this morning, with night approaching

This is not nearly as tidy as I would like it to be.

This guy has had a rough morning. Captain Jack Sparrow, because in his younger days he had a patch over his right eye, now almost entirely white, that made him look like a pirate. “Jack” to his friends; unquestionably the captain in his mind.

We woke up at 6:30 when he bumped his head against my bed in the process of pooping in his. I did my best to ignore the smell, but a few minutes later he stood up, wobbly, gasping, and proceeded to continue the process in six or eight places on the rug. I held him up, because his hind legs are no longer strong enough to support himself while defecating. This went on for a while, while my knees and back complained vigorously, and eventually he went to standing and turning in circles and generally doing his best to hide his discomfort from me.

That’s something dogs do, the vet told me. Their instinct is not to show weakness. Us too, I suppose.

I considered breaking out the gabapentin, if only to let him sleep, but he hates the taste, and I’m not sure about its effect on his digestive tract. Sooner or later he looked at his bed, and I helped him in it, and he dozed for a while before the process repeated again.

This is not the first time we’ve been here. This is not the first time I’ve pondered whether this is the end. This is not the first time I’ve wondered whether I’m going to have the strength to make the right decision at the right time.

You see, in the various corners of the internet, in the places where people like to share things, posts about pets that have moved on. They fill me with joy and sadness at the same time; sympathy for the caregivers who post them, delight at the beauty, at the - well, delightfulness - of our companions. You rarely see posts about their last days, maybe unless you go looking for them. I have never gone looking for them. I guess I need to.

At times I have known I can do this, when he’s been truly miserable with some kind of stomach bug or other ailment or the arthritis that hits a 16-year-old terrier. The scenario I dread is the one where he’s fine, bright-eyed and alert, but the legs just won’t hold him up anymore. We’re heading to that, if something else doesn’t come first. My daily exercise includes carrying eleven pounds up and down the stairs to our apartment. (Yes, our apartment, although he’s been pretty poor about coming up with his share of the rent.)

Once, coming home from college on one break or another, I saw our white German shepherd Hans, unable to walk. I think that day my mom saw my reaction, saw Hans through different eyes. The next day she took him to the vet. I don’t remember if I said goodbye.

(Oh, the euphemisms. “Put down.” “Put to sleep.” “Euthanized” (the “good death”).

We all want to die in our sleep, peacefully, don’t we? That’s the trope. I don’t know how many of us get that. Anyway, the poet tells us that we’re wrong: we should burn and rave at close of day. On the other hand, Dylan Thomas was 25 when he wrote that. What the fuck did he know?

Two friends recently, at different times, for different reasons, have talked about their end of life plans. They don’t want to suffer; they don’t want to be a burden. Both times the discussion filled me with terror. Mostly, terror at losing an important person in my life. That terror is also a stand-in for the sadness that comes with knowing there will be a time, for them and for me. And terror at the enormity, the finality, of the decision.

It is one thing to make that decision for yourself. It feels like quite another to make it for another being, even for a friend who depends entirely upon me to make all the right decisions.

Sometimes I think he resents me for being so dependent on me, especially now, especially here, in this little apartment, not at Mom’s house where, three weeks ago, he was running with abandon around the yard, as if the fresh air and green grass were fountains of youth. Here, we have concrete sidewalks and tree pits strewn with candy wrappers and cigarette butts from the construction workers next door. I feed him, I give him treats, and he accepts them gladly, but some part of me - obviously projection - thinks he carries a silent rage at me, at his dependency. Left to his own devices, he would eat an entire piece of fried chicken, bones and all, right off the sidewalk where one of my careless neighbors dropped it and left it. And pay the consequences later. Who am I to make that choice for him?

What authority do I have to decide when he should die?

I was embarrassed the first time I had to wipe my dad’s behind, in the hospital after he’d had a surgery. I had a moment of, “Isn’t there someone else to do this?” Well, no, and moreover, what makes you so special? I reflected that he had probably wiped my ass more times than I would ever know, and I got to work.

Later, on occasions when the struggle to get him from his easy chair to his wheelchair or into bed was especially difficult, he would say, “Just hit me in the head with a hammer.” I would laugh and say, no, you don’t mean that. I wondered if he did.

He at least could say that, whether or not anyone was going to act on it. Knowing that no one was going to act on it. He at least could put the thought into the universe. Captain Jack Sparrow sits silent, deaf as a post, limited in vocabulary, limited even in willingness to express his pain and his desire. He gets up, walks over to me, wants something: food? a walk? affection?

As it was clear Dad was approaching death, my therapist talked to me about what I was feeling, and about his own father’s relatively recent death. (One of the ways my therapist rocks is that he has never been especially bound by the customary expectation of being a cipher to me.) He talked about the pain that appears out of nowhere. He tells me, and I repeat to myself, that feeling is love.