By Mari Ramler
This little dog who loved me better than mother, than husband, than even children, perhaps. My little dog who outlasted marriage and faith. Her background body dying. And still, I did not take her to the emergency vet because her actual checkup was in two weeks and then ten days and then only four. And still, Bailey was dying with only two days left.
I have less than a handful of regrets in my life. I do not regret leaving Evangelicalism, even as I broke my poor mother’s heart. And I do not regret leaving a fifteen-year marriage to start over with my young children in a new state where I had exactly one friend, even as most people didn’t understand why I left my own life behind. I don’t have these regrets because I never left God, and I never left love. And maybe this is why not taking Bailey to the vet and leaving her there sooner is, so far as I can tell, my only regret. But it is a regret so deep I can drown in it.
Bailey was dying six months before she was dying, probably. I didn’t know this at the time because I was too busy teaching and grading and writing and caring for my actual children. But, in the background, Bailey’s little dog body, that still smelled like peanut butter when I would kiss her soft neck every time I carried her out to pee, was dying.
This is how I know: First, she couldn’t walk, so I carried her everywhere. Next, she went blind, and I potty-trained her again, this time as a blind dog. Finally, she could barely breathe, so I put her next to me on the pillow and listened to her breathing, as I listened to my newborn babies breathe when we first met. Bailey could only breathe at the end with great effort by heaving her chest and with a little cough that sometimes shook her entire sternum.
I’m holding her in my arms and letting ice cubes drop into her water bowl from the automatic fridge dispenser because she likes her water cold when her head collapses. Her small head just collapses in the crook of my arm. And this—and only this—moment is how I know she is dying—not dead, yet, but truly dying—even though I’ve already called the vet and am almost, I’m telling you, I’m almost on my way. Yet, I continue to let the ice fall into her water bowl until it is nearly overflowing.
Mari Ramler is an associate professor of English at Tennessee Technological University. She has published recently in Taco Bell Quarterly, Survive and Thrive, Capacious, and The Iris Review.