Nala parted ways with this world on June 29, 2024. She was approximately fourteen years old.
It's the first time I've ever had the opportunity to choose the time of a dog's death. Unlike Abbey or Bixby, she wasn't in the midst of a fatal medical crisis. It was very clear to me, however, that she was on the cusp of one and that even if I was wrong, or even if she recovered well from the essential surgery she was facing, her back leg function wasn't going to get any better, her arthritis wasn't going to get any better, her vision and hearing weren't going to get any better, her chronic pancreatitis wasn't going to get any better, and so on. She was declining and the only question was how fast or slow. The best case scenario involved weeks of pain and fear...and what if I had to put her down three months after she recovered from the surgery because she could not longer climb the stairs? It was a real possibility. Every thing I ever did for Nala was to make her feel safe and loved and I couldn't think of a more frightening end for her than in the noise and confusion of the emergency vet hospital. So, I realized she didn't, in fact, have to live any longer. I'd already checked off all the things on the mental "before she dies" bucket I'd made for her the year before. I believe she'd spent more years as a beloved pet than as a traumatized breeding bitch. She'd won. Hers was a Cinderella fairy tale and my final responsibility as the author of her "happily ever after" was to choose the timing and manner of her death. I was able to give Nala a very special last day and the next afternoon she parted ways with this life while in my arms on my bed. Safe. Loved. I have never once in the six months since doubted that I made the absolutely right decision.
You may notice that this post doesn't contain any photos of Nala. One of the features of my grief is that I haven't wanted to look at pictures of her, especially ones from the last couple of years when she was so clearly old. My grief will unfold however it unfolds. I am content to let Nala be for now. My feeling is that she's where she's supposed to be. It's probable that this aspect of my mourning was been profoundly impacted by the experience I had immediately after she died, and one that I'm so grateful for. I share below with what I wrote at the time:
Something very special happened after Nala died. I needed to get out of the house, so we took my favorite long country drive, stretching more than thirty miles one way, most of it spent heading south on WA-203/202 on the east side of the Snoqualmie River Valley. Ordinarily, when we do this drive, we head back toward Redmond once we hit Fall City, but I wasn't ready to go home, so we pressed on. And I am so glad we did, because there, in a meadow below Mt. Si just outside North Bend, were elk. At first there were just half a dozen female elk with three calves. Then a few more came. And more. And more! By the time we left, there MORE THAN FIFTY-FIVE ELK in the field. It was magical. Twittering violet-green swallows swooped through the warm air; flocks of starlings rose and fell around the herd, sometimes landing on the elk themselves; and a pair of huge turkey vultures soared on the thermals in the partially overcast sky. The golden summer grass contrasted with the looming craggy mountain as the leaves on the cottonwood trees flickered and shimmered at the meadow's edge. I felt profoundly connected to the circle of life and saw that Nala's death and the newborn elk calves were part of one great whole, that Nala's passing and twittering swallows and the scent of sweet meadow grass and the Mesozoic volcano remnant rearing four thousand feet over it were all right and as they should be. I am so glad that these things will always be linked for me. Mountains are thrust up and ground down on a timescale of millions, dogs live and die within less than a score, insects whisper in the grass for only a season, while murmurations of starlings rise, twist, and flow, scatter, then rise again.
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