Fritz

we had to euthanize our dog today.
he woke from sleep with pain, and carried it throughout the day, through vet tests, during the long time in his cage there. it was lessened when they filled him with pain meds so i could drive him home and have him die here at home, though he still panted and tensed from it.
he was old, my little fritty.
he sniffed the air when i opened the door, smelling his home, the familiar scents. he'd wagged his tail when i came in to the vets to pick him up. i didn't greet him back, i was too intent on discussing things with the vet. i did hold his face and kiss him later, and convinced them to remove the muzzle.
he sat in the car a long time, peeing twice onto my favorite blanket that was made for my son, the one my mum so lovingly made for him, the one i wanted him to come home on because it meant a lot to me. his urine was dark from his body shutting down, so now the blanket is done.
my husband came home shortly, rescheduled his charges and coworkers to be here with us, here for Fritz. Fritz sniffed the air when my husband got out of his car next to us in our driveway, and perked up. my husband looked down at Fritz in the car, leaned his head on the roof, and cried. working all day with the knowledge of this coming, working with clients about their emotional and sexual abuse while carrying his grief and love for our dying dog in his heart. we both watched Fritz, patted him, talked to him, and cried. i brought him water, let him drink some, then took it away to keep him from overloading his system.

Fritz indicated after a long time of waiting that he wanted down, so i lifted him in his blanket, still anticipating the crying that the vets had reported upon lifting, but he was quite as i carried him to the back yard and set him down. he moved around a bit back there, going for the stairs to be inside, but we encouraged him gently to stay outside, for husband's discomfort with Fritz's death coming in our house. we gave him more water, still not as much as he wanted. the vet came with his assistant, a distant relative of my husband's who had been unkind to him in their younger years. the vet was gentle, giving us love, respecting Fritz, surrounding all of us with his caring. they sedated him before the anesthesia so they could put him down without the muzzle that the other vet had insisted on. we sat with him, patted him, waited and coached him through the movement towards sleep. they said the sedative make him less aware of the pain that had had him moaning now and then. we gave him the water again and he drank and drank. i offered another bowl when he's nearly emptied the first; he lapped at it once or twice, the gave us all a sad chuckled when he turned back towards the original bowl to finish. he lapped at it more and more slowly, his chin moving down into it, still slow laps, me tipping the bowl up on its side to accommodate him, still very slow laps, his chin in the water, taking it in. he stopped drinking and we moved the bowl away.

his head lowered slowly to the ground, then rested on the ground. we continued patting him gently, i glad for him and my husband that my husband was crouched by his head, as he always wanted my husband's love. i lay by his head, told him we loved him, looked into his sleepy, clouded eyes. my husband gave him love. we nodded to the vet, who gently put the anesthesia into the port on Fritz's leg. we patted him and loved him. i watched his breaths for a few seconds, then saw his head and shoulders relax fully down to the earth, and knew it had worked. it was as though he melted into the earth, all that was active in him, the "life" in him, sank down into the earth from which it had come. his eyes were opened a little, the blue, scarred corneas showing. my husband and i cried. the vet and the relative left, i gave her a daffodil from our yard that was just starting to open.

my husband wrapped his arms around Fritz, held him and cried for a long time. i was glad he had that, the pouring of his love into Fritz's little frame.

later, my husband suggested we bury him there, where we'd pass by him every day on our way into our backyard, our garden, up to our family in the houses behind. he suggested we plant a willow there; we've been discussing one for a while, this could be the spot, for Fritz. he asked would it have enough room? would it have enough room? between it and the house, just as he started to dig Fritz's grave. i looked up, pictured the willow in 20 years, and said it would.

the boy arrived with his nana as husband dug. he commented on husband's activity, then trotted over to fritz, squatted and toussled the fur between his ears familiarly.

i dug a little deeper, husband decided to wrap Fritz in his blanket, the one i'd saved after we brought my childhood dog home from the vet in it, the small soft blue one. he went in to fetch it, came out and wrapped him, asked me if i wanted to lower Fritz into the grave. i gently laid him in it, and he looked cozy and comfortably curled in it, and i said so. i took the shovel and dug compost from all three piles Fritz wanted to eat from all spring, and shifted it from the shovel onto Fritz's little body. i brought him an egg from the house, as we'd done for my childhood dog, and cracked it and placed it near him. i tore a lettuce leaf and placed it down with him. i poured milk over the compost. he'd loved milk and eggs and fresh lettuce and compost, and aside from the lettuce, he couldn't have them for the health problems they gave him. well, not the compost; we kept him from that because of many nights of getting up with him at 2 am to go outside and eat grass, and compost was on the list of suspects. so the eggs and milk were finally free for him. i also brought him some of the dirt from the driveway which he always wanted to eat and which i sometimes roughly pulled him back from, to keep him from possibly getting us up at night.

we began to sprinkle the soil over him, breaking up the soil and clay clumps in our hands as we came upon them. the boy dropped his collar in, we fetched it out, he dropped it in, we fetched it out, he dropped it in again and we both told each other that perhaps it was supposed to go into the earth with him. we lifted and shook more and more soil, clay from our hands. following my husband's lead, we filled his whole grave with the soil from our hands. so right, so slow, to fill a grave this way, the shovel having done its work in digging. as the level of the soil rose up to meet the ground level, we began to shift the surface of it around, to keep it evenly filled, and it was like toussling Fritz's fur. when the grave was filled and we came to the last of the soil, we raked the soil gently from the grass around the grave with our fingers, and we were running our fingers through Fritz's fur.

his little body lies curled, softly, in our earth tonight. we cry in our hearts, we cry out loud. we speak our misgivings about so many requests for love that Fritz gave us that went unmet. so many moments of thoughtlessness, withholding, that he experienced at our hands, and we grieve and hurt for him and for us.

i understand drugs tonight, i understand drinking, i understand constant distraction. this pain has nowhere to go, is accompanied by no thoughts to ease it. we could have given him a better life. now he is out of our hands, back to creation and wholeness, as i know, out to loneliness, as my husband feels tonight, and we cannot pat him, cannot play with him, cannot kiss him and make him feel beloved now. only grieve him and pray that he feels and knows, or remembers, our love. Fritz, you are loved and missed.