Oh, to Be the Age I Was When I First Thought I Was Old

Dear Chewey,

This one might be all over the place, buddy. Even more than usual. So hang in there with me.

Do you remember your older half-brother, Tripper? Well, I went to see him and Jake in Colorado… and it turns out he’s nearing the end of his life. Much sooner than any of us want. He’s got liver cancer, and he will be put down soon, maybe before I even leave.

Trip and I shared some quiet time together this morning, and it was near impossible not to rewind time back to when he was the puppy I didn’t have the patience for. 

It was 2011, and I was newly responsible for integrating my daughter into our home, after an incredibly contentious and stressful custody battle which required constant time, attention, and money, none of which I seemed to have an abundance of. I was stressed to a degree I had not yet experienced, and had become increasingly angry at no one; at everyone.  

Somehow this coffee-mug-sized chihuahua got caught up in that. He struggled with potty training. I struggled with everything. And now, looking back, the guilt hits me like a wave: I wasted so much of that precious beginning.

With you, Chewey, I found patience easily. With him… not so much. But even then, before there was you, Trip and I found our rhythm. We became best friends. Sunday morning burritos, as he cheered along with me for my fantasy football team. Movie nights where he’d burrow between my legs, making sure I always knew I wasn’t alone. Day or night, he stood guard over whatever pieces of me were left from the battles I was waging.

And now, this little k-9 Giving Tree, whom I took for granted in the beginning, and in the middle of his life, as I left my wife and him along with her, is nearing his final day, and I will be damned if I take his ending for granted.

Of course, as things often do, this is all happening on the heels of other personal difficulties, as my grandmother faces her own health scares. And it’s like the universe is tapping me on the shoulder reminding me that time doesn’t just come for all of us…it comes for everything. Moments, relationships, versions of ourselves we thought would last forever.

I keep wondering… did Trip wait for me to get here? Does he somehow know I needed to walk through this with him? Or maybe he’s here to guide me through something I haven’t quite admitted yet. I’ve never lost an animal before. I’ve never had to make the choice to let one go. It’s occurred to me that this is somehow analogous to my personal life, as I tend to push before being pushed.  I don’t want the finality of seeing something I love to come to an end on terms I don’t control.  That’s a childhood thing to get into on a different post.

Now? Lynne has music playing…the kind she loves…soft, a little (or a lot) sad, like the soundtrack to Trip’s movie as the credits roll. Or maybe the soundtrack hits me, as I see Trip’s passing as yet another chapter closing on a marriage that ended too suddenly for either of us to fully understand.

She and I… we’re good now. Friends. But there’s a void there that never quite fills…a space where a life we once imagined together still echoes. I love her. I always will. Just…differently than before. Love evolves. Time insists that it does.

Still, part of me mourns not just the dog who’s slipping away… but the life that slipped away…the version of us that might have been if only I had not done (insert Chris’s list of personal failures here).

People say endings create room for new beginnings. That beauty grows from what is lost. I try to believe that…I truly do…but I think people say a lot of things when they are trying to help others from feeling hurt the way they once did, or maybe even still do.  We almost become desperate in a way that screams “if I can’t help him get through this, is it possible I’m hopeless to get through my own pain?”.  

So we fight on, because we remember the good times of our past, and believe that others must exist in our future.  We fight on because we have people we love who must see us fighting on.  We fight on because…well, what the hell else are we going to do? 

A dear friend of mine recently reminded me of a powerful quote from Goethe’s dark play Faust…one that feels made for this exact moment. This morning, Trip found the last warm patch of sunlight on Lynne’s wooden floor and curled onto it, as though holding on to the world in the most peaceful way he could. His once-sturdy body is fragile now, his beard gone grey.

I sat beside him, stroking his fur, and the memories came uninvited…who he used to be, who I used to be, and how much time had slipped through our fingers while we weren’t paying attention. Then he lifted his eyes to mine, slow and trusting, and I felt something inside me both break and heal at the same time.

So I said my goodbye in the only way a man overflowing with love, pain, and the confusion of everything lost and everything that remains possibly can:

“Ah, linger on! Thou art so beautiful.”