The Sweetest Soul
One year without our Frankie boy.
This post was written during different times of grief. Parts of it, anticipatory, others, of the present or closer to Frank’s passing. It does not move chronologically, but grief never does.
“I’m just really happy with life right now,” the words slid out of my mouth before taking another sip of wine, my husband sitting across from me eating homemade pasta from the new restaurant in town.
Less than 24 hours later I was desperately trying to hold my 80lb dog up as he struggled to find his footing in the dark, his 4 legs sliding in different directions as he wet himself and fell into it, his body and brain unable to connect the dots of how to function.
Less than 72 hours after that, we were saying goodbye.
Frank always needed extra attention from the beginning. He came to us in shambles, skin and bones, scars all over his body, a mess of a mouth, and anxiety from the trauma he endured before he chose us. When we first brought him home his body was a disaster, scared and scarred. His tail had a horrible dock job that took months of care, bandage changing, towels soaked in blood, and wondering if another surgery would be needed. His teeth were almost all non-existent. Jagged and missing, filed down to a pulp or decayed and deteriorated. But what stood out the most about him were his eyes, how the kindness of his beaten and battered soul still shined through them even after all the abuse and lack of care.
“He has the sweetest soul” a volunteer said to me as we finally were able to take him home.
7 years and a few lifetimes later, that sentiment still stands true; our boy had the sweetest soul.
The first time I took him to the vet, someone who years later I would call consider family and one of his angels, I laid on the floor with him as she told me based on his scars and lack of teeth, she thought he may have been a bait dog, the one that had the bad things happen to him, but when I tell you his past did not stop that boy from loving with his whole block head and murmur ladden heart…
When we officially met him a few weeks before taking him home, he came clumsily bounding out of the back room of the vets office and laid upside down on my husbands feet, looking up, instantly waiting for belly rubs. From that moment on, the two of them were best buds, imprinting on one another. Watching their relationship from the outside made me fall deeper in love with both of them. The way Frank looked to Alex like he was his protector, how after a long day of work they would snuggle up on the couch together, Alex was his person and Frank was Alex’s soul dog.
He was timid and mellow for awhile, moving with trepidation and the energy of a sloth, a slight hint of fear in his every move, which made me wonder even more what had happened to this poor boy. The first time he got the zoomies, he clumsily teeter-totted around the apartment and I thought something was wrong because he looked so uncoordinated and unstable doing it. Years later, I came to the conclusion that he just actually never had them before and had a hard time controlling his own, tall, heavy, somewhat lanky body.
It wasn’t until we were on walks when we realized how bad his trauma really was; his body on high alert as he snapped and lashed out towards every dog we’d pass on the street. His fear coming to the surface and his reaction to survive kicking in.
Over the years, hours on hours of training and behavior modification instruction took place (thanks to another one of his angels) as we worked to break the hard habits self learned to survive. The time and emotions put into it were not easy, but looking back, they taught me some of the biggest lessons I’ve ever learned about loving patience and divine discipline.
Our lifetime with Frank was filled with an immense amount of love and memories, and bit of anxiousness.
*Written a few weeks before his passing
Some may find it strange that I am writing about the death of my dog when he is still alive and for the most part, healthy. The real truth though, is that I’ve been bracing myself for his passing since the moment we brought him home from the shelter.
A bigger truth, is that I am constantly in a state of grief, a consistent and steady spiral of the all encompassing complex emotions that it holds in the umbrella of the definition.
To say it has been an easy life with Frank would be a lie. He (and we) have gone through bouts of medical behavioral problems throughout the years together. IBS and a heart murmur, arthritis and a possible neurological disorder, and then the issues that so often come with age; losing his sight and hearing. With these came frequent visits to the vet, sleepless nights with worry and anxiousness, money that is owed to remedy the issues and above all, the constant worry of how he is, how is he living and feeling?
