sort of like fishing nets but not really or that our feet get cold before we die or that in the last moment there is poop. Time before knowing these things was another life entirely. A different life. One I long for, with all of my might. I don’t want to be here. I don’t want to be here holding my dead dog while thinking about my best friend’s bloody dress and the hairs that grew on my grandmother’s chin. I don’t want this life. I really, really, really want to leave and just go be somebody else. But I can’t. I am where I am.

  Through tears, Dennis brings the other dogs out one at a time to say good-bye. Laika is very cautious—she sees him from afar and she stops wagging her tail immediately. She walks up slowly and sniffs him before turning around to look at us. It’s like she’s asking me, “What’s happened?” I look into her eyes. I killed him. The thought is there without warning and once I think it, it etches its way into my soul. I killed him. I killed him I killed him I killed him. This is my fault. I had the antibiotics in my hand. I squeeze my eyes shut to rid myself of the memory. Dennis gets Quila but she doesn’t want to go near him, it’s like she doesn’t recognize him as him. Maybe his soul has left his body so she doesn’t know where to look. I don’t know. She lies down at my feet. Finally Dennis brings Ringo out. He sees Pepper and comes running over and without hesitation starts licking his face and his mouth. When he doesn’t move or respond he turns to us, eyes big. “What’s wrong with Pepper?” he asks. “Doesn’t he want to play?” “I killed him,” I say, but it’s silent. I know I can’t ever speak those words out loud. “He loved you so much, buddy,” I say instead. “We have to say good-bye now.” Ringo crawls up in my lap. Dennis gets a shovel.

  Turns out, digging a grave takes a long time. We live on the north coast of Aruba and the earth is rocky and firm. I get a new, clean sheet to wrap Pepper in. We put him in the earth. I bring his favorite toy, a stuffed animal bear, and tuck him in. It feels strange to wrap the sheet around his face—I want him to be able to breathe. But then I remember he won’t do anymore breathing. We cover him with dirt and pack the grave tightly. I find a big white rock that we set as a gravestone and small white rocks to circle the grave. Once it’s over we sit on the couch. I look at my watch. It’s eleven o’clock, still morning, and we have already buried our dog in the backyard. My mom has texted me in our family group chat. Is Pepper better? she asks. I answer, No, he died. My phone starts ringing and it’s ringing and ringing. I leave it and go back to bed.

  Bad things come in threes. That’s what I’ve always heard. So now that my best friend, my grandmother, and my baby have left me in just a few months, does it mean it’s over? Or are there more catastrophes knocking on my door? I’d like to know who’s running this show because I don’t know if I want to be part of it anymore.

  Pepper’s death throws me in a way I’m not prepared for. Everything I thought I’d learned in dealing with the loss of Andrea was a lie. I feel like I’ve learned nothing. It pains me deeply to admit this, so I don’t tell anyone, but it’s the truth: Pepper’s death hurts me more than Andrea’s. In a way, it’s like I have to deal with three losses wrapped up in one, but I can’t tell anyone how much pain I’m actually in. Pepper was a dog and Andrea was a human being, but Pepper was my baby and I failed him and it’s added a level of pain to my grief that I’m not in any way equipped for. Andrea was an adult—she drove the car. I was responsible for Pepper. He was counting on me to keep him safe and I didn’t. Pain is worse when it comes with guilt.

  I am angry—angry that Andrea didn’t help me. Any faith I might have had—in God, in spirit, in the universe—any belief that there was a purpose to any of this, that it was taking me somewhere, that I was divinely guided and one day this would all make sense, has been crushed.

  There is a second truth that I also don’t speak out loud, maybe because I can’t bear to hear the words. I feel like I killed Pepper. Objectively, I know I wasn’t solely responsible. He had seen so many veterinarians and no one knew what was wrong, so how could I be? But I was his mom. I should have known. If I hadn’t been so preoccupied with other things, if I hadn’t been so self-absorbed, I would have known. If only. Fuck “if only.”

  I scroll through my Instagram account, from the beginning; 120 weeks ago, when I would be lucky to get a couple of likes on a photo, up to the present. Pepper was in almost every single one. He had been with us through everything, every big moment in our lives. I was Dennis’s wife, but Pepper had my heart and he knew it.

