Last week we had to put down our long time family dog. Dickens was nearly fourteen and I’d seen him grow quiet in the past year as he started to lose his hearing and vision. We knew he wouldn’t be around forever, but that’s an easy thing to know until your are face to face with the day that forces you to make a decision.
I got the call from my mom and raced out of the house to get stuck in traffic on an 70 degree day, with the gas tank nearly empty. I was so worried the car would die halfway across the 520 floating bridge, I cut the AC, turned off the headlights and radio, and opened the windows. I tried to have the mind of a dog—nowhere to be but where I was—sticking my head out the window, looking at the cloudless sky, smelling the occasional cool breeze. I thought about the last time I saw Dickens at home and how I hadn’t let him outside with me when I watered the garden. And now, all I wanted was to give him that slow time in the grass, where he could take the world in and roll in it. But I was creeping toward something much harder than that.
In the vet’s office, my family was already gathered around Dickens, Thom and Andrew on the floor, both of my parents leaning close from their chairs. They had waited for me. We sat around him as he looked up at us and I couldn’t believe how calm he seemed. How these were our last minutes with him.
The vet, a long time family friend, came in with the needle and said it would be quick, but we asked for another minute. How strange to be sitting around a living part of our family, believing we could stay in that moment until we knew we could not. Something sharp and uncomfortable about that knowing. And when the vet came back we watched as our world changed in two seconds flat.
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Our baby’s due date was Monday. It’s Wednesday and still no baby. Elie went to our midwife, Erin, this morning and found out her blood pressure is high for the first time in the pregnancy. Elie has already been working with every natural inducer possible for the past couple weeks: walking several miles everyday, drinking raspberry leaf tea, using evening primrose, eating pineapple, getting acupuncture, and other forms I don’t need to mention here.
But now that her blood pressure is high, it won’t be going down before the baby comes and Erin wants to move quickly. If things don’t change within the day, Erin could insert a catheter, creating pressure that would have Elie in labor within hours.
And suddenly this thing we felt we had no control over requires a simple decision. And for the first time I’m afraid we’re not ready to have this new life, this delicate little body that has been only an idea, a constellation of small parts pushing against my wife’s stomach from the inside.
A simple choice to nudge things along. The hardest decision to make.
