I was editing a live recording we did for Film School tonight, a movie we watched at my house, and I didn’t realize that I was going to hear Coco barking in the background for one brief section.
It was the last Friday I ever spent with her. And it was so painful to hear those barks, because in retrospect, I knew it was because she was in pain. She was sick in ways we didn’t understand yet. Part of me wishes I’d heard those barks and understood, but I didn’t.
And here’s the thing…Coco had started barking well before she was dying. She was the quietest dog I’d ever known right up until the last year of her life, when she “found her voice” and me and Liz liked to say. She hurt her back at the very end of 2021 and we had to put her on strict crate rest…which she hated…and she started barking at us because of it. She barked pretty regularly after that whenever she wanted something.
So…Coco was barking that night in the background of that recording because she was dying, but it wasn’t only because she was dying that she barked. She barked for many things. It only meant she wasn’t suffering in silence, that’s all. She’d learned to vocalize it.
Totally blindsided me to hear her. I’d forgot that recording session was right before she died. It felt both like a thousand years ago, and just days ago. In a few days, it will have been a month. It makes my head spin. Still. Even though I’m better. Only part of me is better. The rest of me is still there, that week she died, panicking and lost. Empty in that bottomless way.
I’d take the barks. In a heartbeat. I thought I was going to have longer with them. Longer with old, slow Coco. A gentle decline. Painful in its own way, but longer. I thought maybe she’d live to 20. I was prepared to take care of her old body for so much longer. To sooth her when she was upset, to carry her wherever she needed to go, support her when she wanted to move herself, clean up after her whenever she had an accident, feed and bathe her. It was going to make us even closer than we already were. That’s what I imagined. She had back problems; she might not be able to walk at some point. But, that was okay, because the rest of her was healthy. Healthy appetite and poops. Her brain was sharp. She never got lost or confused.
I did get all that time with her. I did. It was just so much shorter than what I imagined.
I miss you Coco. I love you so much, and I’m still in disbelief that you’re gone. Grief is a carnival ride. It whips us around, up and down, around and around. I think I’ll feel better in the morning.