  I get the urge to drink. To party, to dance, to be crazy. Patrick, on
e of Dennis’s best friends, is on the island. He knows death like I know death—his father passed away just two weeks before Andrea. We go out dancing. I get drunker than normal. I’m drinking to be somewhere else. Every day I sit by Pepper’s grave. The first night after we buried him I wake up in the middle of the night crying so hard, all the dogs start barking. Dennis tries to wake me up but I am too deep in my dream. When I finally wake up I’m gasping for air—I can’t breathe. I realize Pepper is all alone outside in the dark. We are all in here where it’s warm and cozy and he is out there all alone. Dennis keeps telling me it’s just his shell, his body, he isn’t there, but I can’t shake it. I feel like we’ve buried him alive. I run out at two in the morning with Pepper’s blanket, thinking that if I cover his grave with it, then he’ll feel more held. He will be cozier. I stub my toe on a rock and when I get to the grave I’ve realized how crazy I’m being, so I just sit there and wrap myself up in the blanket instead.

  The next night it happens again—I have nightmares so intense I can’t wake up. In my dream Pepper is out there but we aren’t letting him in. He is howling for us and calling for us but we left him out in the cold. Dennis tries to stop me but I run outside. I fall asleep on Pepper’s grave and when I wake up Dennis is picking me up and bringing me back into the house. On the third night he gets angry. “This has to stop. You can’t be out here. You have to come inside,” he says, but I’ve lost it. I don’t care about anything else. I don’t care about Andrea or my grandmother or Dennis or anyone. I only care about Pepper and the fact that no matter how many blankets I bring out into the backyard, he will always and forever be cold.

  I feel like we put the grave too far away from the house. I wish we’d dug it much closer. Right next to the grave is a tree, but it’s been dead since we moved in. It’s been three years and it’s just a tiny, fragile little trunk of a tree branch; we don’t know what it once was. I decide to plant things around his grave and put a little bench there so we can sit next to him without lying in the dirt. Dennis goes along with it, so we buy jasmine flowers and a little greenery and I find a bench I love, but it’s too expensive. I find myself wondering about Dennis: Is there a limit to how many times he can pick me up off the floor? He’s done it all year. All year I’ve cried, all year I’ve been in pain, all year he’s saved me again and again. And now it’s not my loss, it’s our loss. Pepper was a big-boy dog, a little doofus, funny, with such personality. Dennis loved him more than anything. Am I not supposed to hold Dennis at night so he can cry, too? But he doesn’t cry. And I’m losing it. I’m losing it all.

  I buy a lantern that’s windproof and every night at sunset I put candles in it and bring it out to Pepper’s grave. It helps. When I look over I no longer see cold, dark death but a little glimmer of light instead. The light makes me feel like he is less alone. I stop going out to the grave in the middle of the night. The dead tree by his grave has burst into life. It’s remarkable, really. The morning after we buried him I came out to sit with him and doubled over crying, so I grabbed the tree trunk to hold on. When I came to, I saw four tiny leaves springing from it. One leaf for each year of his life. We’ve lived here for years and there has never, not once, been a leaf on this tree. We always assumed it was dead. Maybe it was. Maybe Pepper lives on in this tree.

  A month passes and now it’s absolutely blossoming—the branches hang heavy with greenery and it’s so beautiful. Someone tells me it’s an Aruban cherry tree. We call it Pepper’s tree. He was only a dog and people tell me to move on—they don’t understand how my life has ended because my dog died. I guess from the outside, in the light of Andrea dying and then my grandmother, it’s hard for people to understand why now, suddenly, I’m losing it. And it’s clear that I am. I can’t keep myself contained anymore. I keep bursting into tears at gatherings, at the beach with our friends watching the sunset, when I’m teaching yoga, at the grocery store waiting to pay for my vegetables. I don’t care. I’ve kept myself together all year and I just can’t do it anymore. And every night I think about all the things I could have done that would have prevented this. I make a list in my head. It’s titled “All the Things I Could Have Done for Pepper Not to Die” and it’s getting longer every day.

