Three Gifts My Dying Dog Left Me

A little over a month ago, our 13-year-old Labradoodle Curly was diagnosed with an aggressive form of leukemia. This unexpected news stunned our family. Already hobbled with arthritis and failing eyesight, Curly's health deteriorated quickly in the week following his diagnosis. When it became clear that he was suffering beyond what any living creature should be expected to endure, we put an end to his pain with the help of our local vet.

I spent much of our remaining time together carrying Curly up and down the front steps of our house so we could go on short walks, or sitting together in the three-season room that overlooks our backyard when his pain became so intense that it was difficult for him to move. Now that he's been gone several weeks, I've pulled myself together enough to see that through his sudden passing he left me three wonderful gifts, three important reminders about this miraculous experience we call life.

First, Curly reminded me that nothing lasts, no matter how much we might wish otherwise. Impermanence is a fundamental quality of our experience, yet we insist on preserving the illusion that the world is stable, solid, and reliable. I imagine that's why some say change is difficult, but that's not true. Change isn't difficult or easy - it's simply the way things are. We make change difficult whenever we dig in our heels and resist its inescapable pull. We seek comfort in the familiar and will do anything we can to make sure we always have ground under our feet.

Our relationships, our jobs, and our health are always at risk. We stare into our laptops and ask friends and coworkers when they think things will return to normal. The answer is that they will never return to normal, if by normal we mean the way things were before the crisis. Of course this won't be all bad. Many of us are already embracing new models of living and working together - how we teach and learn in school, collaborate with each other at work, and deliver and receive care from our doctors, to name just a few. But our world will never be the same. Literally every form of social interaction is changing and will continue to change, long after the current crisis ends, in ways that are impossible for us to imagine.

Second, Curly reminded me that all of us are suffering in one way or another, even if we can't always communicate to others exactly why or how we're suffering. In his final days, Curly obviously couldn't communicate to me how he was suffering. We humans are no different - often we find it hard to share with others exactly where life hurts us most. Whether it's the all-too-familiar hum of existential anxiety pulsing just below the surface of our awareness or the more obvious, incapacitating misery of depression, each of us experiences some degree of psychological distress every day. Much of this suffering we bring upon ourselves because we refuse to accept the truth that nothing lasts. We desperately cling to the way things used to be - to what's safe, secure, and predictable. This obstinacy is a kind of insanity because when we refuse to acknowledge that nothing lasts, we're refusing to accept something that's already happened and can't be reversed. We live in the past instead of the present. As the writer Byron Katie puts it, "when you argue with reality you lose - but only 100% of the time."

All of us are struggling to adapt to changes we've been forced to accept in our lives these last few weeks. What makes things worse is that we find it hard to share our pain with others because we know or have heard of people we believe are suffering more than we are. Some of us have friends or family members who have been hospitalized or who have died from the virus, and we're convinced that our own pain can't compare to what others must be enduring. So we keep quiet and suffer in silence. It's worth remembering that those who wreak havoc on our organizations and antagonize us at work during this crisis are suffering just like we are, but because managing their pain is beyond their current capacity, they unwittingly seek relief by projecting their misery outward on to others. In times like these, our coworkers deserve our compassion more than our anger.

Finally, Curly's illness and death reminded me that service to others who are suffering is a privilege. I never considered the special care Curly needed in his final days to be a burden or an inconvenience. I'm grateful to have had the chance to look after him - to take him out every two hours, even in the middle of the night, to relieve himself when the Prednisone made him insatiably thirsty; to lift his 70-pound body in and out of the backseat of the car for a drive to the vet; or to prepare special meals for his sensitive stomach, which was upset by the Cytoxan he was taking to slow the ravages of his cancer.

Curly reminded me that service to others is a privilege. I was standing in a long check-out line at the grocery store last week and had plenty of time to notice how on edge shoppers were, wary of anyone in their vicinity who might be carrying the virus. I also noticed, though, a man in his twenties ahead of me allowing an older woman, accompanied by her seven- or eight-year-old granddaughter, to step in front of him in line so she could pay for the two hot bar meals she was buying for lunch. Several days later, I witnessed a middle-aged woman approach the entrance to this same store, only to turn away and walk back to her car when she realized that admission at this early hour was limited to customers over 60.

These were small courtesies but still remarkable, given the preoccupation with self-preservation this virus has forced upon us. While such gestures will never command the same level of attention as the growing number of deaths the media report each day, I still think they're worth noting. We ignore such small acts of kindness at our peril, because every time we do so, we diminish our humanity by some small measure.

Nothing lasts, everyone suffers, and it's our job to do what we can to relieve others' suffering. This is the gist of the three gifts my good friend and companion left me. If we're learning anything from this pandemic, it's that we are all inextricably woven into a social fabric that connects each of us to everyone else. Better to acknowledge this now, before it's too late.