In Defense of Being Not OK

The picture of my dog, Chewie, was taken on the patio of a hotel in Lawrence, Kansas on New Year’s Eve 2022. My wife and I were both sick, having picked up a bug on our holiday trip to Texas (COVID negative, thankfully); we canceled plans with friends and ordered pizza and sat in the hotel room watching TV, falling asleep before midnight. I took Chewie outside because he was uncomfortable—we had had the fluid drained from his abdomen before our travels, but it was coming back. He hadn’t slept through the night for months; his cough had grown worse, and the many medicines we had him on to maintain the strength of his heart and keep the fluid off his lungs were beginning to fail him.

He wanted to sit on the outdoor couch with me but couldn’t summon the leg strength to jump. His muscles had shrunk as his body struggled to funnel protein to his enlarged and failing heart. I picked him up gently and set him beside me. For the first time that day, he seemed genuinely comfortable. The air was cool, but not cold, and crisp. There was just enough sun to offer a little warmth. I scratched him on his head, behind his ears. He leaned into my hand as he leaned on the couch. We were tired and we were sick. But for a moment we both felt comfortable and loved.

Less than a month later my wife and I wrapped Chewie in a blanket and carried him to the car. We took him to the vet, and they led us to a room in the back with a cold stainless-steel table. There was a bit of conversation and explanation, a form to sign, two injections, and it was over. My best friend is dead. I am not ok. I have not been ok since. I was not ok before that, because I saw the writing on the wall. Chewie loved to eat and to walk. His appetite hung on until his last day; when that dog didn’t eat, you knew something was very wrong, and he refused a meal of steak tips the night before. But for months our walks had become slower, more hesitant. He seemed more listless and even confused at times. This was a dog who used to eagerly walk with me 2-6 miles every single day, rain or shine, on all but the hottest and coldest days. His vets were not giving us good news toward the end; he had been sick for two and a half years. Chewie had a long life and a good life. We had done everything we could, given him the best care that money could buy; but there was no more that could be done.

I have no plans to be ok. It isn’t ok. This is the single most painful thing I have ever experienced; I do not think I have had a particularly easy, nor particularly difficult, life, and it has definitely not been a life untouched by loss. I lost family and friends to the pandemic. I lost family and friends before that. Everyone alive today, including me, will one day die. I can accept that intellectually even as it fills me with existential dread. Entropy always wins. And death as an event is not something that is ok; it is not romantic. It is pain and it is horror, whether slow or fast.

I am convinced this pain and horror is why we tell ourselves and one another stories about what happens after death. I do not know with certainty what happens after we die. No one does. I hesitate to insert belief where evidence does not follow; especially given that there is a mighty collection of evidence suggesting that consciousness is a function of brains; when brains die, then, consciousness is extinguished. I should like to imagine I will see Chewie again, I will see my friends and loved ones again, but I suspect that may be no more than wishful thinking.

They are gone, and I will not be seeing them again.

And it is not ok. I am not ok. There is no consolation, simply no way to rationalize the loss or assuage the grief. Animals aren’t people, some would say. Yet as any pet owner knows, we can build such strong relationships with animals. Relationships are just the product of ongoing interaction (I’m a sociologist); I had a strong and mutually loving, supportive relationship with my dog, Chewie, which arose over almost eight years of largely positive interactions. Those relationships come with a collection of habits and dispositions that are now redundant—in some ways, the hardest part about loss is that a part of oneself literally dies as well, because there were all those interactions that were part of a relationship that now no longer is. We feel lost. We don’t know what to do with ourselves. And it hurts. And it’s supposed to hurt.

That isn’t to say there is some cosmic reason for what happened and when. I can be grateful for the journey we took together, and the timing of Chewie’s entrance into our lives. It was certainly helpful to have a happy critter to come home to and spend time with while my wife and I moved across the country…twice…and even lived apart for a year, before living through a pandemic that killed over one million Americans (and continues to kill more). But there is no grand purpose in it. I am glad for the time we had; and devastated that that time is over. My wife Charli wanted a dog because we were moving out of state, and Chewie ran across a busy highway and ran up to her in a parking lot, panting and tail-wagging, as if to say, “hi! I’m a dog.” An amusing story, but I wouldn’t be much of a scientist if I took that as evidence of some Big Plan unfolding around the three of us.