Since his sister passed away over a year ago, he grieved the hardest out of anyone else in the family. For weeks his appetite left him and his stomach worked against him. For weeks his anxiety wouldn’t let him be alone in the house without howling for hours or becoming somewhat destructive. For weeks he looked for her, wondering where she was hiding and when she would come home.
It was the most heartbreaking part of my own grief.
Not long after Nola passed, we noticed a mass starting to form on his chest. We ran a few tests, kept and eye on it, did what we could, but unfortunately it grew, slowly but surely, it became bigger and bigger.
Over the span of a past few months, I found myself in the position of caregiver. Changing dressings nightly, administering medication daily, guiding him up and down the flights of stairs in our home, washing his wet beds and couch covers. At times it became overwhelming and I found myself losing patience, becoming unraveled at the stresses or taking care of a senior dog as well as a human toddler who is on the opposite spectrum of where he is, full of energy and life.
At times I felt a deep sense of guilt and shame and like a bad dog owner because I couldn’t pause everything else happening in my life at the moment.
At times I wondered if he is happy, if he is still living a fulfilled, abundant life.
At times I wondered if I took our years for granted.
When I was in 8th grade I had a teachers whose son was in 9/11. He told us that when he got home that night he left the pile of clothes that he was in that day in the laundry room for months, unmoved and still.
As I stripped down, my head full of wine and sadness, I thought about that story as I made a pile of the last clothes I was wearing when I held him that night, the night we said goodbye - they were left in that same pile for weeks after, the sheets he used to lay in still sit in a basket next to the washing machine one year later.
I was not ready to let go but I am ready to move on.
*Present
I started writing this 2 mornings before the the downfall. 2 mornings before I could not hold you up anymore, before I tried to take you in my arms and lead you up the stairs, but your legs wouldn’t allow it. 2 mornings before you laid on your bed, unmoving, wetting yourself without realizing it.
I changed your urine soaked t-shirt as you laid there, still and listless, your little sister standing close by, trying to feed you goldfish crackers to make you feel better. I whispered reassuring words to you, telling you it would be okay, that you were alright and that mommy would take care of you.
That morning will forever be engrained in my brain. It will live forever in a space that I have carved out for memories I want to numb out, but memories that are ones of you.
The night after, you gave us your last gift. You greeted your dad at the door when he came home from work, the first time in months, and you and I slept on the couch together one last night, you laying on my feet keeping them warm, reminding me that your body was still present.
To love a dog is to pour your whole heart and soul into making sure that you give them everything they need in order to survive this life. You unknowingly soak in the moments; the daily walks, the silly quirks, the snuggles at the end of the night, the weird habits they have that make you love them more. When they are young, you show them you care by teaching them structure, by showing them life doesn’t have to be as scary as it maybe once was, you practice skills that make them ‘the best boy’ even when they don’t exactly get them, and they become family.
To love an elderly, unwell dog means continuing to do all those things, but to also become a caregiver. The person who tends to their physical and emotional wounds, to remind them that they are still perfect even when their bones and body have become tired, when their gray face is the one that greets you in the mornings. You become an usher into their next stage of their life, the one where you then learn to live without them.
Once they are gone time passes, both slowly and faster than you can keep up with. At times, the memories start to fade, and yet there are still the visceral ones you can feel in your heart, at your fingertips, like they just happened. You wonder if the ache of losing them will ever go away, if your life will ever go back to ‘normal.’
Sure, the ache fades but the normal only becomes a different lifetime, one without them, one that you have to learn to adjust to and move forward in.
The love though, that never fades, it just gets dispersed differently. Into memories, into gratitude, into moving forward, into saving another animal. The love is what keeps you tethered to the life you are now living, in honor of them and the impact they will forever have on you, into the ‘remember whens’ and moments they engrained into your soul.
To our sweet soul Frankie, we love and miss you buddy. Thank you for the lifetime of memories and being the best, most special boy that we will ever have in our life - I’ll see you in a different one.
