On the Loss of Azul
by Brittany Michelson
“Until one has loved an animal, a part of one’s soul remains unawakened.”
– Anatole France
A delivery man came to the door with a cardboard box. On the outside it said “Handle With Care,” “Fragile,” “Do Not Drop.” The packing slip said 1 lb. I never opened a package so carefully. Inside was a shiny wooden box withAzul engraved in gold. My best friend, my 12 year old dog—my greatest bond—in a box.
I wondered what else he was delivering that day. New shoes, a computer, books? My love along with items people had ordered from catalogs. I was angry she was in a box, reduced to specks of bone and calcium and dust. Outside of our rural Topanga Canyon home were the animal sounds she loved: call of wild peacock, whinny of horse. Her good friend Nemo, the black lab, barked down the road.
She was just there, vibrant and hiking. Twelve years old, fifty-eight pounds, and not a trace of arthritis. This was my first loss of someone close to me. I’d never held a box of ashes. My baby in a box. A fucking box. My heart was in it with her.
I hit the floor on my knees, sobbing from a deeper place than I’d ever accessed, as if there was a gaping hole through which my heart shot straight out of my body. But if my heart was removed, it wouldn’t hurt. I could toss it aside, grow another heart. The neighbors probably thought I was dying.
Five days earlier, Azul had a sudden shaking episode. Even though she was lifeless when my neighbor put her in the car, I drove like hell down the hill to the emergency vet clinic.Please don’t let her die, I begged the universe. I clung to the fact that it was a radiant spring day; that she’d been hiking and eating big bowls of food up until that morning.
The vet was waiting in the parking lot with a stethoscope. When she tested Azul’s heartbeat and said, “I’m so sorry, she’s gone,” I started screaming like a wild woman. It was a ripping apart, a shredding.
An ultrasound revealed that she had a tumor on her spleen. But she hadn’t acted like anything was wrong.
“There’s no way you could have known,” the vet told me. “Dogs don’t usually show signs until the organ ruptures and that’s it.”
“What if I’d moved faster? Put her in the car right away instead of consulting the neighbors?”
“Wouldn’t matter,” she said with a sad smile. “If you’d known, you would have had to put her down. Even with surgery, the animal has a poor quality of life afterwards, and they only live for a few more months. Many do not even make it through surgery.”
“I can’t believe she’s dead,” I said. “She seemed perfectly fine.”
“You’re lucky she went this way,” the vet said, her kind eyes locked into mine. “She didn’t have to suffer. And you didn’t have to watch her suffer.”
Maybe I should’ve been grateful that both she and I were spared