I was hesitant. I’ve had pets before. Seeing them grow old and die is inevitably painful. I got a cat for my first Christmas, Sasha, whom my dad rescued from death row at the animal shelter. She lived almost two decades and eventually succumbed to liver, kidney, and heart failure as Chewie did. I had a dog named Alice that my dad rescued from an abusive family after she came to live at his workplace. Her heart gave out; she died in my arms on Christmas Day, a few months after Sasha died. I had a cat named Simon, an orange tabby, who my sister and I found in our backyard as small children, and who we adopted after his mother was run over by a car. We had to put him to sleep because he lost his sight and hearing but refused to live a life cooped up in the house. I had a cat named Sonja who we found, abandoned by her mother on the side of the house, and nursed back to health. She died of organ failure in 2012, years after I had moved away from my parents; and I didn’t see her but once a week. Fearing to bond with anyone that death can touch is folly, though; we all die, and as social critters, we don’t live a full life without other social critters to share it with.

But Chewie was different. My parents took care of those pets of my youth; yes, I fed them and spent time with them, but I didn’t have to do the truly difficult parts of care. Including knowing when their time had come, and ending their lives quickly and painlessly to avoid long suffering and terminal decline. I’ve never had to make that decision myself and live with it. It hurts terribly, but more undue suffering would have been worse, and I am confident it was the right thing to do. Having done so, I am also confident that, should I live a long life and a good life, and have only agony and suffering to look forward to, I, too, should want the right to end my own life quickly and painlessly as well. But knowing it was the right thing to do isn’t the same as being ok with it.

I reserve the right to not be ok. Because death, loss, grief is not ok. That is the point. It happens, it is, and I accept that—and all the grim and scary and not-so-pleasant implications of that. But death, to those who die, is an end. Whether or not you think death is literally the end, it is inevitable; the grief is ours, it is ultimately for us, those who live on, not them. Chewie is in pain no longer; but I am in pain now and will be for a long time, because I miss him all the time. I accept that as the consequence of the great adventure we had and the fact that it is over. But I am not ok.

Maybe there are those who draw a bright line of separation between humans and the rest of the living things on the planet—usually in the name of assuming we as a species are special. Such a line, for me, seems more artificial, unsustainable, and frankly pointless now than it has ever seemed before. All those hours walking with him and giving him pets and scratches and treats I learned a lot about him, about his life. Chewie could smell and hear things I never could, and it endlessly fascinated me to think about what it must be like for a dog, to have a sensory universe so different from mine. Pound for pound he was obviously stronger than any human; he could jump like a coiled spring from the ground to the top of a picnic table up until his last year. He was a runner, and delighted in running, especially across broad, flat, grasslands, but even in my best shape he—with his stumpy little legs and barrel-shaped torso—could out-sprint me. He responded to many human words and cues as if he knew, at least roughly, what they meant; I often had trouble deciphering his body language, looks, sounds, and other communication attempts. I could see better than him, especially toward the end, and humans have these remarkably big brains; but he must have marveled at the fact that I spent so much time staring at a screen and clacking keys when I seemed to so enjoy being outside with him walking instead. Nature isn’t always pretty; it’s often a bloodbath, but there’s a lot of sublimity there too. Chewie’s ancestors, gray wolves, and my ancestors, early humans, had a different kind of relationship—and it, needless to say, wasn’t always pretty, either.

I will take that sense of sublime wonder with me, and those millions of little moments of joy and adventure, so long as I live. And I can still think about them and smile. And I suspect the pain will fade with time. But I am not ok. And I am ok with that. And I hope that those who care about or depend on me will understand that and be patient.