He lived fast, furious…and not nearly long enough.
Winston is gone.
We recently had to say goodbye to our beloved pup. Winston just couldn’t recover from a serious spinal injury he most likely sustained while doing what he lived and loved to do – running recklessly, leaping dangerously, playing tirelessly and “protecting” us diligently (albeit psychotically) from squirrels, deer, UPS delivery trucks, and virtually anyone else who ventured up our driveway.
Despite wonderful veterinary and even chiropractic care, Winston became a prisoner in a rapidly failing body, and we were forced to make the agonizing decision to release him from his misery.
We came to realize that we were keeping Winston alive primarily so that we wouldn’t have to endure the grief that is ultimately inevitable once you let a pet into your home and your heart. Having endured the deaths of several pets in my lifetime, I began dreading this heartache almost the minute my husband walked in the door and plopped the unbearably adorable Winston in my lap eight short years ago.
There aren’t too many things in this world cuter than shar-pei pups. Soft, plush and unbelievably wrinkly. So when Joe presented Winston to me as a Christmas gift seven months after we had lost Chops, Winston’s shar-pei predecessor, I was delighted, but I also knew I was probably setting myself up for eventual heartache and grief.
It seems that beloved pets pass through our lives much too quickly and the end always arrives with a savage sting.
My last day with Winston was unbearably long and tortuous, as it placed me in the unnatural position of knowing something I shouldn’t know: the exact hour Winston was going to check out of this life. Our dog had taken a significant, irreversible turn for the worse over the course of a weekend, so after talking with our vet, we came to the unavoidable conclusion that it was time to end Winston’s suffering. Joe made an appointment to take Winston in to the vet’s office after work on a Monday.
During Winston’s last day, I tried to help him enjoy as much of life as he could possibly enjoy, which wasn’t much at this stage. He sat in the backyard and looked apathetically at the birds and squirrels in the backyard kingdom he had once ruled with such a mighty paw. His eyes were dim, his spirit crushed, his tail unable to muster even a tiny wag when I talked to him.
I felt pretty much the same way.
It was awful to bear the weight of the knowledge that this living, breathing creature had only a few hours left. It made me feel like I knew something I was never intended to know and that we were being forced by circumstances to exercise a godlike power we mortals simply aren’t supposed to have.
Maybe that’s a bit over-melodramatic, but that’s how I felt. Every time I looked at Winston that day, knowing what I knew about what was coming for him, I felt incredibly inadequate.
Sometimes I foolishly think I want to be the “god” of my life, to write my own script, to call the shots, to be the captain of my destiny. But on this Monday, I realized anew the crushing weight of that job and it was a good, if unbearably heartbreaking, reminder.
There’s only one God, one Lord of life…and I don’t want His job. Thanks, Winston, for one final, important, enduring lesson.