  I try to stay busy, but I can’t keep up appearances like I did before. I forget to answer e-mails, miss meetings, show up late for yoga class. I don’t feel like washing my hair or putting on clothes in the morning. But we have prior engagements and I have a career that’s suddenly blossoming and it’s hard to explain to people that my dog died and I no longer want to do any of it. When I get too consumed with sorrow I try to move my body because I know it helps. I roll out my yoga mat, or if it gets really bad I put on my sneakers and I run. I hate running, but when your mind is playing the record of how you killed your dog over and over, you’ll do anything to turn it off. One afternoon I’m home alone and Ringo is pawing at Pepper’s grave, and every time I close my eyes I see him out in the street at night, scared to walk because he can’t see, and it’s just unbearable so I grab my shoes and I run. I run and I run and I run and on my way back, I have to cross a street where a pack of street dogs live. I drive by them every day and there is one that I know isn’t very nice, but I never worried about them before. It’s there now, the big white dog that always tried to bite at my tires, but now he comes with a whole pack. There are so many dogs and they are all coming my way. I’m in the middle of a dirt road and there is nowhere to go. The white one is showing his teeth and growling and the others turn toward me and now I’m surrounded. I back up because I’m terrified to run. I try to remember what you’re supposed to do if you get attacked by dogs, but I don’t know because I’ve never contemplated it before. Is it like a bear attack and you’re supposed to pretend you’re dead, or are you supposed to run? I don’t have time to think of it because they are barking now and they are so close, all ten of them biting at my feet. The hair on their backs is standing up and their eyes are black and I’m so terrified I freeze. They are going to kill me. I know it. I say a prayer, thinking, This is it, because my back is against the wall and there is nowhere to run, and right then, two of them start snapping at each other and, suddenly, they’re not after me anymore but a dog fight happens instead. It’s a whirlwind of teeth and whines and aggression, but there is a window there for me to escape and I take it. I bolt, knowing they might run after me, there are so many of them. I run faster than I’ve ever run in my life, expecting to get bit any second. The bite never comes. I get to the front door and my hands are trembling so much I can’t get the key in the lock. When I finally get through the door I collapse, crying so hard my body doesn’t know how to cope with it. I can’t breathe and I’m hyperventilating and now the dogs are inside me; the fear and the terror and the panic is coming from within and it’s all closing my throat and I can’t breathe. This is dying, I realize. This is it. I manage to grab my phone and call my friend Rose, because if I die I don’t want Dennis to be the one to find me, and then everything becomes black. When I come to, Rose is there. My head is in her lap and she is stroking my hair and telling me to breathe and I’m convulsing and trembling and sweating but also freezing. I have my running shoes on and my face is streaked with dirt. I can barely breathe and for a second I don’t know where I am. “It’s just a wave, dushi,” Rose says. “Breathe.” I try to pull air down into my lungs but it doesn’t quite make it there—it’s as if it just gets stuck. Why can’t I breathe? “You’re having a panic attack, you’re not dying. You can breathe. There is air. Inhale. Exhale.” She is so calm, so calm, so steady. My rock. I can’t breathe, but she says there is air so I believe her. Rose always tells the truth. The next inhale I take breaks the barrier to my lungs and reaches my body. As I exhale something lets go and I cry. It’s a soft cry now. I don’t know what’s happening. Then I remember. “The dogs. They tried to kill me.” “Shhh, it’s okay. Don’t talk. Dennis is on his way.” I stay quiet. Dennis eventually comes and as he picks me up off the floor I wonder
how many times is one time too many, but when he unties my shoes and lays me in bed I realize: there no such thing as too many. He is always here. I drift off. When I wake up I hear Rose and Dennis talking to each other outside. One of them is crying—it takes me a little while to figure out that it’s Dennis. They are worried about me.

  I’m worried about me. I decide to try harder.

  Time passes by like nothing has happened and there are days when I feel almost normal. But then a wave of grief will hit and now it’s not just Andrea or Mormor or Pepper in a wave of grief—it’s all three wrapped up into one. And it means that I drown in the waves. I can cling to the surface in the in-between, but when a wave of grief hits me now, it takes me under. I have my worst moment since Pepper died right after we come back from teaching a retreat in Bonaire. It’s been almost two months since he died and grief is like that; it will trick you. I did a good job teaching and holding space for other people and I only cried in Savasana, not when I was teaching anything else, which is good because it means I kept it together and people didn’t really know. We come back and I’ve been busy and haven’t thought about death too much. Dennis goes to run some errands and I’m home alone and while cleaning the house, I find Pepper’s collar. It’s something that simple—I just find his collar. We took it off as soon as we found out he was sick and it must have been put with all the other dog stuff, because I haven’t seen it or thought of it since. Holding his collar a wave of grief comes and it’s so intense, so deep, I feel like I’m drowning. Normally in a wave I’d call someone, do something, find someone to help me stay afloat, but this one is just so big I can’t see any light at all. I try and try but nothing works. I decide I need to get out of the house because maybe then I’ll stop crying, so I take the dogs to the north shore to go for a walk, but it keeps getting heavier and heavier still. I try to focus on my breath, to bring my attention to something, anything to shift my state of mind, but I can’t. I’m in too deep.